Chris Lilley as Jen Okazaki from Angry Boys. Photo / Supplied
Chris Lilley as Jen Okazaki from Angry Boys. Photo / Supplied
He's created some of television's most memorable and quotable comic creations, but Summer Heights High star Chris Lilley says even he gets annoyed by his characters.
"Often my characters annoy me. I don't want to hang out with Ja'mie or Mr G. Mr G would be so annoying," Lilley toldnzherald.co.nz during promotions for the DVD release of his latest show, Angry Boys.
"But I certainly miss them, and playing them ... I've got a cupboard full of wigs that I sometimes open up and stare at."
Angry Boys, which follows Lilley's hits We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High, contains some of the 37-year-old's best characters yet, including American rapper S.Mouse, strict Japanese mother Jen Okazaki and Gran, a prison officer at a Juvenile detention centre.
Lilley says he pushed more boundaries on Angry Boys, and purposely courted controversy by playing different races.
"Some of them are really painful to play, but I love the end result. Like S.Mouse, I love how he turned out ... But it was a lot of hard work. It was such a huge leap for me to play something so far from me, and to have an American cast around, and to say 'n****r' around them.It was intense."
The character - a one-hit-wonder rapper stuck on home detention - created a furore at home for the Australian actor, but Lilley says overseas fans loved S.Mouse.
"I thought it was provocative, (that) it was going to shake things up a bit, but I've played a Chinese student, a Japanese boy, a Tongan student. It's like, it's okay to play those races, but as soon as you're a black person obviously there's a different history with that - people get up in arms about it. But not in America or the UK."
Lilley researches his characters heavily, trying to make them and their environments as real as possible, and he says he often forgets that he's acting.
"It's a hard thing to explain. I don't ever think of them as me, even when I'm cutting the show together. I don't think, 'Let's put that bit of me doing this'. It's always, 'Where's that thing that Blake says?'
"Even when I"m writing they have a life of their own, they tell me where they're going to go."
While We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High were lavished with praise, reviewers haven't been as kind about Angry Boys, with many criticising the excessive toilet humour and lack of laughs.
But Lilley says he's had plenty of positive feedback from online fans.
"I like the fans, I follow Facebook and Twitter, and if they're into it and they're part of the gang of people that love it, I read that ... I'm constantly getting message from people saying they're crying at one moment, laughing the next.
"But I don't read analysis of the show, I don't want that to affect what I do in the future."
Speaking of that, Lilley has "three or four" projects on the go, but doesn't know which one will take off.
"I'm working on all of them and eventually one will end up a winner. What I love is playing the lead characters and writing for myself and I'd love to work with the same crew. I'm certainly not over that style yet.
"I'm not about to do a drama or a science fiction movie."
