In comedy, timing is everything. And there’s been something undeniably funny about comedian Bubbah announcing she’s relocating to Samoa while on the publicity trail hawking her new TVNZ+ series, Don’t.
This personal news has dominated headlines and buried the very thing she’s supposed to be promoting. Ba-dom-ching? I don’t hear TVNZ’s execs laughing …
Ask her what she’s most excited about as launch day approaches, and her doco-series doesn’t get a look in.
“Packing up and moving me and my dog Friday to Samoa to live the island life,” she replies. “Waking up to the beach, living off the land and looking after our plantation.”
This leaves it to others to to talk about her show. Don’t follows the 28-year-old comedian, born Sieni Leo’o Olo, as she explores the big, scary life topics faced by those rapidly approaching their 30s and the younger generation coming up behind them.
Each of its three, hour-long episodes tackles a different life-changing question: do you get married, do you buy a house, do you have kids? Or, what if you don’t?
Recognising that getting to the bottom of these heavy topics is too big an ask for just one person, Bubbah has some help. On each episode she’s joined by a fellow comic – Bailey Poching, Courtney Dawson or Rhiannon McCall – and together they talk to experts, quiz randos on the streets and enlist the use of at least one full-body penguin suit.
That last one hints at the flashes of absurdism Bubbah brings to the documentary format. These mostly surface in the parts that see the comedian and her co-host “living the experience”, like exchanging vows, for instance. These can fall a little flat depending on your tolerance for skit-based humour.
Despite the jokey approach, Don’t also brings info and insight into how Aotearoa’s young people are feeling about these supposed rites of passage. The experts tend to have the stats, but it’s the feelings of the people on the street that paint the picture.
In the first episode, there are staunch anti-wedlock types, old married couples, a throuple enthusiast and a pair of sweet summer children who have been together for “over a year” and are already hearing wedding bells.
While Bubbah’s deep dive into all of this stuff didn’t prompt her move, she says it’s been on her mind for a while and the show has left her a changed woman.
“One of the happiest people I met in the show was this lady who decided to be single, and I was also choosing to live a life like that, so that was probably one of my favourite people,” she says. “We also learnt that single women, statistically, live the happiest and longest. Men don’t, they have to be in relationships. Which means that when men and women are in relationships, it’s the woman giving a lot, you know? So, I’m gonna be single forever! That’s what I’ve taken away.”
And now she’s going away – even though getting your own television show would presumably be the dream of many Aotearoa comedians.
There’s only one question left to ask, why? “I was at the dairy and saw that the cheese cost me $15, and I thought, I’m out. So, that’s why I’m moving,” she jokes. “Okay, not really because of the cheese, but it’s an easier life. I like being outside. It’s so easy.”
Don’t streams on TVNZ+ from Thursday, May 29.
