Hi! I'm Carolyn Taylor. I am one of the executive producers, creators and stars of Baroness Von
Sketch show on CBC and also on, I guess, YouTube and other places. Who's your favorite comedian
these days? I've been really loving following Chris Locke on Twitter. He just is so bizarre. I
would encourage you to follow him. He just cracks me up in the most absurd ways,
and it's like the world is happening, everything's falling apart and then there's Chris Locke on a
strange island made of balloons or something, and it somehow works. I'm also a huge fan of Mae
Martin -- she's an old friend and she is working out in the UK. She's got her show, Feel Good -- I
believe they've got a second season they're working on now. She always makes me laugh and
she's grounded and weird and she compares herself to a kernel of corn, so how can you not love that?
Nah, come on. I know -- I mean, have you seen her? She's like England's rose,
and I'm like a kernel of corn that somebody glued onto some sticks.
What's the last series you binge-watched? Well, last night I was watching -- I didn't -- I
started the binge, so finishing a binge, if that counts -- like, second half of a binge,
Bit Playas with Nigel Downer and Kris Siddiqi. It has a really cool sort of political edge,
just what it is to be a person of colour and a bit player in in the world of Canadian television.
You can pick the chicken right off the stick -- uh, great. First go. The client
wants urban. Uh, urban. Right.
And there's some great POV in it, and really funny and broad but also specific. And I really dig it.
I think it's great. What's making you laugh in the pandemic? The pandemic-ness of it all -- like,
I just -- the sort of no way out of it, all the existential, what-the-[ __ ] of it all, the
conversations -- the constant texting a friend or picking up the phone and like, 'Where are we
going? What's going on? So it's not a laughter of like, 'Oh this is funny,' but it's a laughter of
like, 'Oh, we're -- what the [ __ ], what the actual [ __ ].' And that's what's making me
making me laugh. You know, end of world scenarios and how we would cope -- and not cope, honestly --
The uprising just happened a little bit too quickly for my taste. I just
wish we'd taken just a little more time, you know, to think it out, you know --
All four of you play male characters and queer characters. Did that come from
necessity or was it a conscious development? I was show running the first three seasons and for me,
having a queer perspective in the show was essential, so I didn't want it to just be a
show and to erase that aspect of myself and fall into what was perhaps a perceived sense of what a
woman in her 40s should be, or whatever, and -- not that that pressure was being put on me,
I'm talking about my own insecurities or feelings around our industry or whatever -- and the CBC
was really receptive and didn't have a problem with that. And so one challenge
was one bringing in queer writers and making sure that things were authentically written.
It's not a shoe conference. No. It's a conference on footwear
as the final frontier of feminist resistance.
And then playing queer parts -- though I play straight, when I play straight women I actually
feel more in drag than I do when I'm in drag, but that's more of a gender thing than orientation --
Can we look each other in the eyes before we clink glasses? Okay --
And also not to make being queer the butt of the joke. It's like, no, we're queers and we
have our own inside jokes and our own issues and our own queer theory reading groups and our own
pride parties that are not about what it is -- you know, it's so hard to be gay or queer or
whatever. It's like, okay, let's remove that, let's not be the butt of the joke or fall into
stereotypes and let's get into the minutia of our discussions and what we talk about.
How's the gay book club going? Oh -- it's -- well,
it's not really a book club, it's a queer theory reading group. Oh yes. That's -- yeah.
So that was super important. And then, I know I grappled a little around
all of us playing queer. I think there's a fine balance of saying,
yeah, I mean I'm playing straight so of course why can't Aurora or Meredith or Jen play queer and or
gay? And that could work, but then also making sure that we were hiring queer artists and making
sure that they were represented authentically on screen. So it's a fine balance. It's not like,
oh, well just anyone can do it --it's like, well, no, I think there's a balance and there's a long
history of drag in sketch comedy. That's just a huge part of the history and stuff, so we embraced
that, but we never wanted it to be the joke necessarily, so that's why it's peppered through.
It's not -- we usually are not in drag, only occasionally in fun ways, when we feel we want to.
Hey titties. Mouth. Titty titty titty. Gonna put those tits on Reddit.
Do you have a favourite character or type of character you like to play?
I love playing a straight lady. I find that really satisfying and fun to put on that drag
and assume that gender expression and all of those things. I find it really,
really fun and satisfying -- and who's just clued out in earnest.
Did you really need to flush? Um, yes. Are you sure? Was it, uh, was it mellow? It was not.
I like the everyday villain,
too. I like the annoying person who tries to set the record straight.
The dress that all of you are talking about, it doesn't actually belong to her -- it's,
it's, like it is my dress and I wear it quite successfully.
Those people I find really satisfying to play. It's really fun to
set the record straight and just call out things that shouldn't be called out. Like, why do you
have to do that? And I don't know, maybe that's some neurotic tendency of mine. What's next for
you personally? I've been working on an album with a bunch of queers, a queer collective album.
We recorded it in 2019, in March over 18 days out near Kingston,
and so I'm working on the final mixes and then mastering and stuff right now. It was a whole
group of queers coming together, multidisciplinary artists -- so the genre, someone asked me,
I was like -- what's the genre? And we're like, what, is it like experimental witch pop?