Kitty Flanagan is best known for bringing to life one of the most loved yet unlikeable characters on Australian TV.
The 57-year-old comedian, who started her career as an advertising copywriter, became one of Australia’s most successful comedians when her TV show Fisk went international.
But Kitty has been making Australians laugh with her standup shows, TV appearances, and sketch characters for over 30 years.
Here’s everything we know about Australian comedian Kitty Flanagan:
Kitty Flanagan’s early career
Kitty started out her career as an advertising copywriter. After five years she was fired, so she got a job working behind the bar at a local pub and started working on her standup material.
The Australian public were first introduced to the comedian when she was cast in the sketch comedy series, Full Frontal, in 1995.
She left the series in 1996 to concentrate on her stand-up but would later appear on Shaun Micallef’s World Around Him, The Micallef Program, The 50 Foot Show and The Fat.
A move to the UK in 2001, saw Kitty write for various shows on the BBC, Channel Four and Sky Television, while she continued to work on her standup.
When she visited Australia, she would regularly appear on TV shows like Rove, Good News Week, Spicks and Specks and The Sideshow.
In 2013, after returning to Australia, Kitty was cast as Rhonda, the public relations manager, in the hit ABC series, Utopia.
The unexpected success of Fisk
Kitty is best known for playing Helen Tudor Fisk on her ABC series Fisk.
However, the series almost never made it to air.
When the 57-year-old first pitched the idea for Fisk, she was told her main character was too unlikeable.
Then she wrote a bestselling book 488 Rules for Life: The Thankless Art of Being Correct, which almost served as a rule book for the character she had been developing for years.
“Writing that book, I got a very strong sense of this opinionated person who believes that her way is the right way all the time,” she later told ABC News.
After the success of the book, the ABC commissioned the series.
“What changed, in part, was being able to say people thought these persnickety rules were actually quite funny, so, a person who abides by all these rules, maybe she is funny,” the comedian says.
In 2021, Fisk won two AACTA Awards, including Best Narrative Comedy Series and Best Comedy Performer.
Inside Kitty’s private life
Kitty lives in Melbourne with her dogs Henry and Pickle and her burmese cat, Sarge. Henry also plays Helen Tudor Fisk’s dog Artie in Fisk.
Speaking to TV Week last year, Kitty admitted there was a lot of her in Helen and she was quite “socially awkward” like her character.
“And the laziness of not wanting to change clothes every day,” she said. “It’s not that she’s dirty — she does have three different suits and she always has a different shirt on. She just can’t make choices.”
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