Speaker A
And would you say drama school did help you? Oh, yeah. I mean, I wanted to go because I thought if I didn't, I'd always feel like other actors knew something that I didn't.
Diane Morgan discusses her unique comedic style, awkward charm, and career highlights including her character Filamina Kunk.
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Key Takeaways
- Diane Morgan’s comedy thrives on awkwardness and deadpan humor.
- Her character Filamina Kunk is largely an extension of her own personality.
- She uses embarrassment and social discomfort as comedic tools.
- Diane’s unique style contrasts with typical polished celebrity interviews.
- Confidence and authenticity are central to her comedic success.
What the video covers
- Diane Morgan reflects on drama school and her acting career.
- She shares humorous anecdotes about awkward moments and past jobs.
- Discussion of her character Filamina Kunk and how much of it is her true self.
- Diane’s approach to comedy involves embracing awkwardness and deadpan delivery.
- She talks about her disdain for magicians and her love for vintage horror films.
- Diane reveals challenges and funny moments related to her vegan lifestyle.
- Insights into how she interacts with guests and experts on her show.
- Her confidence allows her to ask bold questions and challenge experts humorously.
- She discusses pitching and playing a robot character for the BBC.
- Diane embraces humiliation as part of her comedic growth.
Chapters
- 00:00Drama School and Acting Career
- 00:36Funny Anecdotes and Accents
- 01:20Philosophy and Filamina Kunk Character
- 02:21Past Jobs and Career Choices
- 03:46Comedy Style and Interview Approach
- 04:48Interactions with Experts and Filming Process
- 05:57Views on Magicians and Show Business
- 07:43Personal Preferences and Veganism
- 08:45Pitching Projects and Career Growth
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
But now I know it's not true. They don't know anything. Tom Hiddleston, Filamina Kunk has left some of the world's smartest people completely speechless. But put Diane Morgan on a talk show as herself, and somehow she's even more dangerous. From terribly
Speaker A
awkward to seriously funny. Here is Diane at her funniest. I was at the top of a sand dune, and I thought I didn't tell anyone I was going to do it. I just thought this is going to be quite boring
Speaker A
me walking down a sand dune. So I'm just going to fall over. No one came to help me. I was rolling.
Speaker A
Just kept rolling, and we were just filming. Don't know English accents very well. Where are you from?
Speaker A
This is a Lancashire accent. Is that up north? It's up north. It's ne— It's Manchester near Manchester.
Speaker A
Okay, got it. Yeah. Oh, from people from Manchester. Yeah, you've just heard of Manchester.
Speaker A
Is there a dream ad campaign you'd love to do? Is there someone you'd love to work for? Maybe loads of advertisers.
Speaker A
I'd like to be the face of asbestos. It's a great future. We— We're having a lovely time, aren't we? Professional comedians and all that.
Speaker A
This is sort of just a distraction for it, isn't it, for people? What is life?
Speaker A
Not the show, you know. Oh, Filamina Kunk may be fictional, but Diane has never been entirely convincing about where the character ends and she begins. So, just how much of Britain's least reliable historian is actually an act?
Speaker A
All right. So, the monkeys that didn't turn into humans, they must be gutted that they didn't turn into humans. What is a building?
Speaker A
A building is anything that anyone has built. So, my shoes are a building. There may not be a building.
Speaker A
You have this character who is telling us about history and just seems not only disinterested, deeply bored by everything. And I think that's where the flatness really comes in handy.
Speaker A
Absolutely. 'Cause I know that everyone watching it is bored by history as well. So I know what people want.
Speaker A
Is there parts of Filamina that are you? I'd say I'm sort of 99% Filamina Kunk.
Speaker A
And the 1%— the 1% is just social skills. I'd be her if I didn't have any social skills. If I didn't have to be nice to people. If I could just be rude.
Speaker A
Long before Kunk made her famous, Diane's CV already read like an episode of Mandy. Tell sales, packing worming tablets, and also as a dental assistant.
Speaker A
Somehow acting was the sensible career choice. 'Cause you've had an extraordinary amount of jobs.
Speaker A
I've had tons of terrible jobs. Yeah. Yeah. Like what? Uh, I think the worst one was packing worming tablets in a factory for 10 hours a day. You weren't allowed to sit down, and you weren't allowed to talk, and the dentist
Speaker A
would say, "Diane, aspirator. Diane, aspirator. Diane, as—" So I— I'd come to and I'd shove, and I knocked someone's tooth off.
Speaker A
No way.
Speaker A
Well, they were in the right place. Exactly. They glued it on, and they didn't know. So, but that's a true job, isn't it?
Speaker A
Apparently, that's a real job in Bolton, which is a factory, a banana factory where they hand you a mallet, and if you see a spider run out of the bananas, you smash the spider.
Speaker A
Well, I struggle with it being plant-based. Most celebrities spend interviews protecting their dignity. Diane Morgan seems to have abandoned hers years ago.
Speaker A
And after a lifetime of awkward moments, she's turned embarrassment into a superpower. People often get me in because they go, "Oh, you know, we got you in 'cause we're like your deadpan miserable thing." And then they get me in to do it,
Speaker A
and then they go, "Can you make it a bit more energetic?" Yeah. That does my head in.
Speaker A
Yeah. Is that a real thing? A fatberg? A fat fatberg? Yeah. They're called fatbergs.
Speaker A
What is a fatberg? Well, it's like an iceberg but made out of fat and [ __ ]. You did ask, Daisy.
Speaker A
I'm like, I say, I'm buying these big glass jars with the massive beans in, and they're really expensive, but you know, I'm on the telly. I'm earning.
Speaker A
Kunk's real superpower isn't ignorance, it's confidence. She can insult an expert to their face, ask the unaskable, and somehow make them feel rude for correcting her. So, what actually happens when those cameras start rolling?
Speaker A
I don't think she's rude. Oh, she is. She is. Oh my god. She just strikes me as like sort of unaware of the effect that she's— No, she'll just yawn in someone's face if she's bored.
Speaker A
Oh, which is lovely to do. Yeah. How much do they know ahead of time when you shoot those, what they're about to embark upon?
Speaker A
They don't know. Well, well, they know that it's a comedy. Now the cat's out of the bag now, right?
Speaker A
But they play along, but they don't know what I'm going to ask. Yeah. So, they don't know any of the questions, and it's nice to sort of back people into a corner.
Speaker A
Yeah. And watch them struggle. Do you learn— You have to learn a lot to know so little, I would imagine. Do you actually have to study up on the subject to make sure you get it wrong?
Speaker A
Or do you really just say yes, that's true? You actually just don't know anything.
Speaker A
I don't know anything. Yeah. We've found a clip of Filamina Kunk expounding on Sherlock. Have you seen this?
Speaker A
No, I can't remember. I can't remember what I said. It's all right. I forgive you. It's fine.
Speaker A
Whatever it is, it's fine. That wasn't that bad. I was expecting it to be much worse.
Speaker A
We've cut some of it out. Okay. Diane is willing to forgive a lot, but apparently pulling a rabbit out of a hat crosses the line. Of all the people she could despise, magicians have somehow earned her complete and undivided
Speaker A
contempt. I think they're quite needy people generally. Whenever I watch them, I'm never entertained.
Speaker A
That's quite a negative review. I don't— there was one that I went to a restaurant, and there was one that was going between the tables between courses and showing you a card trick, and then he'd finish the card trick and he'd wait,
Speaker A
and you can't just go to go, "Oh, that was good. How did you do that?" So, you feel like they're getting more out of this than you are.
Speaker A
It's like it's so boring. It's like cups and balls. Who cares? Pulling flags out your sleeve. I just can't find any enthusiasm for it.
Speaker A
Show business rewards big smiles and polished answers. Diane built a career doing the exact opposite, weaponizing the awkward stare and embracing tastes so old-fashioned, even her horror films practically come with cobwebs.
Speaker A
Yeah, I like a vintage horror. Okay. Like Peter Cushing, something or a 70s horror. You like Carrie, something like that.
Speaker A
Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In about 45 years, you can watch this. Yeah. I think I've just naturally got a face that looks quite miserable in repose, you know. So, it's quite useful. It's quite funny.
Speaker A
Just fun. Things are funnier, I think, if they're just delivered completely straight and slightly miserably.
Speaker A
Seem to kind of revel in the awkward. Yeah. Yeah, 'cause your characters, all the characters you play are quite awkward.
Speaker A
Yeah, I love an awkward silence. Diane says cheese was the hardest part of going vegan. But when Saturday Kitchen offered her a vegan cheesecake, one tiny problem emerged. Her face is completely incapable of lying.
Speaker A
I used to love cheese. Not anymore. I don't even think about it now. Really?
Speaker A
How is it? Yeah, it's nice. Great. Soon. Can't be that fussy. All right, good. Uh, what do you want me to make for Diane at the end of the show? Uh, will it be a food heaven butterbean curry? If so, I'm going to make a fiery.
Speaker A
So, I went and I bought some adult nappies, and I thought I was getting a pack of 12, but in fact, I got a box of 500 G.
Speaker A
But I never deployed it. I just want to say I never deployed it. Okay. On the show.
Speaker A
And have you laid down the 450 that you've left? Yeah, they're there when you need them.
Speaker A
Exactly. That's what I've got. Planning ahead. After successfully pitching Android to the BBC, Diane discovered one small flaw.
Speaker A
So, I thought that was a really funny idea and I pitched it and they went for it. But now, of course, I've got to play a robot.
Speaker A
Yeah. I didn't think I didn't think it through. But it's just the voice is everything.
Speaker A
Your voice really hard. The movement. I know. I don't know what I was thinking. It's so stupid.
Speaker A
Well, this commission now you're in. You get some of the flawless boy to teach you something.
Speaker A
Diane didn't choose comedy so much as got pushed towards it by someone who recognized her gift. But turning that gift into a career required one final lesson. One that show business taught her repeatedly. But was it a man one of
Speaker A
your managers I think that said that you should get into comedy? Yeah. Um I was doing telly sales and uh Sean Sinclair was his name. So if you're watching Sean, thanks for that.
Speaker A
He used to tell me, "Do you know you should do standup and uh I couldn't think of anything worse at the time. The thought of it terrified me." But I think you've got to get used to being humiliated.
Speaker A
And the more you audition, the better you get at it and the less it affects you, the less sick you feel after you leave.
Topics:Diane MorganFilamina Kunkcomedyawkward humorBritish comediandeadpaninterviewvintage horrorvegan lifestyleBBC
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