Writers can sit down and write anytime, musicians can pick up a guitar whenever they want. What do actors do to express their pent-up creativity when they don’t have a show to act in?
Jenna: Lie. Bake up little lies.
Vic: Microdose acting by lying to your family and friends.
Jenna: We have both been known to spin a bit of a tall tale when we can get away with it, to scratch an itch.
Vic: And to be a really good first date.
Jenna: The best first date you’ve ever been on in your life.
What do you spend too much money on?
Vic: Both of us are probably the same – clothes.
Jenna: We both love The RealReal. We both have not nailed online shopping. I would say we’re both still learning.
Vic: For every win there is a loss.
How would you describe your relationship with social media?
Jenna: Fraught.
Vic: I would like it all to be banned so I don’t have to do it. It feels like something you have to do. And if it wasn’t on the table, god, that would be a beautiful world.
What’s your most controversial pop culture opinion?
Vic: We don’t like crass humour. We just don’t think it’s transgressive to see a bunch of women shitting.
Jenna: We don’t like women shitting. We don’t like women vomiting. It’s like guys, I understand that it had to happen in the pipeline of, I guess, progressing equality, but we’re both over it. We don’t want to see women vomiting or shitting any more. We want to be gorgeous and hot and have it all again. We missed that stage.
Vic: We don’t like that people have to debase themselves – well, actually, I don’t mind when men debase themselves, but I don’t think that women have to debase themselves to be funny.
Jenna: We’re better than that.
Who is making women vomit and shit on screen?
Jenna: Like, Bridesmaids. I mean, not just Bridesmaids, which is a very important, great movie. But I think what we’re saying is we’re very done with it now.
Vic: Overt sexuality too. Just being like, “I’m fucking” or “I’m doing this, and my pussy is crazy.” I don’t wanna know about your crazy pussy, I’m sorry.
Jenna: Our actual most controversial opinion is that sometimes Vic and I clutch our pearls a little bit, which no one would expect. Some things should be private. You’ll find that we’re completely asexual in Optics. We don’t have any sexuality. We just care about our work.
Vic: Which is true to our lives as well.
What is the cringiest thing you’ve done in the name of comedy?
Jenna: I think our very existence is cringe.
Vic: Any stunts. We’ve done a lot of public stunts that I look back on and go, “Oh my god.” We did this one stunt where we stormed Tanya Plibersek’s office, and because we’re women, the women who worked there were like, “Please don’t do this. We don’t need this right now.”
Jenna: We were like, “This would never happen to The Chaser.” But they appealed to our empathy and we completely unravelled. So Vic and I are retired from stunts now.
What’s your average weekly screen time, and do you feel bad about it?
Jenna: We’ll check. [checks phone] Oh, that can’t be right. Mine’s very varied, but right now it says I’m at four hours.
Vic: My average last week was six hours. So, yes, I spend a full school day on my phone, and I think that’s beautiful.
Do you have beef with any celebrities?
Jenna: Caitlin Foord from the Matildas, who I used to play soccer with. I used to be really good at soccer, which is an important fact about me. She concussed me in the penalty box and I had to be wheeled off. So I think about that a lot.
Vic: I’m just a huge fan of Jenna’s one celebrity beef.
Jenna: I just want her attention so badly, and I need her to apologise to me. So wherever you are, Caitlin Foord, I’m coming for you. I’m slowly climbing the ladder just so I can one day be in the same room as you and we can have it out like a couple of adults. Hopefully she has Google Alerts on for her name and she’ll get notified about this story. But something tells me she doesn’t.
What’s a thing you do at home by yourself that you’d be ashamed for anyone else to see?
Jenna: It is deeply narcissistic, but I can spend so long in front of the mirror trying on all combinations of all outfits that I own. That can go on for hours. Sometimes, if I’m particularly proud of an outfit, I’ll take a photo and send it to my friend and they’ll go “Great outfit!” But they don’t know that I’ve been there for five hours. That is actually a joyous day for me. So yeah, I’m ashamed.
What are you currently obsessed with?
Jenna: I’m very obsessed with the kind of civil war that’s happening on the right – the Elon Musk/Steve Bannon situation. People from the same political ilk who are telling each other, “I’m going to rip your head off.” I just find that so funny, so I’m obsessed with all the information I can get about that.
Vic: I’m obsessed with history podcasts. I’m listening to a lot of stuff about the fall of the Roman empire and also the starting of the second world war, and doing that pattern recognition thing where I’m looking at TikTok specifically as this tool of a wider geopolitical game. And then how a lot of US citizens are now downloading RedNote and the politics of that, and that TikTok is maybe being sold to maybe Elon Musk. That’s the stuff we like: geopolitics and techno feudalism.
Wow, OK. I would have just said “Moo Deng”.
Vic: Sorry for party rocking.
Optics starts on ABC and ABC iview Wednesday 29 January, 8.30pm
