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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nOn Thursday (26th<\/sup> September) Sarah will star in the\nbittersweet dark six-part comedy Frayed, a Sky original production, which she\nalso wrote. Sarah\u2019s tales blend intricate narratives with a cast of memorable\ncharacters, providing belly laughs along with moments of heart wrenching\npoignancy. This is why we chose Sarah Kendall to be a focus for this week and\ndecided to ask her a few questions \u2013 not only related to her writing but also\nto himself as a person. Check out the interview below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Having establishing a name for herself as the creator of the\nbleakest of funny stories and tales, Kendall explains why Frayed started to\ntake shape and what was it about this story that made her want to write it.<\/strong> \u201cI loved the idea of writing a\ncharacter who thought that she\u2019s successfully lied her way into this position\nof power \u2013 she (Simone) thought she\u2019d gotten away with it – and then all her\nlies explode, kind of in one day \u2013 everything falls apart in just the one\nday. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Suddenly she has to confront everything that she\u2019s been running\nfrom, and I just love the idea of someone landing in such a hot fire, with so\nlittle warning and seeing how they cope. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n My character has a huge amount of wealth and privilege; to go from\nthat to having nothing and to also have to confront all the lies that she has\nbuilt her life on at the same time made the story really rich for plot lines,\nrich for comedy.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I wanted audiences to be drawn in, to want to know what she\u2019d been\nrunning from and why her life became such a web of lies in the first place.\nWithout a strong dramatic engine driving her behaviour I think she\u2019d be\nfarcical, so she has a powerful backstory. And I think the key message the\nseries is that you can\u2019t run from your past forever<\/em>.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Kendall\u2019s character, Simone, finds herself rather abruptly back in\nAustralia, and in a hometown she\u2019d put behind her a long time ago. The now\nBritish-based comedian discusses how it felt to be back on Aussie soil.<\/strong> \u201cIt was so weird for to be filming a show set in the world of\nmy childhood, and to be filming that show in the town that I grew up in\u201d, she\nconsiders. \u201cIt was actually a really surreal experience \u2013 because really I was\nfilming a world that\u2019s gone \u2013 it doesn\u2019t exist anymore \u2013 but I was still\nfilming in the town that I grew up in. I got a real kick out of that. \n We also just had an amazing cast and crew. It was such a fantastic group\nof people to work with, and we were also really lucky on the weather\u2026 actually,\nno we weren\u2019t, that\u2019s bullshit! We were SO unlucky.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n One of Kendall\u2019s first jobs in Australia was working in\nMcDonald\u2019s, where her sole purpose was to remove pickles from where they had\nbeen tossed aside by customers. After establishing herself on the Australian\ncomedy scene, she decided to move to the UK, joining the stand-up on the\ncircuit. Even when on stage, her shows are reviewed as more comedic\nstorytelling than straight stand up, and you\u2019ll rarely find Kendall playing a\ncomedy club. Kendall talks us through her shift in focus. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI got to a stage where I didn\u2019t want to do straight stand up\nanymore\u201d, <\/em>she says by way of explanation. \u201cI\ndidn\u2019t want that to be my job. I was always more comfortable telling stories\nrather than \u201cgags\u201d anyway, so I thought, \u2018How do I keep doing that?\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I was quite fortunate on a couple of levels-\nmy storytelling style really suited festival shows where you get a whole hour.\nFor me 20 minutes spots in stand-up clubs never gave the opportunity to\nproperly sink my teeth into a big story. And in the past decade the shift in\ncomedy has really been away from club-style stand up. Festival shows are really\nwhere the interesting stuff is happening now, so it\u2019s been a good time for me\nto be a storyteller more than a stand up. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n T<\/strong>he show is set in the 1980s and\nhas been conceived as an antithesis of the kind of shows Brits watched during\nthat time. The nation devoured programmes that were set in Australia in\nsun-drenched neighbourhoods. Kendall says,<\/strong> \u201cIn the 80s, the way most people\nin Britain were seeing Australia was through the lens of Home and Away and\nNeighbours. I wanted to do a show that was like a filthy companion piece to\nthat. I wanted it to be a much darker version of those worlds. You\u2019ve still got\nlots of sunshine and that healthy outdoor living, but the place is a bit of a\nshithole. There\u2019s lots of unemployment and there\u2019s some pretty dark stuff\nhappening in this world, and as the series goes on you realise that there are a\nwhole load of characters with some pretty dark secrets. I wanted to play with\nthat 1980s Australia that was sold to the world and show this other version\nthat was a lot darker. It\u2019s like a dirty companion piece to Neighbours and Home\nand Away.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Also – For me the\nkey thing about it being the 80s is that it\u2019s the moment before the internet.\nThis is before the digital age and that meant so many things \u2013 no mobile\nphones, no social media. People could disappear without a trace; people could\nmove to the other side of the world and reinvent themselves. You didn\u2019t know\nwhere people were every hour of the day, you couldn\u2019t contact people whenever\nyou wanted to. It\u2019s a world that has completely disappeared. When these people\nare stuck in Newcastle they have no connection whatsoever with London. They\u2019re\nnot Facetiming friends back in London, they\u2019re not remaining abreast of what\u2019s\nhappening back home. If you went to the other side of the world, you were a\nlong way away. I loved that the world still felt huge back then, that you could\nget lost<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Frayed will air on Sky One and NOW TV on 26 September<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Nominated twice for the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Show and two-time Writers\u2019 Guild of Great Britain Award winner, multi-award-winning…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[13954,13953,13952],"features_issues":[],"featured_themes":[],"ppma_author":[16671],"class_list":["post-61114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-100-percent-design","tag-from-fringe-to-tv","tag-funny-women","tag-laugh-out-loud"],"yoast_head":"\n