Comedian Zoë Coombs-Marr says there are common threads running through Australia's queer history: isolation, loneliness and defiance.
In 2020, Bossy Bottom was filmed and released internationally on Amazon Prime Video and she's also appeared on The Weekly with Charlie Pickering.It's cleverly produced, interesting, funny and moving. Coombs-Marr's comedic wit brings some light relief to sad and often shocking stories of persecution, discrimination and lives lived in secrecy that endured through generations.
"While we explore different stories in different eras, there's a common queer experience, a thread between the 1850s, the 1920s, the 1970s and today, and that is one of isolation and loneliness, the same experience of not fitting in, not really feeling part of society, not feeling part of your family, of being different from a very young age, of having to figure yourself out.""Then, the other common thread is defiance and finding community," Coombs-Marr says.
While her parents and sisters — who she also interviews in the show — were hugely supportive, she found others in the regional New South Wales town of Grafton, where she grew up, were not so accepting. "You're still afraid of the dark or what's under the bed and you're having these thoughts and realisations, and trying to work out how to navigate the world and you realise, 'There's something about me that some adults hate'.
"Queer people have been here in all different guises the whole time and, while there have been all sorts of attempts to stop us, we just keep showing up.
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