The standup’s new memoir traces her London childhood and battle for recognition in the UK. She discusses coming out, moving to the US and making it big
It is 14 years since Gina Yashere walked out on Britain. The standup comic was sick of accepting second best. It’s not that she wasn’t successful – she was. She had a recurring slot on the BBC’s Lenny Henry Show between 2004 and 2005, sold out theatres when she toured and was a regular guest on the TV panel show Mock the Week. But it wasn’t enough. She felt that any number of less-talented standups had their own TV shows, while she was always on a promise that never materialised. And it was beginning to destroy her. So she packed her bags and headed to the US, where she was an unknown.
“I always knew I had something special, and I wanted to swim with the big boys. I’m not going to stay in England begging for crumbs,” she says. “To get off my arse and start again, knowing it may take me years to get recognition, if any – you’ve got to have a pretty astounding amount of self-belief to do that.” And, to be fair, she did have. “I wasn’t doing it in the way Ricky Gervais and Russell Brand were doing it, where they were coming off hit shows in England, and coming over to America already recognised, with their faces on billboards. Nobody knew who the fuck I was, and I literally started again, doing open mics, performing wherever I could.”
Continue reading...source https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2021/jul/12/gina-yashere-on-riches-racism-and-us-success-i-dont-like-to-boast-but-im-doing-very-well
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