Killian Sundermann: 'I had a lot of Catholic guilt pent up for years'
Killian Sundermann: "I don't think I was predestined to be a performer. I fell into this. I wasn’t funny until I went to secondary school."
I was born in Reading to a German dad and an Irish-German mum. We moved to Ireland when I was about three or four.
It was hard enough being German but I didn’t tell people I was born in England. Sometimes people found it out — but it was something that I hid.
My little brother Finn came along when I was 9 and stole my mantle which was an absolute disgrace. I was a star — and then ‘he’ came along.
I was a giddy little kid. My two older siblings were very close to me in age so anything they did — cycle bikes with no stabilizers — I wanted to do as well. I ended up in trouble quite a lot. Three or four times, I jumped into a swimming pool after my siblings and my dad had to save me. I have a long history of nearly drowning.
I don't think I was predestined to be a performer. I fell into this. I wasn’t funny until I went to secondary school.
It wasn’t something I would do at the time because there was an element of setting yourself up for failure. When you go up on stage, you're accepting the possibility that it could go wrong.
You get a thrill from standing up there and making people laugh but if the joke hasn't landed, you just feel like a stupid fucking idiot.
I've lived abroad a lot, that's something I love about my life. There are moments when you're in a big metropolitan city and you're thousands of miles away from your family and friends and that’s a really tough thing.
I was going over to live in New York City with my friends Mark and Emer but two weeks before I arrived, they were like; ‘We're going to leave New York and move back to Dublin.’
That forced me to meet new people and make friends with Americans who are some of my closest friends now.
You’re living hand to mouth. You don’t have the community you have in Ireland. My granny and my uncle died while I was there and I couldn't travel back because it was too expensive or my visa was in jeopardy.
I got involved with this choir activist group called Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir. I consider them like family still.
When you externalize joy, or a video you do goes viral, everyone is chatting about it. But if that becomes your raison d’etre — your reason to keep going — then, when it doesn't happen, you end up disappointed and sad.
The videos I think are the funniest tend to be the ones that aren't as well-received. I'm happy I've got a creative practice I value that makes me happy.
I'm very close with my siblings so I’ll turn to whichever one of them happens to be in the country. I'm the only one who isn't a carpenter. It’s a matter of time really before I join the family business, to be honest.
I talk to my girlfriend Anna all the time. She's an artist. She's a huge source of comfort and help when I'm going a bit mad.
I used to wake up at 7am in the morning and put on my jeans. I was fairly regimented and I wasn't enjoying myself very much. Since I’ve met Anna, she's taught me to loosen up and enjoy life a bit more. I bought my first pair of 'what are they called?’ ‘Comfort pants!’ I wear dressing gowns now! And Crocs!
I'm not so hard on myself anymore. I had a lot of Catholic guilt pent up for years; I've released a lot of it recently.
I hope I’m a good person to the earth but I don't mind too much about legacy or people remembering my name. That’s not really my vibe. I just want people to remember that I’m gorgeous with a chiseled jaw and a thick, full moustache.
I don't have life regrets, I think that's quite unhealthy. I could have stayed in the States a bit longer but it did feel like it was time.
I was doing loads of different things throughout my 20s; working in bars, as an English language teacher, and as a video editor. Comedy came out of nowhere — it does feel like a calling. This is exactly what I want and have to do.
It's terrifying the way humans interact with the earth. We haven't figured it out at all and we are living in a very unsustainable fashion that attempts to ignore that we are 'of the earth.'
Some comedians get so much hate, it’s crazy. It’s always astronomically dwarfed by the nice messages but we tend to hyper-focus on the negative ones. You might have a thousand lovely comments but you forget all that when one person says; ‘This lad is a bit of a dickhead.’
Generally, people are really nice to me but that's because I'm so lovely. What I do is quite abstract. It’s a guy standing in a field talking about how tall a hedge is. It’s hard to get annoyed or insulted about that.
- Killian Sundermann plays CoCo Comedy Club in Cork, November 11.
