Cork comedian Kyla Cobbler: 'I’m here because women in Ireland wanted to see me succeed'
Comedian Kyla Cobbler has announced a 2027 3Arena date for her new show Not My Lemons.
Breezing into a Belfast coffee shop, where the night before she’d headlined a sell-out gig, the Ballincollig native looks positively zen. Dressed casually with zero make up (more on that later), Kyla declares that she’s coming into her Not My Lemons tour hot and strong with a “really good mindset”.
In the space of five years, since she told her first joke on stage, the 35 year old has become one of the hottest names in comedy right now.
She first gained attention through her viral Instagram reels, before stepping on stage for her first open mic in May 2021. Fast forward to today, and she’s built a global following with over 800,000 Instagram followers, 100 million plus video views and built a solid reputation as a must-see live performer. Earlier this month, Hachette announced it would publish her forthcoming memoir, in September.
“It started with the Instagram videos, but my idea was never to be a comedian,” she says, when we meet at Belfast’s room2.
“I remember when Instagram first came out and it was all makeup and beauty bloggers. I remember watching these women online and almost feeling compelled to say there’s another way. You can also just be a bit scruffy and a bit fun and a bit mischievous.”
While she’s laugh-out-loud funny in these videos, she’s also making points that really resonate. In one hilarious, must-watch-on-repeat recent video she takes a pop at the rise in online content celebrating the return of ‘skinny’ in her signature style.
At the beginning, she says, the reels she created were mostly because she missed home. She was living in Milan at the time, and it gave her a community of Irish women. When she moved to Barcelona, and then the pandemic hit, her followers multiplied by the day.
It was, says Kyla, her way of showing up and talking through what she was feeling and what was happening in the world.
“It was beautiful to say ‘hey, this is what I’m feeling’ and for other women to say, ‘me too’ and to feel normal. It was such a beautiful, shared community. It was very special — it still is. Back then, it was growing; it was like the first ever girls’ group chat,” she explains.
The seeds of her future life in comedy were, unbeknownst to her, being set when she moved to Italy after falling in love with an Italian. She picked up the language quickly and found that she was a natural at communicating and at getting jobs.
It was, she admits, the first time in her life that she had felt intelligent. Kyla is on record about her struggles with school — she was not diagnosed with dyslexia until she was 18. Learning Italian and thriving in her work made her realise for the first time, “I’m smart!”
It was also a warm-up for performing in a way. “I guess speaking a different language was like putting on a costume. It was my first kind of stage,” she says of the time.
When she ended up moving to Barcelona, comedian Mike Rice — who has since become one of Kyla’s best friends — invited her onto his podcast, introducing her as a comedian, which she was adamant about at the time that she most definitely was not.
After the podcast, she went to an open mic with Rice where there were only a few people in the audience. It just so happened that the audience was mainly Italians at a Christmas party and Rice suggested she do a short set in Italian.
“I took a shot of whisky, and I got on stage and I said in Italian ‘I really fancy this man here and I’m mad trying to get with him. If you can act like I’m coming out of nowhere with the jokes.’ Everyone was having such a good time. I think the shock of hearing me speak fluent Italian was funny for them,” she recalls.
“The minute I allowed myself to be an artist and to lean into what this is, the universe was like OK. There’s something about being Irish and calling yourself an artist, you think ‘notions’. Now, for me, everything is part of my process. When I’m on tour, from the minute I wake up, I have to prioritise that and I have to be selfish. I have the material. The jokes are there. The most important thing is that I get on stage feeling good.
“Again, it’s the little disciplines every day, and that doesn’t matter if I’m in a hotel or travelling six hours to a venue — it’s the meditation, it’s the yoga, it’s the running — I live fully as an artist.
It’s not me turning it on to go on stage. I try to go on stage and be as authentic as possible. Being up on stage and getting to say what I want; my grandmother wouldn’t have been allowed to do this. It would’ve been scandalous.
Now I get to go up — I don’t have to wear make-up, and I don’t have to get dressed up. I go up on stage and be exactly how I am and put it all out there and there’s such a liberation in that,” she says.
Part of her success, she believes, is in connecting with women tired of the Get Ready With Me (GRWM) videos online and the endless noise of the beauty industry that is obsessed with looking young at all costs. In her work, she tries to create a space for women to be the ‘mischievous feral pirates’ they are – if that’s what they want.
“It’s this idea we are told that beauty is youth — that’s what was drilled into us. There’s a multi-billion-dollar industry telling us from the day we hit puberty that we’re not good enough. You’re not good enough how you are — wax it off, take it off, put it back, be quiet, sit down. Of course we’re insecure! And there’s no one on our side apart from each other and we’re pitted against each other in our industries.
“I’ve been on yoga retreats with groups of women, strangers. At the end of three days, we’re sitting there saying we are the definition of divine. My career is this one because I leaned into who I am, but mostly, because I was celebrated by other women. That’s why I’m here; it’s because I was celebrated by groups of women in Ireland who wanted to see me succeed, and that’s what I did. That’s the power we hold within us,” she says.
And Kyla believes there is a zeitgeist around tapping into a moment where women are sick of the pressure to look a certain way and whatever they do, not to age.
“Look at the men in power. Look at what’s happening now — men trying to keep us children if you think about it; hairless, youthful. You’d never look at a big oak tree that was 100 years-old and think ‘Yuk, look at that’. You’d be like how gorgeous,” she adds.
In her personal life, Kyla has found love with South African Fiancé Simon, and the couple moved to London last December. She has comedy to thank for bringing Simon into her life as well – they met at a gig.
“I never thought I was going to find love — I’d given up on love — and then I found him in the third row of a comedy show. When you do what you love, when you choose yourself, your person comes I think,” she says.
When I ask her if she had gone on dating apps to meet someone, she rolls her eyes incredulously.
“Girl I was king of the apps. I did it all. I really wanted to find love. I didn’t think I was going to get married, but I was like I have this beautiful life, I want to share this,” she says.
Simon now comes on tour with Kyla and the couple plan on getting married later this year. She admits that going on stage, filling packed houses comes with big brain chemical spikes that can impact her mental health.
“We had a talk and I was like I would love to have company. We’re in a moment now where we don’t have a mortgage and we don’t have kids, let’s go on this adventure together. He’s an incredible support system to me and I can sleep – I can’t sleep when I’m on my own after shows. There’s such electricity off me,” she says.
While Kyla never had the dream about wearing the big white dress, she is fond of the idea of having all their friends and family together for a party.
“I will wear a big white dress. I think it would be my mother’s dream to see me in a big white dress. I’ll probably have an outfit for after. But I have no strong feelings — I think there’s bigger fish to fry,” she adds.
As for the future, while she says she manifests and visualises, she has learned to let go a little.
“What I’ve learned in my time is that it never arrives the way you think it will. It never looks like what you think it’s going to be. I’ve learned that if I want something, the most important thing is showing up every day and being present every day and doing the small things to keep your frequency high.
Getting up and journaling, meditating going for a run — all those tiny things, all those different disciplines give me freedom mentally to relax.
In the past, Kyla has been open about her struggles with her mental health. She admits that there was a time during the pandemic when she was drinking a lot, leading to her not regulating her emotions properly.
“That’s a thing that happens me when I drink, I can’t feel myself, and I hate that,” she says.
For now, she’s giving alcohol a wide berth. “It’s just not serving me. It doesn’t align with where my life is right now. I think to be lucky enough to be in the position I’m in and have the career opportunity I have, I just want to feel everything. I want to soak it up and when I drink, I don’t have that capacity.”
Once the tour ends, Kyla is looking forward to doing nothing. She says she loves a full fridge and a clean house. Getting up in the morning and making her coffee, the small simple things of life bring her joy.
When she reflects on the last five years, she admits it’s been a bit insane. “Everything’s been so accelerated as well. I’ve never had something feel so aligned and so right and also so bizarre at the same time.
“With so many things in school, it took me so long to learn to ride a bike and to learn to swim. I was the last to use a pen — I had to use pencil for years. I was so bad at everything. I was like ‘where’s my thing?’
- Kyla Cobbler brings her ‘Not My Lemons’ tour to Dublin’s 3Arena on Friday, February 26, 2027. Her memoir, ‘Happy, Thank You. More, Please’, published by Hachette, will be released September 1
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