Chris Lilley finds it "awkward" pretending to be a 14-year-old boy.
The 39-year-old Australian comedian, who returns with BBC Three show ‘Jonah From Tonga’ next week, has given yet another character from his cult comedy show ‘Summer Heights Heigh’ their own spin-off following the success of ‘Ja’mie: Private School Girl’, but didn’t anticipate how weird it would be filming romantic scenes with teenage girls.
He explained in an interview with The Sun newspaper: "Jonah has this love interest that is his cousin and she’s a real 16-year-old girl. I have to do some pretty weird stuff to her and it’s a bit awkward. But you have to go, ‘It’s not me, it’s a 14-year-old boy, it’s normal.’ I write it first, then when I film it there are days where I’m like, ‘What the hell? How am I going to do this?’ "
However, Chris is so good at pretending to be Jonah Takalua, donning terrible fake tan and an afro wig to play the potty-mouthed teenage tearaway, that his young co-stars forgot he was an actual grown-up.
He laughed: "They forget that I’m older than them. I’m in costume and I go into character and they get used to me being like that. Then at the wrap party they see me as myself and you should see their faces! They really got into the idea that I was one of them."
Chris is bracing himself for an onslaught of hate mail from redheads and their parents since the new comedy series pokes fun of gingers, who he dubs "rangas".
He joked: "I feel a bit guilty because I get angry letters off rangas and parents with kids that are rangas. But its funny and that overrides people getting mad. "
Chris Lilley finds it ‘awkward’ playing a teen
