Hannah Gadsby's Douglas Special Is Coming to Netflix in May

Hannah Gadsby made a splash with Nanette in 2018, now she's back with Douglas on Netflix.

By Chris Harnick Apr 13, 2020 1:00 PMTags
Hannah Gadsby: DouglasNetflix

She's back! Two years after the release of Nanette, Hannah Gadsby is back on Netflix with Douglas, a new standup special. Yeah, turns out she didn't quit comedy after all.

"Hi, I'm Hannah Gadsby. My second Netflix special, Douglas, will debut on May 26th on Netflix! I'm excited for you to see it. It's gonna be good. Unless you don't like it. Then it's still going to be good and you'll be wrong," Gadsby said in the video announcement.

Gadsby won an Emmy and Peabody award for Nanette, her special that turned everything you know about standup comedy specials on its head. Now there's Douglas, which is named after her eldest dog, which Gadsby toured around the world with before finishing in Los Angeles where the Netflix special was recorded.

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"You can expect your expectations to be set and met by Douglas: a tour from the dog park to the renaissance and back guided by one of comedy's most sparkling and surprising minds," Netflix said in a statement.

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In Nanette, Gadsby opened up about style of self-deprecating humor and why she was calling it quits. "I built a career out of self-deprecating humor and I simply will not do that anymore, not to myself or anybody who identifies with me. Do you understand what self-deprecation means? It's not humility, it's humiliation."

She said she was quitting comedy in Nanette because she was tired of hurting herself.

"I was doing all the fat jokes…And I realized, then, the power I had on stage was not reflected in the world and I didn't know how to reconcile the power I had in the reach with my platform, and then I go out in the world and just be all my sub-human in certain parts," she said. "That's what the show's about…Putting the line in the sand, saying, ‘How can I do this job if I'm putting myself down?'"

Nanette is now streaming on Netflix. Douglas drops on Friday, May 26 on the streaming platform.