Queue & A: Chatting With ‘My Mad Fat Diary’ Creator Rae Earl About Depression & Feminism In Comedy

Since it debuted in its native Great Britain, My Mad Fat Diary has gone on to become a global phenomenon. People have fallen in love with its raw, raunchy wit and its honest approach to coming-of-age while dealing with mental illness. The show was adapted from a book of the same by author and broadcaster Rae Earl. In fact, the book is a compilation of Earl’s own teen diaries written while she was a teenager growing up in Hull, England. Today Rae Earl lives in Tasmania and has two more books (and a brand new TV project she can’t talk about) due to come out next year while Americans are finally discovering the bittersweet joys of My Mad Fat Diary on Hulu.

Earl was on hand at Hulu’s recent TCA presentation in Los Angeles and Decider had the chance to sit down with her for a chat about what it was like seeing her diaries brought to life onscreen.

DECIDER: My Mad Fat Diary preceded a bunch of shows that have come out in the last year — a lot of comedies like Lady Dynamite, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — that are using comedy to address mental illness. Why did you think that comedy was the appropriate avenue to deal with those issues?

RAE EARL: For me, comedy is the fail-safe, it’s the trampoline, it’s the thing that dilutes all the horror of having a mental illness. On top of that, I think a lot of aspects of mental illness are quite funny, certainly in my case. Checking the iron, sniffing plugs. When you view that behavior from – I mean, it’s horrible, it’s horrible to experience – but it’s absurd, surrealist, ludicrous. My OCD, when it’s at its worst, is ludicrous. They’re natural companions, tragedy and comedy are always natural companions, anyway. It just has to be done well. I never want people to feel uncomfortable with what they’re going to because I’m laughing at myself or laughing at what I did and, you know, suffer with from time-to-time. They’re natural bedfellows.

D: Yeah, it’s really interesting. I used to do comedy, and I did find that it’s the best way to take something ugly in your life and transform it into something beautiful and positive.

RE: You said it better than me. It’s therapy. It’s the butterfly effect! It’s taking something so horrific — and people think OCD, for example, is chopping vegetables finely and having a clean house. My house is filthy. I mean, it really is, it’s a disgrace. But when you have that ability to just — I don’t want to say put a comedic slant on it, but just translate that horror into something that you can live with, I think that’s really important. You said it better than me.

D: I don’t know about that.

RE: Interview yourself! [laughs]

D: You touched on this in the panel — it must be so bizarre to one, have your journals be public, and then two, have them made into a TV show, and then three, see your own self transformed into someone different and have to have that relationship.

RE: Yes, but what I did was, with the television show, I made quite a conscious decision to see her as a character, and that was important because otherwise — it’s like living in a Doctor Who time vortex meta crisis thing, you just can’t do it. So I see her as a character, and that allows her to go off and do different things. The character does things that I haven’t done, but nothing that I wouldn’t have done. So I see her as a separate entity and I think that’s quite healthy.

D: Did changing the decades help that too? And like, adding different characters? Did that also help keep that distance for you, mentally?

RE: It did, yes. Though I can see everything translated across. But it’s age, the biggest thing is age. When you’re in your 40s looking back at your teens, I’m still Rae but I’m a very different Rae than I was and I can kind of own that and look after her from a distance. It’s actually kind of nice.

D: Yeah, like at 31 I see myself at 25 or 21 and it’s like completely different people, but it’s the same person.

RE: Absolutely! I wasn’t some crushing introvert when I was younger. I’ve still got the essential same parts. But yeah, you’ve got experiences, you’ve got confidence. When you’re in your 40s, you don’t frankly give a flying fig what most people think, you have a core of people you do care about and their opinion, but everyone else can go scratch. That’s health. Teens isn’t like that, you care about what everybody else thinks and not really about what you think, which is the crux of most of the problems.

D: Yeah, and I really like that even the first episode addresses that in a really great arc where she had the swimsuit and the alligator – you realize as long as you own it and you own yourself, you can laugh with them.

RE: I found that terribly emotional, I still do.

D: That really happened to you?

RE: Yes, I got stuck on the slide. And that really resonates. I find it all emotional, I mean, you would anyway if it wasn’t you, but if it is you!

D: It’s very vulnerable.

RE: It’s very raw, absolutely. But the slide thing did happen.

D: Did the alligator thing happen?

RE: It did not happen! That was a bit of beautiful television drama which I adore. But again, seeing that is sort of therapeutic, and the response to it from people! We all feel this way. You would’ve felt that way, Heather over there would’ve felt that way. It doesn’t matter! Originally I thought it’d be a period piece most enjoyed by people of that era, but no, it translates right across. And there’s something lovely about that.

D: I think someone asked you about the possible American adaptation and you were being Henry Kissinger-diplomatic. I’m not sure if you heard about this, but MTV tried to translate Skins to an American audience and it just didn’t work. What do you think an American version of the tale would have to nail in order to keep the heart? And also what would be different?

RE: I think the cultural references would have to change. I think what you were going through in the 90s is obviously different to what we were going through in the ’90s. I suspect there’d be a lot of grunge in there. Nirvana. Though we had that, I can see that as much more pertinent here. It doesn’t matter whether it’s American, Brazilian, Korean — it doesn’t matter what version is made, I’d just be looking for the same truth to it. Somebody who isn’t a conventional television body size, who is, I would say, a normal body size, and the open discussion of mental health issues. But there’s no reason why MTV or anybody else can’t do that. We’re living in an age now where other things have come along and people are discussing these things so there’s no reason why anybody can’t do it.

D: Even in the UK, I feel like Caitlin Moran did Raised by Wolves which seems very similar in that vein where she’s playing a fictionalized version of herself.

RE: Love Caitlin Moran. Oh, god. I love this push of feminism that’s happening right now. It seems really real to me. There was a feminism in the ’90s — I think I’ve lived through lots of different waves of feminism — there was a feminism in the ’90s that was basically about sticking your tits out a lot and saying, “I’ve got tits!” But that didn’t really resonate with me much, whereas this one does. But the reason why we think they’re similar is we’re so unused to seeing working class and that sort of things. I mean, I’ve had a very weird life — what would you call it here? Housing estate? Housing commission?

D: It’d be welfare housing, probably.

RE: But I was a poor kid who got a scholarship, so there’s that in the mix. We’re just not used to seeing working class, down to earth, female characters.

D: What is streaming like over there in Australia right now?

RE: It’s still a bit behind. Netflix is there, Hulu is not there, I’m really encouraging Hulu to come because I think Australians desperately need it. The ABC is very good, SBS is a new channel that’s very good. But the commercial channels are not so great, and they’re basically sporting me out of TV. I think Australia’s a fantastic place for any streamer, I mean, you’ll absolutely sweep up there! We need it! We do!

[Interview has been edited and condensed from its original version.]

[Watch My Mad Fat Diary on Hulu]

[Photos: Getty Images, E4]