Since when is murder funny? It isn’t, but comic Greta Lee Jackson has made a comedy show, Murdernerd, out of people’s excuses for committing murder. “I’ve always been obsessed with true crime,’ she notes. “It’s so outside my world, so beyond what I know as normal. There’s a perverse schadenfreude about it, I guess. I haven’t had to kill anybody.” Good to know. “People’s reasons for committing murder are fascinating. People think they can get away with it. I love doing stand-up, and I have this obsession so I started thinking about how I could bring the two together. My love of comedy and my love of murder! People told me it was impossible but I did a show in Sydney in 2013 and it was a sell-out. I was experimenting with performance art and thought I could make something successful out of this.”
What led Jackson into comedy to begin with? “Some friends signed me up for RAW Comedy in 2011. I had no choice!” But she was a natural and wound up getting into the NSW State Finals. After studying at the Improv School at the University of California, Berkley, and the Groundlings School, Jackson’s now back in Sydney and busy with a web series called Skit Box, a show touting itself as ‘comedy by women for everybody’. She’s also involved with Fresh Blood, an initiative from ABC Entertainment TV and Screen Australia, making the pilot to a show called Wham Bam, Thank You Ma’am.
Jackson has been in the States working as a TV editor and having her photo taken at famous murder sites like OJ Simpson’s house and where the above mentioned Jodi Arias committed her crime. What did she think of the Serial podcast? “I was really happy at how popular it became. It became everybody’s thing.” While in the US Jackson appeared as a presenter on Oxygen now, as an expert commentator on a show about killers called Snapped. “That job was a dream come true. It was a bit weird cos they couldn’t refer to me as a comedian on the show so they said I was an ‘investigative journalist’. But I did do a journalism degree!”
Jackson started off following stories of serial killers but reckons she got too weirded out. “They were just too crazy, too nuts, too full on. With serial killers, seen one, seen ‘em all.” Really? To any charge that she may be trivialising the ghastly, Jackson has this to say: “You have to see the show. I’d never make light of a victim or the circumstances of a victim. I’m ridiculing the criminals, the perpetrators who think they can get away with it. When you hear their defenses in court you think ‘are you serious?’ Families of victims often scoff at the behaviour of killers in court. I’m not making light of crime, I’m exposing the ridiculous beliefs behind the motivation. Taking a life is never justified. I’m against the death penalty.”
Was Jackson into Dexter? “No, I wasn’t interested in Dexter or CSI cos it’s fabricated. I’m not interested in violence, I’m not a violent person in any way, it’s the psychology of the murderer that interests me. There’s a very famous case in the States, where woman, Jodi Arias, murdered her ex-boyfriend. On the page, we’re the same woman; we might both be going through a bad break-up, but where I walked away, she chose to kill her ex. I take a look at the dark side of humanity, at what goes wrong.”
BY LIZA DEZFOULI
