Hannah Gadsby was the last person who expected Hannah Gadsby to become a star, thanks to her groundbreaking stand-up show turned Netflix special Nanette. So much so, as she recounted to Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday night, that she didn’t go to the Emmys ceremony where the special was nominated alongside Beyoncé’s documentary Homecoming.
“I assumed I wasn’t going to win, because Beyoncé,” she recalled, explaining that she opted to perform the last date of the show’s live run and just get her producer to throw up a slide for the audience saying HANNAH DIDN’T WIN AN EMMY when her category announcement rolled around. Of course, when she did, the producer had a slide for that too, resulting in an unexpected standing ovation in the middle of the show (which you can see in the clip above). “It was a very graceless but wonderful moment.”
Since then, the perfectly deadpan Australian comedian — who has a new special, Douglas, out now — has become a much bigger name in the U.S., leading to a few awkward moments. While her favorite was accidentally meeting a very excited Anna Kendrick (whom she had only just Googled), for every high there is a low.
“My gynecologist called me Nanette, which was an incredibly awkward moment for both of us” she recalled, sending Fallon into a wave of out-of-frame cackling.
“She was more embarrassed than me, and I didn’t have any pants on.”