Jim Jefferies: Homecoming King

Netflix specials, hit TV shows, sold-out arena tours. Jim Jefferies might be on top of the world, but as luck would have it, right now he’s wanted Down Under. A week ago the Aussie comedian was in the United States where he and his young family reside, shooting Him, the next highly-anticipated Jordan Peele production. As he has done throughout an extraordinary career, Jefferies is pushing into new territory, with this film his first foray into drama. 

“I texted Russell Crowe and I said, ‘Russell, I’ve got an acting job, can I call you quickly for some tips?’ And I think he thought I just wanted acting tips […] And I was asking him more about when you talk to a director, what do you do here? And is it too much for me to add a line here and there or do you not do that in drama? But Russell sent me a quote from Hamlet and he told me to hold a mirror up to nature and I went, ‘Thanks mate’ [laughs].”

I ask him if stand-up could soon take a backseat and a permanent move into films could be on the cards.

“That’s like saying, ‘Do you think you’ll have sex with more attractive women?’ It’s not my decision, is it? They get to make the choice. Now obviously I’m joking, I’m a happily married man, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you get what I’m saying. It’s up to the movie industry, it’s not up to me […] I look at Sammy Davis Jr. I watched a documentary about him. He was a really good singer, an amazing dancer, an outstanding impersonator and all that type of stuff. He was just a ball of entertainment. And I’d like to be that. I like the idea that I can entertain at any time. So whether it be TV presenting or acting or doing stand-up, I just consider myself to be an entertainer first and foremost. I don’t think I can because of my voice or whatever, but I’d like to do a bit of musical theatre or something like that. Give that a crack. I’m up for doing everything but juggling and mime.”

Before he can catch his breath, 13,000 kilometres pass and Jefferies is back in Australia to record a new television series he has created for the Seven Network. It follows the ratings hit of his first role with the network as host of The 1% Club. That show introduced Jim to a new audience in his home country, presenting the notoriously foul-mouthed comedian who was once almost exclusively popular with young men, as a cheeky game show host your grandma would invite around for a Sunday roast. Generously, it’s Jim’s hope this new show, Jim Jefferies and Friends, will introduce some of his mates in Australian comedy to that same audience. “I’ve got some comics on there who are going to blow your socks off,” he declares with obvious pride.

When I first meet Jefferies, I hear the comedian before I see him. He’s giving a Python-esque operatic performance from behind a hotel door, high up in Melbourne’s Crown Towers. I knock. The singing stops. When the door opens, a Hollywood-slim Jefferies sheepishly welcomes me inside. The tidy room offers few signs that he has been living here for a couple of days now. The bottles of water on the table are sealed. The pair of jeans next to them are folded, tags still attached. Closed French doors shut off his bedroom, TV news murmuring away inside.

It’s neither the brash comedian from the stage, nor the sanitised game show host from the telly, that lies down on the couch, ready to get into what he will more than once refer to as a ‘therapy session’. This is a quieter, more reflective Jim Jefferies. One prepared to stop and take stock of the expansive career he has carved out for himself. 

“I’m very interested in doing as many different things in entertainment as possible. I like a challenge. I like doing something new. I don’t know if there’s a stand-up comic from Australia who’s had a more diverse career. You know what I mean? I think of myself like I’m an entertainer more than a comedian.”

That might be true, but it’s in stand-up comedy that Jefferies made his name. After studying musical theatre and opera at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), Jim’s attention turned to comedy. Following a handful of open mic spots in WA and Sydney, the plucky upstart decided Australia simply wasn’t equipped to give him the career he envisioned. He wanted more.

“You had, and I’m not kidding, maybe 12 rooms; two purpose-built comedy clubs and 10 rooms that did comedy occasionally, in a country that at that stage was 20 million people. And that’s not enough to make a living. Even to this day, if you’re a big comic in Australia, you’re doing morning radio. I don’t want to fucking wake up in the morning.”

So it was that in 2001, a year after leaving WAAPA, Jefferies left for the sunny shores of England, where he quickly got to work. Recalling that period, he sits up and stretches, as if reliving the physical toll of that time.

“I was doing over 300 shows a year for the first few years […] And that sounds like a lot more than it is because I was doing three or four on a Friday, three or four on a Saturday. But if there was a corner of a room for me to stand up, I was taking the opportunity.”

Corners of rooms became stages in theatres, and after a solid few years, Jim Jefferies had begun to make a name for himself. Having had a successful run at Edinburgh, it was in 2007 as he was about to embark on his first solo tour that things took a dark turn. During a set at the Manchester Comedy Store, a member from the audience took to the stage and repeatedly assaulted Jefferies.

“I distinctly remember what happened. I get punched in the face and then I sort of fall to the ground and then he hit me in the back of the head and then the audience came up and rushed him. To this day, if I go out drinking — which I don’t do anymore [Jefferies has been sober for three years] — if I go out in Manchester, someone will come up to me and say that they were one of the guys that jumped on the stage to defend me. I think I’ve bought about 30 drinks, but I only saw four people get on the stage.”

Watching the disturbing clip, which was recorded on the venue’s CCTV, it’s evident that in the immediate aftermath of the assault, Jefferies was rattled. While he briefly returned to the stage to make a joke about having employed the attacker, he soon left again, cutting short his set. For some, being assaulted on stage might feel like a sign to call it quits. For Jefferies, it was an opportunity to go bigger. “Because I was the person who put it up on the internet, what it did do was, it did sell out that tour.”

The video of the attack “went viral” — back when that phrase meant something — and for the first time, Jefferies caught the attention of the American market. HBO offered him a special and a move Stateside was made. Still under contract to record a series of comedy specials in the UK, he would be forced to compensate his record company, meaning the American deal was technically a financial loss. But the comedian had arrived and the Yanks liked what they saw. Fellow comedian and friend of Jefferies, American Arj Barker, says the Australian’s honesty resonated with US audiences. “Jim, he’s a package. He’s funny. He’s got funny bones […] and I think he has that quality of truth, his own truth, which is coming through. And it’s like, that’s badass.”

In 2013, FX gave Jefferies his own sitcom. Legit saw a heightened version of the comedian attempting to make his career more legitimate. The critically-acclaimed series cast a number of actors with disabilities, and was roundly praised for its depiction of disability over its two seasons. It also found fans in the likes of Eddie Murphy and Brad Pitt. When I ask Jefferies about his experience making the show, the jetlag falls away and his eyes light up.

“That’s probably the thing that I’m most proud of in my whole career. […] But I went in so blind writing it. I didn’t own a computer. I was dictating the scripts to someone else to type out. I was semi-bloody literate and fucking with loads of dyslexia, and I was just like, ‘This seems so overwhelming’. And then I found that I had a knack for writing these scripts. I just sort of laid down like I’m talking to you now in therapy and I chatted out each line. […] But, I love that show and people really love that show.”

The following year, Jim would arguably make the most important creative choice of his career. During his 2014 Netflix special, Jim Jefferies: Bare, Jefferies would do a blisteringly funny routine on America’s desperate need for gun control. It is an example of a master at the top of their game; insightful, eviscerating, and hilarious. And due to the evergreen nature of the topic thanks to ongoing gun massacres across the United States, to this day it continues to find new audiences online with disturbing regularity. 

By his own estimates, those 16 minutes of stand-up have been seen 10 times more than anything else Jefferies has ever done, earning him fans on the left, and death threats from the right. Something, even a decade on, the comedian admits is a daily reality.

“Yeah you get those, but if someone’s going to kill you they’re not going to send you a threat. Every time I get a death threat I feel a little safer, you know what I mean? Because I know where the person is. […] Could there be a weaker action in this world than someone on social media sending you a death threat?”

I ask Jefferies whether that nonchalance has changed at all since becoming a dad.

“If you worry about it, that’ll be all consuming […] you just have to live your life. Like if Trump and Biden haven’t been assassinated, why would I be first? I’ve got to be so low on the list. Like you’re kidding me, right? They’re going to go Gandhi, Martin Luther King, JFK, John Lennon, Jim Jefferies? Come on now.” [EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview occurred prior to the assassination attempt on Trump and Biden dropping out of the presidential race.]

Over the years, it’s not just those on the right that Jefferies has angered. “I do feel like I’m this comedian who’s both loved and hated by the left and the right,” he tells me. 

Keep an eye out for part 2 of the Jim Jefferies Rolling Stone AU/NZ cover story.

This article features in the September-November 2024 issue of Rolling Stone AU/NZ. If you’re eager to get your hands on it, then now is the time to sign up for a subscription.

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