“I did law and dropped out of law. I dropped out of philosophy – [that] was what I probably went furthest [in].
“I did a little bit of history. I did, like, one math paper, but then hit logarithmics and forgot what that was.
“And then I was going to do a Bachelor of Communications at Massey and I think that was the last thing I dropped out of.
“But it’s kind of silly because the student loan is very high and the knowledge is very minimal.”
That hasn’t slowed Hotene’s comedy career, though. The comic has established a cult following, particularly on social media, where his self-deprecating humour and gags about te ao Māori have had major cut-through with NZ audiences.
Hotene told Real Life he fell into comedy partly by accident.
His friend, an amateur comedian, had a rooftop apartment in Auckland where he would often put on gigs and parties, and decided to hold an open mic night with musicians, poets and a few other comics he had met on the stand-up circuit.
“There might have been 30-40 people in this big lounge, so it’s a pretty good crowd of pretty warm people. And I just went up and told a few jokes, and it was one of those things that went so much better than I could have imagined.”
That night led to bigger stages at bigger venues, with Hotene earning a reputation for plumbing his Māori identity for humorous anecdotes.
He told Cowan trying stand-up took a bit of courage initially, but now he’s got to a point where he enjoys it and wants to do it regularly.
“My auntie was a skydiver and she dived out of this plane like 200 times, and I’m sure the first couple of times it was very brave. But once you fall in love with something, you kind of just want to do it non-stop, almost,” said Hotene.
“It’s a real connection when you can kind of curate this language to put a point across that seems to connect with a large group of people… every now and again you might say something quite clever or have a very specific idea that nobody has talked about and get a big group of people laughing.
“It feels like a particularly unique thing to comedy, where you’ve created this new idea with people – this little thing in your mind that you didn’t feel like anybody connected to – and all of a sudden, it’s apparently pretty broadly understood.”
Hotene also gets plenty of material out of his ginger locks and pale skin, which challenges some people’s perceptions of what Māori should look like.
“My name and the way that I look – that’s a conversation I’ve had like a million times before going on stage. It’s one of those things where you almost have your predetermined script.”
Having bagged two major comedy awards in two years – he was named Breakthrough Comic by the NZ Comedy Guild in 2024 – Hotene is looking forward to Edinburgh Fringe, where he’ll be able to try out a bunch of new material for the first time in a room full of people who will mostly have never heard of him.
“I’m kind of excited that nobody knows who I am [there]. Not that I’m super big here, [but] there’s this real feeling now that I’ve had this award – or even before that, when I was getting a bit of attention online – there’s a little bit of pressure to be good, because people will remember if you’re bad.
“Whereas if I’m bad in a place where nobody knows who I am, I can fail in anonymity and grow that way.”
- Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7:30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here.
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