Club Friday Q&A: Comedian Isabel Kanaan on Why Immigration Inspires Such Great Jokes
By Stacy lee kong
Image: Kam Sylvestre
You don’t have to be Filipino to see the humour in Abroad, a half-hour sketch comedy show created by actor and comedian Isabel Kanaan. You just need to belong to a diasporic community and you’ll feel so seen, I promise. I mean, are you struggling to keep up with your immigrant parents’ demands—and subsequent guilt trips if you don’t? There’s a sketch for that! Unsure about some of your community’s beauty standards, which are clearly rooted in colonialism and white supremacy? There’s a sketch for that, too! But of course, the most powerful appeal is to Kanaan’s fellow Filipinos, especially since sketches are performed in both English and Tagalog. Ahead of the show’s season 3 premiere this spring, I chatted with the comedian about balancing humour, important themes and accessibility, why immigrant stories make for such great comedy and how to get the timing right.
What drew you to comedy?
I was in the Acting for Camera and Voice program at Seneca College and one of my teachers actually told me, “You can find the comedy in anything.” Then when I graduated, I realized that a lot of the roles that I was getting were comedic roles. I was like, ‘Oh, I guess I really leaned into that.’ I do notice that when I do comedy versus drama, I feel so at home there. I think it has a lot to do with my family and how I grew up within my culture. But it all started from that note.
I’m always curious about what draws people to particular paths, but not everyone has such a clear moment. Like, not everyone can say, “I know exactly when that happened.” So, it's kind of fascinating that you did.
It's because I never thought of comedy before. I feel like I just stumble into things, so if someone tells me, “Oh, you're funny,” I'm like, “Okay!”
Where you always a comedian, even as a kid?
I was a performer, but I was dancing, I was singing, I was acting. It wasn't necessarily comedy. If you were to tell me as a kid that I was going to grow up to be a comedian, I'd be like, “What?”
I get that. I always want to be funny, but I don't know if I actually am. Do you think of yourself as a funny person?
Honestly, I still don't think I'm funny. I think my superpower is that I can see what is funny and replicate it.
Okay, I think that might actually be imposter syndrome, because I get what you mean, but I also think you might just be describing being funny! When we’re thinking about style, Abroad is sketch comedy. What is the appeal of that style for you?
I tried stand-up and it’s great, but it's not for me. I like the acting part. I like listening to my scene partner. I like adapting the script and doing my own take with it. So, sketch comedy is like the perfect amalgamation of acting and comedy. I write it as well, and sketch comedy just seemed to be the perfect home for that.
When I was doing research for this interview, I read a Now Toronto profile where you talked about using comedy and humour to cope with your experience of immigrating to Canada, which really resonated with me. I mean, I was four when we moved here from Trinidad so I think I dealt with the transition mostly by crying—we moved in December, and the snow was literally taller than I was, so it was deeply offensive on every level. Why do you think immigrant experiences can be such good sources of comedy? Because I've never told anyone that I moved here in December without getting the same reaction, a combination of laughing and crying, so there's clearly some humour there.
What’s that quote? It’s something like, “comedy is trauma plus time.” Well, immigration is pretty traumatic, you know? It's a big change. No matter what age you are, you're so used to the sun. And then one day bam, snow. Like, you've never seen snow before, but now your entire life will be snow, just for shits and giggles. We’re like living sitcoms.
Oh, I love describing people as just like sitcoms, because a sitcom is not just funny, right? There's also the emotion, and the after-school special aspect of it. That really reflects many people’s immigrant experience. Like, some of it is so deeply ridiculous that you just have to laugh. But the trauma part is also so real. And not just the external trauma of, ‘Oh, you might come and face racism.’ It's also internal! Like, ‘Hey, everything that you thought you knew about yourself might actually be partially predicated on your location, and now we've changed your location. What do you think?’
Yeah, exactly. A lot of people think comedies are purely ‘ha ha’ moments. No, the reason why comedy is so widely appreciated and why people love it is because it's relatable. We love to see people going through the same hardships that we have, and we laugh at it because it's like, ‘Oh, that’s so true.’ It's not necessarily that it's funny.
It's not nice, but it's true. But, on the flip side, I think the idea of laughing at trauma is a particularly immigrant thing to do. I know other communities do it, too, but a lot of my friends are first-gen, second-gen or third-culture kids, and somehow, coincidentally, many of us use humour to work through the hard things. Why do you think humour is such a good tool for excavating the parts of our lives that are dark or hard or messy?
It is true. I've noticed it time and time again. You know, I think it’s that when you're going into a new country, the language is different, we're all having culture shock—what is one thing that's universal? Laughter. Remember Mr. Bean, from back in the day? Mr. Bean was so huge in every country, because he didn't say a word, but the comedy was universal. That's how we can relate to this new country that we're in without having to say anything.
That makes me wonder if some of your love for sketch comedy comes from the fact that it’s a bit more physical than just stand-up. Like, I wonder if that relates—you had to learn the power of a facial expression, and figure out how to deploy nonverbal communication to get a laugh or reaction, because you were navigating learning a new language. It feels like there's some synergy or alignment there.
You're totally right. When I first started acting, in the very beginning, I was so ‘big.’ They always said, “Tone it down, tone it down.” Because here in North America, it's all about the subtleties. And I'm like, “I'm from the Philippines!” There's no subtlety—we have more than 100 different dialects throughout how many islands? We have to use our facial expressions and our physicality to communicate with each other. So, coming to North America, it's just like, subtlety? No, that doesn't exist with me.
When we talk about culture shock, I think we often talk about language and communication, but it's those ideas of how you're supposed to be that, for me, can be so much more jarring. Like, I'm supposed to be quieter than I am, or I'm supposed to be more serious than I am. Shifting gears a little, tell me more about Abroad. How did this project even come about?
During the pandemic, I took to TikTok, basically to use it as my sketch diary. I was doing a sketch show before, on stage, but when the pandemic started, I couldn't do that anymore, so I needed an outlet of some sort. I started doing little skits, just me being me. So: me being Filipino, me being an immigrant, me being an actor. When the producers from Longhope Media saw it and contacted me and were like, “We want to do a show about that,” I was like, “What?” I did not see it at first, because it was very TikTok, you know? But they saw it for what it could be, which is now Abroad. So we talked about it, and we basically finagled it to be a 30-minute sketch show.
I think in the same Now profile, you described the difference season one as being jokes and stories that we’ve heard and we love, and season two making the audience think more. What were the less commonly addressed topics that you were trying to tackle in that progression? And, why did you want to shine a light on them?
So season one was a celebration of this Filipino immigrant journey, but I also noticed that throughout this journey, we also have to take a look in the mirror ourselves, because maybe the things that we're bringing from our culture from our countries aren't that great, either. So some of the things that we brought up were shadeism, fat-shaming, things like that. That is very, very common in Filipino culture, and they don't even see anything wrong with it. But coming to Canada, you see that those things are detrimental to your mental health. So that's what we tackled in season two. We’re still obviously very, very proud to be Filipino. However, let's also work on ourselves. Let's also heal from our ancestors' trauma, you know?
Yes! I think a lot about how we strike that balance that you’re talking about, between celebrating our cultures and shining a light on ourselves. Do you ever feel pressure to avoid touching on difficult topics, or that there are some topics that are just too complicated because you're concerned about portraying Filipino-Canadian culture and Filipino-Canadians in the most positive light? Like when you're thinking, ‘Okay, we have to hold ourselves accountable,’ are there conversations that still feel too fraught to have?
Oh, I feel like every conversation still starts off like that, in the very beginning. When we were touching on things, I was very much like, “Oh no, people are going to hate me for showcasing this!” But at the same time, it's like, well, if I'm not gonna do this, who's gonna do this? Someone's gotta tell us! So, I just had to put a brave front. But to this day, it still is difficult. And that's why comedy is such a great tool. Because no matter what we do, for example, we do touch on a theme. So we’re like, “Oh, this is a really heavy theme. Let's try and find the comedy now,” and we create a sketch and find the comedy from it. But don't get me wrong, because there are times when we still like the topic, but we can't find the comedy in it. So, we don't. We put it on the back-burner, because you never know when we might find the comedy in it. And that has happened. It was shadeism, actually; in season one, we had pitch after pitch, and it was only in seasons two and three that we finally found the funny in it and could put it to air.
I do like that thought process—not everything is going to fit into every format right now. Which is the time part, right? Because it's not just, can we tell a joke? It's actually, can we tell a joke that is genuinely funny at this time, or do we need some space from it? I’m curious if you ever think about the reception from outside of the community as well as internally? I often ask myself, can I tell this story responsibly, and can I hold my community accountable, without discounting the oppression we experience or opening us up to unfair criticism? Do you ever think about that?
We do. That's why I like Abroad, because we say it’s accessible to Filipinos, to Canadians and to Filipino-Canadians. The writers’ room is a mix of different cultures, different modes of when people immigrated, so we have all those different perspectives that can weigh in. We’re finding the balance of comedy and theme and accessibility, for sure.
What can we expect in season three?
I like to call season three the audience collaboration season, because we've put sketches up on social media and we've gotten comments and DMs, so it's more of what people want. So, recurring characters that people liked, the themes that people liked.
Do you have a favourite sketch from this season, or a favourite joke? Can you even choose a favourite joke? Is that possible?
I have a favourite character. She's a new character. So, in the Philippines, we have these teleseryes, which are our version of telenovelas. There's this very famous, legendary teleserye actor that I parody. She's doing an acting class, and it's so over the top. That was my favourite because I just got to let loose and over act—but like, over, over, over act.
Season 3 of Abroad airs on Omni this spring. In the meantime, follow Isabel on Instagram, and the show too!
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