Hannah Gadsby’s 2018 Netflix comedy special about art, trauma, and stand-up is titled Nanette.
Gadsby developed Nanette as a stage show in Australia before taking it to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it won the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Show in 2017. Netflix released the filmed special internationally in 2018, bringing its unusual mixture of storytelling, criticism, and performance to a much larger audience.
The show questions the mechanics of stand-up itself. Gadsby discusses her experiences as a queer person, the treatment of marginalized subjects in art history, and the emotional cost of repeatedly turning painful experiences into jokes. Its structure deliberately shifts between conventional comic techniques and direct dramatic monologue.
Nanette is not simply a conventional hour of jokes, which is why it is often described as a hybrid comedy performance. Gadsby followed it with Douglas, released as another Netflix special in 2020.