Based on the hit web-series of the same name, How to Talk Australians: The Movie sees the students of the Delhi College of Linguistics leave the classroom and head Down Under. When their plane is diverted to the country town of Dubbo due to storms, and their tour-leader is detained by customs, the hapless bunch unearth the ‘real’ Australia while never making it to Sydney, Melbourne… or even Brisbane.
From Tony Rogers, director the of internationally acclaimed series Wilfred and featuring an all-star comedy cast including Shane Jacobson (Kenny, Oddball), Rohan Ganju (The Emu War, Urvi Went to an All Girls School), Danielle Walker (Gold Diggers, Bittersweet), Dave Lawson (Utopia) and Rick Davies (Offspring), this irreverent comedy explores cultures colliding in the most hilarious way.
As How To Talk Australians finishes a run at various comedy and film festivals around Australia, and before it hits cinemas nationwide on June 11, Nick L’Barrow spoke with the film’s director Tony Rogers about expanding the series into a feature film, and how comedy works as a tool to connect people and cultures.
Nick: When the original web series came out in 2014, it was during a time when the way people were consuming comedy was rapidly changing. There was more online comedy content than television or film. I’m curious to know what your experience has been with the way comedy consumption has evolved over the last 2 decades, and how that led to creating a feature film in 2026?
Tony Rogers: That’s a good question! I just reckon we’re in a bit of a weird place where people are wondering what’s going to happen next. But I mean, comedy just keeps going. It might not feel as prolific, but maybe we’re just getting used to a new system with streamers and all of that transition. I mean, the fact is things do work online. Instagram has comedy. TikTok has comedy. There’s a lot out there, just in smaller bites. But it’s also exactly like what we had with Australia’s Funniest Home Videos. The reason that was funny was because things would just happen by accident. You could try and do some of those things in a movie or TV show, but it might not work the same. I think all forms of comedy work. I think we’re just in a transition period. I still struggle to get things up and running.+
Nick: I consume a lot of comedy online, too. But there is something about sitting in a room full of people and laughing together…
TR: We were at Elsternwick on Wednesday night, and it was great. The Gold Coast screening was great too. That was a ripper of a night. But we had a screening down at the [Melbourne] Comedy Festival with about 500 people in the audience, and it was a great night. All the screenings I’ve been to have been good. I sat next to a woman who just cackled the whole way through. Two women in front of me laughed the whole way through. And the film won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Even people told me they don’t know who they feel about it all.
Nick: Comedy is one of the most subjective things, but I also think it’s a fantastic way of connecting people and culture. The inherent Australian quality to take the piss out of ourselves and others is very apparent in this film. What was it like exploring that sentiment, but through the lens of Indian characters?
TR: The original idea came from my friend, and the writer, Rob Hibbert, when he walked into a shop in South Melbourne called the Australian Pie Shop. And the man who served him was a genuine Sikh. And Rob immediately thought there was something here to explore. So, this idea has been developing for a long time. I really think comedy is powerful, as long as it’s not nasty. All the people involved should be getting stuck in to. We’re talking about a lot of touchy subjects, but we’re not being cruel or rude to anyone.
Nick: What was the process like in finding a feature length narrative to stitch together all of the comedic bits and ideas you and Rob had?
TR: It was very tricky, but I am glad I did it because I’ve learned a lot from this. I’m glad I went through this process because now there is talk of doing How To Talk Indians. Working on this helped me work on the next thing, and that was a great experience. It definitely is easier to make half an hour episodes than it is to make a film when it comes to comedy, because you’re more interested in making people laugh rather than making them invested in a story. But for film, you need that story to be desirable enough to keep watching. You want bums on the edge of their seats, and that’s what the story element does. You can’t just do 90 minutes of comedy because after 20 minutes people go, “I’ve seen enough now.” But it was a great experience because we wrote a skit film, and then got to add a story into it. Initially we were making this for the ABC as a series! We also wrote a pilot called How To Talk Americans that my partner Carol read, and she said it’s one of the favourite things she’s read.
Nick: If I can go on a tangent for a moment since you’ve mentioned American versions of shows – did the idea for How To Talk Americans stem from your experience in taking Wilfred to the US?
TR: ICM, the American agents who got the FX deal for Wilfred actually saw the Australian version of the show on US TV. We even got a call from Sacha Baron Cohen saying he loved the show. I was in New York and there was a 10 metre poster of the Australian Wilfred in Central Station. And ICM said that they could sell the show in America, and we were in a meeting with 12 people from FX and the only thing we want is for Jason [Gann] to be the dog, and they took him on.
Nick: What is the process of writing jokes that aren’t spoken or just purely slapstick? There’s a hospital scene where the room is called ‘The Unfortunate Accidents Ward’. Is that something written into the script, or does that naturally arrive when you’re in production?
TR: That idea was actually written. We had this whole sequence in the hospital, and that was a part of it. But, at the last minute, we could get into the hospital we wanted to shoot in, so we had to build our own. But we had a whole list of “unfortunate accidents” that we shot that didn’t make the film. I think we will have to do a series next. We pretty much went down the hallway of this hospital and investigated all of the accidents that happened.
Nick: I have two questions about certain jokes in the film. The first one is: how long was the list of horse names that the caller reads out over the radio throughout the movie?
TR: We had a lot! But I’ve got to give credit to Tim Parrington, the editor of the film, because not only is that his voice as the radio caller, but he wrote down a whole bunch of stuff for those scenes. We all contributed, but I think he contributed the most.
Nick: And the second is about how accurate the “beer maths” really is?
TR: I mean, I think it’s accurate! I worked in a pub once. It was pretty much my first full time job, and we were still serving ponies and seven-ounces. Pints and schooners weren’t really that big. But, you’d go to Sydney where pints and schooners were more popular. Those scenes with Vishal teaching all of these things about Australia through the videos – we have about four or five sequences that didn’t make the film, but they were all great.
Thank you to Tony for his time, and to Umbrella Entertainment and NixCo PR for organising the chat. How To Talk Australians releases in Australian cinemas on June 11.
