According to a source in the New York Post, our girl Hannah Gadsby and Transparent and I Love Dick creator Jill Soloway are in a relationship.
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You know 40-year-old Hannah Gadsby – I don’t need to explain the massive success of her Netflix special Nanette, which lead to her smashing her appearance at this year’s Emmys. I don’t need to tell you about her turn in Please Like Me, or about her art history specials. If you’ve even been remotely familiar with the Aussie comedy scene over the last ten years you will have seen her sets, interrogating trauma and mental health issues, and the extremely fucked view of homosexuality in her home state of Tasmania in the ’90s. She’s now quit stand-up (or has she??) and is working on a memoir, due out next year, Ten Steps to Nanette.
Here’s a throwback:
If you weren’t familiar with 53-year-old Soloway’s work, they’ve written for Six Feet Under and Grey’s Anatomy, and are most famous for creating Transparent, a series inspired by their own father coming out as transgender, which is still worth a watch, despite the alleged shitty behaviour of Jeffrey Tambor, who has since been fired from the award-winning show.
They’re also behind the adaptation of Chris Kraus‘ cult favourite novel I Love Dick – the one that feels so naughty to read on trains – about the author’s obsession with a handsome academic. You should read it. But you should also watch it, because Soloway managed to get Kevin Bacon on board as a sexy cowboy academic.
They also won Best Director at Sundance in 2013 for Afternoon Delight, starring Kathryn Hahn and Josh Radnor, and is currently in the midst of a book tour for her new memoir, She Wants It: Desire, Power, and Toppling the Patriarchy.
The couple are rumoured to have been dating since the middle of this year, and are currently travelling and doing talks together.
New York Post’s source says that the couple are “very private” and “don’t want people to know they’re a couple“, adding that “Jill recently went to Australia to meet Hannah’s family.”
At a talk promoting Soloway’s book at New York‘s New School university last week, Soloway said that she had gone to see Gadsby perform live, and the next morning the pair went for breakfast: “We had breakfast the next morning … and became friends after that. We realised yes, we both have a lot of things in common that we like to talk about that generally annoy other people… Rage, patriarchy, consent before the coffee comes.”
Soloway was previously in a relationship with poet Eileen Myles, an inspiration behind Cherry Jones‘ academic character in Transparent; they processed their break-up live on stage in late 2016 in Los Angeles.
I know this is really just two people’s private lives and it’s none of my beeswax but I’m allowed to be excited about the convergence of two real great artists, okay? Okay.
