It’s been a day, maybe two – I’ve lost all track of time now – since I watched Magda Szubanski and Kim Kardashian West star in an UberEats ad together. Strike that, Magda Szubanski as Sharon Strzelecki in an ad with Kim Kardashian West in full netball attire, with the words “nooiiccee like oiice, I looikkke you, roice, pine lime sploice, throice, moice, doice” in it.
THRICE.
“Getting thrice into an UberEats commercial as Sharon with Kim Kardashian, I’m like ‘I’ll just retire now’,” Magda, a national treasure, tells PEDESTRIAN.TV over the phone.
“I’ve got so many friends calling because I couldn’t tell anyone and people are like, ‘whaaaaaat?’”
Magda, and a good chunk of the world, know Kim Kardashian is a “phenomenon”. There’s no denying it, so Magda knew the ad was going to do numbers.
“But whether people would like it or not, you just never know! But people are loving it. I’m describing it as a meta pop cultural event rather than an ad, because it goes way beyond ad standards,” she says laughing. “It’s really messed with people’s reality.”
Truly.
So what was it like working with Kim Kardashian West, you ask? Well, Magda says she was just really lovely.
“I said to her, ‘Do you know what netball is?’ And she said, ‘Well, you know we have this thing here called the Met Ball, and I thought it was a joke about that.’”
Incredible.
“She was saying how her sisters watched it back and were crying with laughter. She was so up for it!” Magda adds.
In a behind-the-scenes clip, Kim actually dons the iconic bowl cut. If you’ve yet to see it, aggressively click on the below.
Magda genuinely couldn’t believe Kim did the look.
“I was like ‘You’re kidding, she’s doing it? She’s doing the bowl cut?’ And she thought it was hilarious because she thought she looked like her mum.”
Speaking on Kath and Kim, Magda says she counts herself so lucky to be part of a show that still has a place in the hearts and minds of Aussies everywhere.
“This whole new generation is watching it on Netflix and thinking it’s a new show, it’s amazing,” she says. “We finished filming – we did the last series in 2007 and the movie in 2011, it just keeps on keeping on.”
“I get gangs of 11-year-old girls now running after me going ‘SHAAAAARON’ – it’s crazy! But I think it’s great that people are rediscovering it all on Netflix. It’s just so damn Australian.”
Whether or not there’ll be a reboot, though – Magda doesn’t think so. SORRY.
“Never say never but I think it’s really unlikely,” she says. “Something like this [the ad] is completely different, it’s uncharted territory.
“But personally, [I think we should] leave it on a high. Never say never, but yeah, I think it’s very, very unlikely.”
WELP.
In saying that, Magda says that if she is approached with a brilliant pitch for a reboot then she’d absolutely do it.
“My gut feeling is that we have kind of exhausted everything,” she says. “If there was a brilliant idea, of course I’d be up for it – I’m not saying no, but I don’t think anyone has the appetite for doing it at the moment. I think we all know that we don’t want to mess with it.”
As for Sharon’s new second best friend, Kim asked Magda to let her know how the ad goes.
“I imagine she’ll be getting a lot of these random tweets from Australians. And I just wonder if this will filter back to America and what Americans will make of this.
“They’d be looking at her and thinking ‘What is she wearing? What is that?’ And the bowl cut? I really kind of hope that happens because I think it would be so funny! No context, just ‘what the fuck?’”
…
LET’S WATCH IT AGAIN.
