Introducing Kat & Kat, the comedy duo made up of Katerina Robinson and Kat Ronson. These girls do sketches, stand-up, live shows, digital content and character comedy and represent being free and unapologetic.
The pair say “we get judged so much as women and the expectations on what we should and shouldn’t say. We’ve never paid attention to that, we don’t see why there are different rules for us.”
In their sketches, these two are a breath of fresh air. They have been moving from strength to strength since they teamed up after meeting on Facebook. In an interview with Kat & Kat below, Broke Magazine gets the inside scoop on their relationship, inspiration and future plans.
How did the both of you meet? And how did that relationship blossom into a duo act?
Kat: I wanted to do an all-female comedy show so I put a post on Facebook and Katerina replied. I saw her name which was literally nearly identical to mine, it seemed like fate. Then when we finally met we decided we’d do some sketches together. We thought of about 5 random ideas together and it flowed effortlessly. We don’t mess around, we just got on with it and had so much fun laughing the whole time. That was 5 years ago!
Katerina: We actually met on Facebook! How millennial of us! Kat posted on a female creatives group about wanting to collaborate with other comics on a show. She then slid into my DMs, we got chatting and she invited me to her poetry night. The first night we met I watched her perform a poem about her clit and I knew from that day we’d get on like a house on fire! We started by making little skits together for Instagram and we got a great response, we both have similar humour and what we visualize for ourselves, so it made sense to continue working together.
What is your audience like?
Kat: It’s varied. All different ages and genders! It’s a misconception that we’re just aimed at young women. Loads of men come to our shows and relate to it the same amount as women.
Katerina: Fun people who are up for a good time, but I would also say pretty mixed! We don’t like to exclude anyone and we always say everyone is welcome to our shows.
How are you finding it being female creatives navigating through the industry?
Katerina: It definitely comes with its challenges and I think because myself and Kat use our femininity and sexuality a lot in our comedy, that can sometimes go against us. We find there is still this stigma of being women in comedy, but times are changing, and it feels like there’s more of a place in the world for our style of work.
Kat: It’s tough. With any male-dominated industry, it’s difficult to just be seen as the artist. You’re the ‘female comedian’ – so first it’s how are you as a woman then it’s what you’re saying. It’s very different for men, so of course, that feels unfair. It’s sometimes hard to keep feeling energised and like you can still be yourself.
Tell us what your unique selling point is?
Katerina: Well we’re both called Kat and we have the same initials, that’s already a selling point in itself! I would say the fact we’re willing to take risks, we never take ourselves too seriously. We’re willing to push boundaries and do things a little differently!
Kat: We like to make a little production out of things, we dress up, get the visuals going, and create an atmosphere. We like to be theatrical as we both trained as actresses, and we want it to be an experience for us and the audience. We like to be silly too! We are creating poignant moments but generally, we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
How do your political opinions influence the content you produce?
Katerina: When we first started creating work together, we didn’t really have any political motivation behind it, we just wanted to have fun and be funny. We then started to notice a lot of the work we were making had similar themes, using our experiences with men and how we’ve been treated as women. We like being satirical and exploring topics of female empowerment, but in a way that feels accessible to audiences, and I think that’s something myself and Kat do really well without coming across as too heavy.
Kat: I think a theme we’ve always had is female empowerment and being able to be open about our sexuality without judgement. It accidentally became a theme for us. Kat and I noticed during our stand-up we would tell a sexual joke and would get a completely different reaction to a male comedian speaking about sex. We think that disparity is bullshit, so that’s something we’ll always be passionate about.
Are there any topics you feel adamant to speak about in your performances and why?
Katerina: I think owning our sexuality is a topic we explore a lot in our shows. We’ve both come from backgrounds ranging from stripping to ring-girling and we just own it because we’re comedians we’re able to poke fun out of our past and experiences without slut shaming. There’s so much male toxicity online these days particularly influencing young men and we want to use our influence to create an open, safe and non-judgmental space for everyone.
Kat: In The Whoreing Twenties we do discuss female safety and point at the government and how little they’re doing. It’s a way of getting some power back, we can feel quite helpless with everything that’s going on. It’s also a way for us to heal and release our frustration.
What are the best moments of your career so far?
Kat: Releasing our web series ‘Lads’, we play Charlie and Dave which from just looking at us you wouldn’t typically picture us playing teenage boys. We made it all ourselves during a lockdown and it really is our best work. I’m always proud of us for pulling it off and making 6 episodes just us two, in my flat. We got a lot of write-ups and were selected as Chortle’s Top Picks, we got 100% on Rotten Tomatoes and 9.1 on IMDb.
Katerina: Creating our series LADS! We self-funded it all and filmed it in lockdown, it’s been an ongoing project and now we’re in the process of pitching it to channels with a production company. We’d absolutely love it to get picked up! Performing our show The Whoreing Twenties too, Vault Festival was actually our fifth time performing it and it’s really gone from strength to strength.
And were there any downfalls you overcame? How so?
Katerina: We’ve both experienced a lot of rejection and the majority of our projects are self-funded, so it can be disheartening when something isn’t really going to that next level. We’ve always powered through and we’re always thinking about our next move, but I think for any artist it can be a struggle and deflating going through periods of rejection.
Kat: We actually started The Whoreing Twenties years ago and it got postponed four times due to Covid. That was really disheartening we just wanted to get performing again. On projects we’ve made ourselves, there’s no one watching over the process like an agent would so there’s been a few people who’ve tried to take advantage. A favourite for me also was when we were doing a cat-calling scene in Lads then actually got cat-called! Kat & I just stick together and banish anyone who’s being disrespectful to us.
How do you envision female comedy in the future?
Katerina: I think there’s so many great upcoming female comedy talent and I would hope people would be more accepting of sexy, sassy women being funny. There’s still this stigma that you can’t look glam and also be funny, it’s a very backwards way of thinking and I’d absolutely love to see more sexy, female talent killing it on the comedy circuit.
Kat: I just want everyone to be more open to women being funny. Being able to talk about anything. It can be really accepting but I was shocked when I first started out that there’s still so much judgement. The more women rise up in the industry and we see more women on panel shows and big line-ups, the more audiences are going to
widely accept women are funny too. When we stop hearing ‘funny for a female comedian’ or ‘I don’t find women funny’ is when it’s how it needs to be.
What should our audience look out for in terms of new shows, collaborations etc?
Kat & Kat: We have our podcast Reading Our DMs which is on all podcast platforms, that’s always ongoing! We have also been developing Lads since we brought out the mini-series, we’re in discussions so we really hope we’ll get the green light soon. We’re also always making content on TikTok and Instagram, so please head over to our socials!