You ask. They answer. “They” being the comedians starring in the new 8-part entertaining and enlightening series WTFAQ (pronounced “What The FAQ”) on the ABC.
Starring Chas Licciardello, Alex Lee, Lawrence Leung, Lou Wall, Kirsten Drysdale and Cameron James, the team answers burning viewer questions like Is it really dangerous to use my phone on the plane? Is Centrelink’s hold music deliberately annoying? And should you put your tomato sauce in the fridge or the cupboard?!
Speaking on Mediaweek and Chattr’s The Entertainment Hotline Podcast, co-presenter [Cameron] James said that the team not only present the show but also does the research — alongside a team of producers.
“We do it all. Obviously, there’s a team on the show. There are producers and shooters, some researchers and a couple of writers as well,” he said. “But the reason that we were all brought on is because we’re all self-producing comedians, producers, writers and performers.
“My background is in production. I started in post-production and then I became a producer and writer. And then, at the same time, I was doing stand-up comedy. So I’ve kind of got all those things cooking. I’m a Jack of all trades, master of none as they say!”
WTFAQ cast: Lawrence Leung, Lou Wall, Kirsten Drysdale, Chas Licciardello, Alex Lee, Cameron James, ABC
What type of questions will be answered on WTFAQ?
In terms of the questions being answered, James says they’re “pretty broad”.
“Some of them are science-based questions,” he said. “One of them that I tackled was, ‘What is a mirage?’ This is something I’d always wanted to know because you see mirages in cartoons… so, I wanted to know exactly what a Mirage is. Is it a hallucination? Or is it a real optical illusion?”
Then there were more topical — and completely polarising — questions like the aforementioned tomato sauce debate.
“That was a huge one,” he admitted. “That one caused a lot of controversy in the office.”
According to James, he spent a month researching the why, how and where things started, including a trip the a shooting range to see if whether affects the trajectory of a bullet.
“I went down to a shooting range and shot guns a bunch of times to try it out.”
While we get to see a myriad of results, some questions didn’t make the cut.
“We’re mainly just sort of tackling fun little questions that you might discuss around a dinner table,” he said, adding that “there were a lot of things I wasn’t allowed to do for safety reasons.”
“One of them I really loved,” he admitted. “I really wanted to do ‘How do you get over a fear of heights?’. I have a fear of heights. And so I wanted to do immersion therapy where I start by jumping off a stepladder, and then I work my way up to being thrown out of a plane, essentially.
“I really thought that would be good television because I genuinely do have a fear of heights and I would be confronting my fear step by step. But the lawyers said that it was not safe for me to do that.”
What if you have a burning question that must be answered?
If you have a question for the team to answer, you can submit it here.
WTFAQ premieres Wednesday 30th August at 9pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.
Listen to Cameron James on The Entertainment Hotline Podcast from Wednesday, August 30.