Claudia O’Doherty Tells Us About Her Post-Apocalyptic Beauty Blog "Sarah’s Channel"

Zoella meets Zombieland in Claudia O’Doherty’s bonkers new series.

Aussie comedian Claudia O’Doherty doesn’t have any makeup tips for you, but she does have some skincare advice: "Get a prescription for Retin-A."

Her character in Sarah’s Channel, however, has beauty advice for pretty much any situation. No, seriously. Having been reanimated after an unexplained apocalypse, her newly-undead (and underground) YouTuber Sarah has figured out a new way to contour with rust, mud and ash, and created her own lipstick and cheek tints out of saliva, clay, blood and glow-in-the-dark mushrooms.

In the first episode of her series—now streaming on ABC iview and premiering on ABC COMEDY on 29 June—she even has some off-screen assistants, though we only get to glimpse their gnarled hands occasionally reaching into frame. We see more as the series progresses, but despite Sarah’s best efforts, not all the primer in the world can soften their creature features.

"We shot it in a week, which is quite quick," Claudia tells Student Edge, who’s coming off three seasons of Netflix’s Love, in which she played the irrepressibly cheery Bertie.

"It’s much more relaxing to be doing a big production where you have a lot more time and you might shoot a page and a half of dialogue in one day. With [Sarah’s Channel] we were shooting 11 pages a day."

The idea for Sarah’s Channel came from co-creator Nick Coyle, who wrote and directed each episode, and also appears as one of Sarah’s otherworldly companions in her mysterious dystopia.

"I think he just thought it would be fun and interesting to have a post-apocalyptic/sci-fi genre mash-up with these YouTube beauty blogs, which are so prevalent now," she says.

Turns out beauty blogger Zoella was a key inspiration, having been recommended by Nick.

"It was amazing to not really know much about her and then be like, 'Wow, she’s made so many videos. Hundreds and hundreds of videos and they’re watched by millions of people.'"

Though it’s just a six-episode season, and runs for about 30 minutes in total, Claudia reckons there’s plenty of room for Sarah’s Channel to grow, should the ABC give them a second expanded season.

"I think these episodes are very much specifically written, conceptualised to be thee short things that are faithful to the format we’re parodying… Nick does want to expand it, and the scope gets a lot bigger for the idea as a half-hour."

In the meantime, Sarah’s Channel fits the YouTube form perfectly, with O’Doherty reassuringly gazing down the barrel of the camera as she shares stying hacks in ungodly circumstances.

It’s a knack she picked up by watching plenty of YouTubers. Or, at least, half-watching them.

"If I’m procrastinating, they’re a weird combination of soothing and boring and compelling all at once; you can half-watch them for ages," she says.

"I think it’s because they don’t require your full attention. You can look at your phone while you’re watching one of them. It’s sort of halfway between a television show and nothing at all. I think that is why I like watching them; they require so little from you as an audience member."

But you won’t want to tune out of Sarah’s Channel, which drip feeds increasingly bizarre clues about Sarah’s life and her weirdo friends. And you’ll want to stay tuned into O’Doherty’s career too. Coming up next, she’s developing a show for HBO (though, she adds, that "doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll have a show, but I’m writing one for them").

If you’ve been charmed by her Aussie accent on American shows or podcasts (like Comedy Bang! Bang!, where’s she’s among the rotating cast of oddballs), she promises that won’t change soon.

"I’ve been very lucky that I’ve worked with people who generally want me to roughly be myself; no one’s demanded that I do an American accent," she says.

"They generally understand that you’re funniest when you’re at your most comfortable, and obviously for me, that is when I’m doing my own accent.

"There will not be any American accents coming out of my mouth on the [HBO] show."

Sarah’s Channel is now available to stream on ABC iview. It premieres on ABC COMEDY 29 June.

Header Image: ABC