Do we like Chris Lilley?
Our score: 3 out of 10. A long run of characters criticised as racial caricature and little sign of change, set against a clean record on everything else and thin evidence of good works.
Chris Lilley is a Sydney comedian who started in stand-up and broke through on the Seven Network's Big Bite in 2003, where he introduced Mr G, a melodramatic drama teacher. He then wrote and played nearly every role in a run of ABC mockumentaries, with Summer Heights High (2007) the big one. Ja'mie, Mr G and Jonah all came from that world, and plenty of people still quote it.
The trouble is Jonah, a Tongan schoolboy played by Lilley in brownface, and S.Mouse, a Black rapper in Angry Boys. Critics have complained for years that his characters lean on racial stereotypes, and in June 2020 Netflix pulled four of his older series in Australia and New Zealand. Netflix did not publicly say why, but the removals were widely tied to the brownface and blackface criticism.
In July 2017 a clip of S.Mouse in blackface was reposted to Lilley's Instagram hours after hundreds protested over the death of Indigenous teenager Elijah Doughty. It was deleted. Lilley said it was a fan remix, not connected to news stories, and apologised for any hurt caused by the misinterpretation. Note that this is a statement about how the post was read, not about the character.
When Netflix commissioned Lilley in 2018, it told Pedestrian there were no plans for him to play characters of different races in the project. Then the 2019 Lunatics trailer arrived, and PinkNews reported critics accusing him of blackface for Jana, a lesbian pet psychic from South Africa. That one is a critics' accusation, not a ruling, but it fed the same pattern.
Harm check: we found no campaigning against LGBTQ+ or trans people, nothing on vaccines, climate or elections, and no run of dodgy collaborators. The case against him is his own work: the characters themselves. Asked about criticism of that work in an earlier interview, he said it was “a bit stupid that you would shut yourself off” from playing them. That leaves him a close call rather than a clear pass.
Nothing new on him lately that we could find beyond April 2025, when he announced Mr G was back. The character returned as a podcast, with no TV network attached, and no ABC deal was reported. Star Observer noted how many of his characters have been criticised as stereotypes of race, sexuality, disability and gender.