DIVA sat down with the YouTube sensation behind Chi With A C to find out about her debut series
BY ELLA GAUCI, IMAGE BY DAVID REISS
Have you ever felt like you rely on your parents for too much? BBC Three’s new show Things You Should Have Done, written and starring YouTube sensation Lucia Keskin, might be just right for you.
Following the life of “stay-at-home” daughter Chi (Lucia Keskin), the show tracks the 20-year-old grappling with the death of her parents. After being left with a list of things to do from her late parents, the hilarious, off-beat comedy watches as Chi tries to fend for herself alone.
Lucia Keskin – also known online as Chi With A C – rose to prominent internet stardom after she posted a video documenting her failed GCSE results in 2017. Ever since the comedian has been posting skits and parodies to her 500,000 subscribers on YouTube. She’s starred in the likes of Channel 4’s Big Boys and Dave’s Sneakerhead.
DIVA caught up with the queer sensation ahead of the debut of her first BBC show.
What prompted you to start making videos on the internet?
I had just done an amateur musical theatre course for a year locally but I had just been dressing up as my teachers and not taking it seriously. Especially not the academic side. I wanted to do more silly stuff. I got my GCSE results and they were terrible, so I thought I’d post them online.
Which comedians inspired you?
I love Diane Morgan, Julia Davis, and Sharon Horgan.
You’re about to debut your first TV show Things You Should Have Done, could you tell us a bit about what inspired that series?
I had no experience on how to write a show so I was just writing a script from scratch and thought it was really hard. I had a meeting with Steve [Monger] from RoughCut and he liked it but he told me that we needed to start again. In my head, I didn’t think it was going to go anywhere so we just started thinking of some of the most stupid ideas we could think of! And then the more we thought of it like that, the more stuff we came out with.
My grandad had just died so I wanted to write about grief. We did that in a light-hearted way because laughing was the best thing to get through it.
What was it like when you walked onto the set for the first time?
It was crazy. The day before we started filming I went to the unit base. There were all these trucks and I couldn’t believe that all these people were here because of something I’d written. I honestly couldn’t believe it. It was such an amazing moment. I still can’t believe it.
What do you hope people take from it as a show?
I hope it shows that when you’re 20 you don’t have to have everything put together.
So much of this show is rooted in dark comedy, why do you think humour is such a powerful way of dealing with grief?
I think it’s a form of relief in that sometimes laughing is just the best medicine. Grief is such a different experience for everyone but finding any possible way of relief and light-heartedness is something I think a lot of people can relate to.
Chi is a one-of-a-kind character – what parts of her do you see in yourself?
I definitely see her vulnerability in me and how it feels being in your early twenties and suddenly having to do grown-up things.
What was your favourite scene to film?
Some of my favourite scenes we filmed didn’t actually make it into the show because we laughed too much but I definitely enjoyed filming the scenes with Sarah Kendall in episode five.
Do you have a favourite line from the show?
One of my favourite lines ever is when Dave (Daniel Fearne) comes out of the toilet in episode four and says: “I’ve just pissed on my shoes just in case anyone thinks it’s water.”
To teenagers in the same position as you were, what advice would you give them if they wanted to pursue a career in media?
Don’t worry about finding exactly what you want to post straight away. I didn’t know what I was good at and I just posted everything. I think you have to in order to realise what you like and what works with viewers. Try lots of different things and see what you like.
As a young person in the industry do you get imposter syndrome?
100%. The fact that people run around and get me drinks makes me feel terrible. I can’t wrap my head around it. Imposter syndrome is mental. I don’t know how you get over that.
You can watch Things You Should Have Done on BBC iPlayer now!
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