For a while, Superwog creator Theo Saidden was balancing the worlds of law and YouTube star.
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Theo and his younger brother, Nathan, are the pair behind the Superwog videos that have been watched more than 70 million times on YouTube and spawned several live stage shows.
While he’s now devoted to Superwog full-time, afew years ago he still had a day job working as a paralegal at a Sydney law firm. To Theo’s surprise, the law firm had no problems with his over-the-top parodies of the way wogs behave.
‘‘It’s a character and it’s written material,’’ Theo says. ‘‘I’m not exactly like the character and I think they realised that there is a separation.
‘‘They were fine about it, they seemed to enjoy the videos. Even my boss did – she came to the shows. They were so supportive and this was a commercial law firm in the city. I was really surprised.’’
The brothers posted their first video to YouTube while Theo was studying law at university.
‘‘Superwog Episode One, it was called,’’ Theo says.
‘‘That was back in the day and it was an introduction into the character of Superwog. It was a very amateur mockumentary. Having seen Summer Heights High and Fat Pizza, I really like the idea of that mockumentary format.
‘‘It was just that we decided to put it up for our mates to enjoy and they started sending it to their friends – they wanted more, so we kept going.
‘‘We’ve always liked playing characters. Even when I was 10 or 11, we had our mum’s video camera and we’d make videos.’’
Breaking through on YouTube has really been a shortcut to fame for the brothers. Rather than slog it out on the touring circuit for years, they’ve managed to create a name for themselves while staying at home and uploading videos.
‘‘We’ve had comedians saying ‘we’ve had to work 10 to 15 years to do the places you’re performing in’. Because of YouTube, we’ve been allowed the opportunity for so many people to have viewed our stuff. We’re very appreciative of that.’’
Theo says the stage show they’re touring now isn’t just made up of a lot of three-minute skits like their videos.
‘‘It’s all brand new material but the characters are similar. It’s something we worked really hard on. It’snot just a three-minute video, it’s one hour of really honed material that we worked very hard on. It is stressful but it’s very rewarding to hear the audience laugh and enjoy the material. That’s nice, that makes it worthwhile.’’