Comedian and speaker Fiona Cauley, known for appearances on “The Tonight Show” and “Kill Tony,” shares how disability shaped her path to comedy.
Transcript
I used to be an athlete. I did soccer for six years, volleyball, cross-country, and then when I was 15, my coaches thought I was coming to practice stoned or something. They didn’t understand why my coordination was, like, more off the normal.
So eventually, I got benched because they didn’t think I was taking it seriously. And so I decided I was done with sports and I’d start doing art. You know, I’ll pivot in high school. And so I did.
But my walking was getting worse. I had to have, like, friends carry coffee for me. It was, you know, falling down the stairs at school. And my principal started smelling my breath in the morning for alcohol.
And I was, like, “Well, that’s that’s a little much.” So it’s definitely odd, you know, more than just clumsy. And when I turned 18, my senior year of high school, and I took myself to a couple doctors, I ended up at a neurologist. They thought I either had a tumor on my cerebellum or a genetic disease, and then that’s how I got diagnosed.
I always was doing, like, the, “I’m going to joke about stuff because my family situation wasn’t, you know, white-picket fence.” My parents got divorced when I was 9. Like, it was very piecey and messy.
So as a middle child, it was my job to add a little bit of levity to the situation. So it was more, I guess, kind of a survival mechanism for a while. And now it’s a career, which is also survival. I guess it pays my bills, so.
I got on stage for the first time ever, probably in 2017, but I was tricked into it by my friends. I was, I had been drinking, it was Valentine’s Day. I was very sad. You know, I ended up doing like five minutes just talking crap about my ex-boyfriend. I was like, “all right, that was fun, but I’m never doing it again,” you know?
And I kept randomly doing it throughout the years and then I really committed about five years ago. In my opinion, I think the more like diverse, challenging, whatever it is of a life of someone has, the more they have to say and the more people need to hear it.
I think disability has always been, unfortunately, just like people have been told not to stare at disabled people. Don’t ask. That’s rude. Which kind of makes us, like, subhuman to a lot of people.
And I think comedy kind of gives people permission to look and listen whenever they were taught for so long not to, and it opens up kind of a conversation. And a lot of disabled people have things to say because no one has ever listened. So it’s like a really cool platform where it’s only us talking for an hour.
Advice? Just do it and don’t be scared to fail, you know what I mean? Like, if you do something long enough, at some point, someone’s going to pay attention. That’s how I feel.
