Special is being touted as 'this year's Nanette'

Nate, Natalie Palamides’ sometimes confrontational clown show about consent, is coming to Netflix.

In the special, the American performer adopts the exaggerated alter-ego of an archetypal man she’s variously described as a  ‘douchebag’, ‘a jerk’ and ‘a loveable idiot’

Taking the audience to sometimes uncomfortable places, the show was Palamides’ follow-up to the egg-based Laid, an allegory about parenthood which won her the best newcomer gong at the 2017 Edinburgh Fringe.

Blurb for the live version of Nate – which she developed with clowning guru Doctor Brown – warns punters that it ‘may include: consensual touching of boobies, non-consensual mind-blowing, and Nate’s hard, stretchy cock.’

It is a far cry from Palamides’s role as Buttercup in the Powerpuff Girls series that aired on Cartoon Network in 2016.

Netflix has not yet announced a date for the special to drop, although there is a page on its website ready for the release, which has been made by Amy Poehler’s production company Paper Kite Productions.

In an interview with Palamides, the website Vulture likens Nate to Hannah Gadsby’s breakout show, saying it is ‘ready to be this season’s Nanette-level conversation piece’. 

‘This is not the typical journey for foulmouthed, outer-orbit Weird Clown stuff,’ journalist Helen Shaw wrote. ‘In the normal scheme of things, there’s an intermediate step between the Deep Fringe and the Netflix special, but Nate jumped that gap.

Published: 3 Sep 2020