Louis Hanson wants you to know he really is a Good Boy
The goodest, even
By 
LOUIS HANSON is having a good day. He just got two parking fines within blocks of each other, but other than that he is having a good day.
“Not a great start,” Hanson says. “In spite of that though, I’m choosing to vibe out, so today is still a good day.”
To do our interview, the Melbourne-based comedian is settled in the privacy of his car. Hopefully parked somewhere where the rangers won’t spot him.
I tell him, I have a theory about cars being queer safe spaces. Historically, they’ve often been the (literal) vehicle for them to come out to friends or family.
“That’s perfect. I always feel like the car is perfect [for these conversations] because you’re driving, you’re like looking ahead and you can avoid eye contact at all costs as you drop some truth bombs.”
But still, it’s been a good day. For a good boy. Literally, given this is the title of his new stand-up show, now touring Australia. Good Boy! also marks Hanson’s first full solo comedy tour after years plugged into the digital culture and building an audience through his bits and sketches on Instagram.
If you’re unfamiliar with Hanson’s oeuvre, let me catch you up to speed. We could go back to the days of (lots of) wall-twerking, the adventures with the bussy pond™, his defence of the introverted and the longing to sit on the couch all weekend and do nothing at all. And the time he attempted to flirt with the official Instagram account for Australia. I even credit Hanson with teaching my very heterosexual brother the term “bussy”.
Was he always a natural performer?
“I feel like I was kind of a walking contradiction when I was a kid,” he tells Esquire. “I was the type of kid where, when mum and dad were at home and sitting in the living room, I would walk in and I would put on Rage or I would start playing the CD. Then I would start dancing in the middle of the rug, in the middle of the living room. But I would tell mum and dad to look away.”
“Seriously, it would be 30 minutes of me shaking my booty to something like ‘The Ketchup Song’ by Las Ketchup, but knowing that mum and dad were in very close proximity to me but telling them look away. Which is just kind of a fascinating contradicting way to perform.”
This knack for drawing out the humour in moments of surreal tension does fit the online persona that he has cultivated, with Instagram providing the perfect vehicle for him to reenact this scene for an audience that isn’t there, at least physically.
That’s all about to change, obviously, with Good Boy!
Hanson’s work often plays with the expectations people form when they first encounter him online. The polished host, the fast talking cultural commentator, the guy making videos and PowerPoint comedy sketches for the internet. The stage version is recognisably the same person, but also something else entirely.
“Over the past few years with the rise of TikTok and comedy in the digital age,” Hanson says, “it’s kind of just shown that comedy in general can exist in so many facets. Be it the traditional stand up show or a multimedia comedy show or a musical comedy show.”
For Hanson, the digital instincts that shaped his career are not something he leaves behind when he steps on stage. They are built into the show itself.
“There’s songs, videos, there’s a real multimedia component to the show that I’m bringing,” he explains. “So it’s so important for me to get into a space and start understanding the physicality for the show. I definitely have to jump and move around a lot.”
That blend of formats feels natural for someone whose career has unfolded in a multi-platform way. Hanson first built a following through online media and writing, contributing to publications including The New York Times, The Guardian and The Sydney Morning Herald, while also becoming a familiar presence in Australian pop culture through podcasts, social media and presenting work.
He co-hosted the podcast Everybody Has a Secret, fronted Pedestrian’s daily news podcast and later appeared on television as a presenter for events including the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras broadcast and the Australian Open’s Bluezone coverage.
Yet stand up was always hovering nearby.
In 2023 he appeared at the Melbourne and Sydney Comedy Festivals alongside Lucinda Price in the show Besties. It sold out and confirmed something Hanson had suspected for a while. The next step would be a show entirely his own. Writing it required a more dramatic change of scenery.
“I remember one weekend I was in the early stages of getting ghosted by a guy that I was seeing and I was so heartbroken,” Hanson says. “I was like, I need to go to the top of a mountain somewhere. I need to whisk myself away and start typing out of emotion and pain.”
The result was a marathon writing session fuelled by wine and mild existential reflection. “I just drank a few bottles of Chardonnay over a 72 hour period and wrote the entire show,” he says. “I sat my laptop down and I looked at myself in the mirror and I was like, you’ve written the show.”
That process of isolation is familiar to Hanson. He describes it as part tortured poet fantasy, part practical necessity.
“I always need to whisk myself away and feel disconnected from the world,” he says. “Whether it’s writing an article or writing a script, I always have to have this intense period of isolation.”
If the writing is solitary, the finished show is anything but. Hanson sees the stage as a shared space where audiences arrive expecting something slightly unpredictable.
“You can truly throw the rules out the window,” he says. “You look at the rule book and then you throw it in the bin and say to yourself, what story do I want to share?”
Still, for someone whose comedy often draws on personal material, there are lines he tries not to cross. The internet may reward oversharing, but Hanson is cautious about how much of his private life becomes content.
“It’s a fine balance of wanting to let the audience in but also maintaining those boundaries,” he says. “For the past couple of years I’ve set a personal boundary about not speaking too much about family or my immediate personal life.”
But that doesn’t mean all anecdotes are off the table.
“I kind of reserve the more honest conversations for spaces [like the show],” he says. “If someone buys a ticket and we’re all in the theatre together, it feels like a safe space to talk about those things.”
Which brings him back to the show itself. Hanson is determined that audiences get the full version.
“I’m putting my entire bussy into this show,” he says, laughing. “Every funny thought that I have is in the show.”
Tickets for Good Boy! are on sale now
Related:
How Kip Williams is transforming theatre for the digital generation
