Comedian Johanna Nordström: “It’s been a journey to be able to talk about weight”

The ebullient 26-year-old is speaking to me over Zoom from Stockholm – career success meant a move from her hometown of Västerås, now seven years ago. Nordström is part of a new global boom in female stand-up comedy, which include famed Irish comic-turned-screenwriter Sharon Horgan and Australian Emmy winner Hannah Gadsby, although admittedly neither of those have achieved recognition through or had to navigate the muddy waters of social media engagement. "It’s scary," she endearingly admits at the prospect of her shows being streamed all, "obviously I am so happy to have the Netflix show launching but it’s the first time I will be viewed by a global audience so I am slightly nervous they will understand all the references."

Nordström began making jokes and skits, such as her now well-known sketch, Paradise Hotel, under an anonymous Twitter account which she started back in 2011 whilst still in college. By the time she left she had 30,000 followers.

“I didn’t tell anyone, not even my family, but I come from a small town and someone at my sisters’ boyfriend's football training began to work it out and said to my sister, ‘Is it Johanna?’” Thankfully her family saw the funny side, as did a local Swedish newspaper, Aftonbladet, who commissioned her to write a column and do short, funny memes and videos, she moved from Twitter to Instagram doing one sketch a day for a year, and from there a radio station in Stockholm came her way, where a colleague encouraged her to try stand up. It was 2016, Nordström did three minutes fixed up, open mic and knew then it was the career for her.

“Since I had my Instagram and was doing freelance jobs along the way, incorporating myself acting in skits, dancing, singing, I had challenges moving into stand-up full time as there is a difficult mindset in Sweden, where audiences think you have to go to small stand-up clubs and practise for years before being mainstream,” she says.

Nordström, however, quickly won over audiences as she went full time in 2018, impressed by her sophisticated style and the challenging topics she fearlessly covers, everything from TikTok to weight diversity and women’s prisons. But does she feel a pressure from today’s society to address political issues within her shows? “On stage, I actually feel very free, I don’t feel responsible to talk about global issues, I just feel a responsibility to myself. For instance, weight has been such a painful subject for me – I was bullied the whole time at school for it. It’s been a journey to be able to talk about it, but now on stage, I feel I have taken my own power back as people are laughing with me, not at me.” She stresses: “It is personally very important to me to take the stigma off these subjects.”

Nordström’s ability to bring out good feelings in others is palpable throughout our conversation. Her approach to stand up mostly came through her biggest influence, the famed Swedish comedian, Johan Glans; “I watched him as a kid, he makes all people and ages laugh, he could see things others didn’t and every joke was on point.” Nordström reflects, “I never felt like the smart one in school but through watching him I came to see there were other ways to be smart, from creating to building up the jokes.”

So, what exactly is her writing process? It’s hard to be funny on demand, surely. “I don’t just sit down and write jokes or have a particular place I go to for inspiration. I collect phone notes – whether it be from conversations I hear on the bus, or people I see walking around the city… but for me the work is mostly done on stage, the epiphany comes through the reactions I get from the audience."

And her stories are challenging, investigative, sexual and self-deprecating: with stand up audiences limited during the pandemic, Nordström also launched a podcast, Ursäkta, (meaning ‘sorry’) with actor friend, Edvin Tornblom, has released her new song Bleeding (on Spotify) and took her stand up show, Call the Police to a sold out Avicii Arena. Phew, she’s been busy from the sounds of it.

So what if she hadn’t opted for the comedy life, what might she have pursued instead. Her answer is not exactly what you would expect of someone who spends their days trying to make people laugh for a living; “One day I dream of being a police officer in the hours I am not doing stand up! We have so many problems in the world, I want to help people and work with something that matters.” But then again, if you think about it, comedy does truly matter too. It can be a powerful force in helping us digest and understand the sometimes chaotic and tough world around us. Just done with a little bit more of a smile on our faces – where’s the harm in that?