Your supporting cast is strong. Do any of them really crack you up?
JEMAINE CLEMENT: Kristin Schaal, who plays the fan...Our friend Arj Barker, who plays Dave. He's one of my favorite standups...I really love working with Rhys Darby — he plays our manager. I always laugh doing scenes with him.
He had a line, ''Girlfriends and bands don't mix.'' Meanwhile, your characters are all about the ladies. Is that art imitating life? Have you been doing the whole dating-in-New York thing?
CLEMENT: We've imported our New Zealand girlfriends here. They love it. They're not allowed to work. They don't have work permits. I think that would be great, if I could be in a city and wasn't even allowed to work. It's a good city to do that. And we're lucky — we've got jobs so we can look after them here.
Ever sense, after being so well-received abroad, anything is lost in translation when you perform for American audiences?
CLEMENT: I think there's something gained. Because, you know, we're quite low energy. And that's unusual here. I mean, some American comedians, like Stephen Wright, are deadpan. But usually people are running on stage with their hands up in the air. And we just...sit there. I think people find that funny, that we're not shouting. There's something funny about being on a big stage and not making a big effort to fill it up. We try to entertain people with our little songs and small gestures.
Do you sometimes feel like ambassadors for your country?
BRET MCKENZIE: I think once the show's on TV, yeah, we could become — what do you call them? — mascots for New Zealand. Which is quite concerning, because we portray New Zealanders as total idiots. At the moment, they're proud of our success — we're on the news every few weeks — but they don't know how stupid we're gonna make them look. When you think of famous New Zealanders, there aren't many. There's Crowded House. The guy who sang ''How Bizarre.'' Edmund Hillary. He climbed Mount Everest. Some people have heard of him. Peter Jackson. And if our show's a success, Bret and Jemaine.
Speaking of Peter Jackson and his trilogy, Bret, you flirted with worldwide fame after one tiny role made you a Middle-Earth heartthrob. Did you love or hate that?
MCKENZIE: I was very concerned that I would be forever known as the guy who was the elf. But now it looks like I'll be known as the musical comedy guy. Which is good news for me. Or I'll be known as the New Zealand idiot.
