As a teenager, the Australian actor and comedian Shaun Micallef toyed with the idea of becoming a priest. At his Catholic boys’ school in Adelaide run by the Marist brothers it “was always brought up that you might get a calling. You might hear the word of God and become a priest.”
In year 9, young Shaun felt the first stirring of a vocation. Maybe this was it – maybe he was being called?
“I told my religious master that I was interested in becoming a priest and he said, ‘Give it a couple of years’,” he says. “Then adolescence really hit and the calling just fell away.”
Instead Micallef went to law school, met Leandra, married and had three boys. He started his career in Adelaide as an insurance lawyer and then moved into comedy in 1993, gaining recognition for his skills on shows such as Full Frontal and The Micallef Program and later appearing on such shows as Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation and Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell.
Micallef is back on screens this week exploring big topics around meaning and religion in the second series of his documentary, Shaun Micallef’s Stairway to Heaven.
While he doesn’t regret not becoming a priest, questions about faith still linger. “Back then there was clarity around the calling but you just accept everything you get told,” he tells Guardian Australia.
The first series of his documentary focused on Indian spirituality; this time around, Micallef spends time with Mormons in Salt Lake City, Christian doomsday believers in the US and faith healers in Brazil.
In the first episode, which airs on SBS on Wednesday night, Micallef immerses himself in the Mormon faith, travelling to Utah and Fiji to live, study, work and pray with Mormon families and the young missionaries who leave home en masse once they turn 19.
Mormons can be a soft target for satirists, with their wholesome lifestyle, preppy outfits and fantastic origin story. Instead, Micallef’s tone is gentle and non-judgmental. He is able to elicit interesting insights from his subjects because he seems genuinely curious about their lives and keeps an open mind. A Mormon man who lives with two wives in a self-contained community, for example, who might be treated like an object of derision by a less sensitive host, is instead approached as someone raising a large, loving family.
“These are all nice people. When you get up close with people, it’s difficult to be cynical about their choices,” says Micallef, who cites Michael Palin and Stephen Fry as the main influences on his non-confrontational approach.
“Television treats zealots a little coldly; [it] treats them as nuts. The idea of going into their world and even into their homes is more respectful – and as a result it becomes a lot warmer. The main motivating thing with the docos was just talking to people.”
The Shaun Micallef most of us are used to seeing is clever, satirical and urbane: clean-cut, sharp-suited, with slicked back white hair. The Micallef in Stairway to Heaven is quieter, more thoughtful – even daggy with his beard and glasses.
So is this the real Micallef?
“My wife said this is pretty much me,” he says. “I didn’t really approach the documentary in a self-conscious way. I’m not the point of it – I’m there to help to get the story. I was just a dag. Usually there is a comedy construct but the last thing I wanted to do was a put on the character of a documentary maker. So I was pleased when I watched the show and I appear really nice, although there are a couple of scenes where I get a little bit cross.”
Aside from his early years as a Catholic, Micallef characterises himself as a curious non-believer who’s interested in the big questions of meaning.
“I’ve been a bit distracted living my life rather than examining it but when there’s a near miss or a loved one gets sick, then we ask those questions.”
Is it possible to live without meaning?
“I suppose a lot of us feel like there isn’t any meaning and that is worrying. And a lot of people are too busy trying to survive to find any meaning – they are just trying to find shelter and food.”
But to live without meaning is to “occupy negative space. If there is no meaning there is an existential crisis and so people feel they have to give their life meaning to create some order. There are a million ways to do that – including finding meaning through religion.”
Micallef would love to do another series of Stairway to Heaven, focusing on Islam. “It’s the faith which could do with a few windows,” he says. “It’s in the news so much, yet is still very misunderstood.”
• Shaun Micallef’s Stairway to Heaven starts Wednesday 18 January at 8:30pm on SBS
