Comedian, writer and actress Janaye Henry reckons her rather unorthodox secret weapon will power her to Celebrity Treasure Island victory.
“My greatest strength is delusion,” the 27-year-old star enthuses. “I really believe I can do anything. Because of that, I can’t see myself getting scared or overwhelmed by anything presented to me. I know that I’m just going to give it heaps. I’m going to give it everything I’ve got.”
It’s the right attitude to take into a reality TV competition that tests contestants’ physical and mental capabilities. But for every power, there’s a weakness. Unfortunately for Janaye, her CTI camp at Te Whanganui-o-Hei/Cathedral Cove is crawling with them.
“I’d hate to be in a bathtub full of bugs or anything like that,” she grimaces when asked about her phobias. “I hate Fear Factor-style stuff. That’s really not for me. I’m not great at swimming either, but I’m not scared of it. Although I should be.”
Despite being nominated for a Billy T Award, appearing regularly on comedy panel shows, and scoring roles in series like Far North and Time Bandits, Janaye says she doesn’t consider herself famous.
“I don’t really feel like a celebrity at all,” she laughs. “It feels like I’ve been grabbed from my normal life and put on this show. Honestly, a lot of people in the crew keep forgetting my name, so I’m definitely feeling very grounded.”
Starring on CTI is certainly not where she expected her career to lead her. After growing up in Tauranga, Janaye moved to Wellington to study law.
“I realised I didn’t like it at all,” she admits. “I didn’t want to ever have to carry a briefcase or wear a suit, so I started doing theatre and improv.”
It was at an improv class that someone suggested Janaye pivot to stand-up comedy because she wasn’t “really acting – I was just being myself”.
She decided to give it a whirl and signed up for her first gig, the prestigious Royal Comedy Quest, not realising it was a competition. It was a trial by fire, but Janaye was a natural and made it all the way through to the Wellington finals.
“I’d never done comedy outside of that,” she says. “I found it easy at the beginning, so I just kept on doing it.”
Moving to the capital also changed Janaye’s life in another important way.
“It’s so cliché, but Wellington made me a lesbian,” she says, before joking, “Don’t send your kids there!
“In Tauranga, I never saw queerness represented in a way that felt true to me. I only saw Ellen DeGeneres, but that’s just not who I am. Then when I moved to Wellington, I saw feminine lesbians for the first time and I was like, ‘That could be, and probably is, me.’”
Janaye’s sexuality is a big part of her comedy act, as is her size. She credits her body positivity to her father.
“My parents were awesome growing up and fatness was always talked about in a neutral way, which I thought was the norm,” she says. “I remember coming home from school in Year 10 and saying to Dad, ‘This boy called me fat.’ Dad was like, ‘Yeah, well, you are fat and that’s fine.’ His response was so neutral that it just took all the sting out of the word.”
Now Janaye has set her sights on what she thinks could be the final frontier when it comes to societal taboos – “hair positivity”!
“I do have a moustache,” she shares. “I always have. Once, I got rid of it during lockdown, just to see what it looked like, but I felt naked. It felt so different.”
Janaye says it’s a natural part of her body and doesn’t cause her sleepless nights. She doesn’t worry about it because “there are so many other things that I could be doing with my time. It makes me feel powerful, like Frida Kahlo”!
She hopes that power will help her take out CTI’s $100,000 prize money for her chosen charity, The Aunties, an organisation that provides support for victims who have escaped domestic abuse.
“I’m literally obsessed with my charity,” she smiles. “I donate to them monthly, but I’m an artist and I don’t make that much money, so my donations are not sizeable. I would love to be able to give them a really impressive chunk of money.”
Celebrity Treasure Island screens 7.30pm Monday to Wednesday on TVNZ 2 and streams on TVNZ+.
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