Meet Toronto’s version of Ab Fab: Charlie & Yoni. #LifeAfter30.  Armed with vodka, hairspray & shoulder pads, these ladies from the eighties just might clinch the $500,000 prize from CBC’s ComedyCoup to produce a half-hour special for CBC prime-time.

Since October, comedy teams from across the country have been competing to win Comedy Coup. 55 finalists got voted down to 15, and on Nov. 24, the top 5 will be revealed.

Charlie & Yoni. #Life After 30 is a mockumentary created by (and starring) comedians Jessica Hinkson and Lucie Guest. The show, set in 1989, revolves around  a struggling costume-and-prop shop “and the two train wrecks who run it.” She Does The City caught up with the pair.

SDTC: Who are Charlie and Yoni? 

JH & LG: Charlie and Yoni are two best friends in their thirties – a struggling actress whose dreams are bigger than her talent, and an aimless socialite desperate for a social life. These two have ripped up society’s script about what life should look like by age 30 in exchange for something messier but a hell of a lot more fun! What do we mean by messy? We mean nothing in their lives is quite sorted out yet. Not their careers or their love lives or rather lack thereof their careers and love lives.

What is more fun after 30?

Therapy bragging rights, relationship with your parents, embracing the full-bum panty, more self-awareness and confidence (for better or for worse), sex, electric toothbrushes, sex.

What’s less fun after 30?

Back-bending in yoga, jogging, taxes, hangovers, periods, dating (being single), unfulfilled career goals, ticking biological clock.

If Charlie and Yoni had a night on the town in Toronto, where would they go? What would happen?

A night out of the town starts with Charlie and Yoni drinking rosé listening to Songza’s ‘Vodka Escapades. Ladies be Pre-Gaming,’ in Yoni’s Chocolate Factory Loft. Then it’s off to Soho House (where they’ve previously been kicked out of on numerous occasions) to sneak into a private party to catch a glimpse of that hot guy from Suits.

What do you remember most from 1989?

Paula Abdul’s ‘Straight Up,’ Honey I Shrunk the Kids, NKOTB, neon everything, scrunchies, side ponytails, strawberry milk, fruit roll-ups, jazzercise.

Women in comedy you most admire:

Where do we start? So many but if we HAD to name a handful (in no particular order): Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball, Catherine O’Hara, Elaine Stritch, Amy Sedaris, Jane Curtain, Gilda Radner, Joan Rivers, Amy Shumer, Kristin Wiig, Amy Pohler, Tina Fey, Chelsea Handler, Melissa Macarthy, Rachel Feinstein, Chelsea Peretti, Amy Pohler, Nikki Glaser, Whitney Cummings, Sarah Silverman & Natasha Leggero.

How will you celebrate if you win?

Also in no particular order –  sleep, yoga, sleep, Netflix, sleep, wine, sleep.

 

To help Charlie & Yoni make it to the Top 5, follow them on their project page at comedycoup.cbc.ca.

CBC’s ComedyCoup winner will be announced on December 9th.