What you never knew about Kath & Kim

Here's what you never knew about Kath & Kim. Photo / Supplied

"Look at moiye. Look at moiye, ploise, Kim."

Kath & Kim is the Aussie comedy that's gifted the world with some truly iconic lines, reports News.com.au.

Written by and starring Gina Riley and Jane Turner, Kath & Kim spawned four series, a 2005 telemovie called Da Kath & Kim Code and the 2012 movie, Kath & Kimderella.

The show last aired on TV in 2007 but it's recently won a whole new legion of fans after being added to Netflix.

To celebrate the foxy ladies from Fountain Gate, we've tracked down some little known facts about Kath & Kim.

Show was cancelled before it began

The characters of Kath, Kim and Sharon first appeared on the sketch comedy show Big Girl's Blouse.

"The characters had had a very good response from the few people that saw them," Turner told The Herald Sun.

They decided there was enough material for a TV show based on the characters' lives and the ABC agreed. But then, just three days before production was due to begin, the ABC pulled the pin.

"We had this phone call saying they had decided not to go ahead with Kath & Kim and we were like, 'What? … Anyway, Gina, what were we saying about this script?' We just kept going. We were too far down the track and had such faith in it," Turner said.

Thankfully, the ABC changed its mind again and decided to back the show.

Magda's shaky start with co-stars

Magda Szubanski played Sharon Strzelecki, Kim's "second best friend". But in real life, the comedian wasn't exactly friendly with Turner and Riley when they first met.

"I hated her on sight," Szubanski said about Riley in 2015. "The dislike was mutual. I thought she was a crass show-off and she thought I was a stuck-up snob. We were both right.

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"When we finally overcame our pride and prejudice a year later when I moved in with a mutual friend, Gina and I completely fell in love over the phone when she would ring to speak to him and get stuck talking to me."

Szubanski first met Turner on The D-Generation and said she initially felt threatened by her.

"Jane and I can be a little oil and water. We both love one another's work but we don't always mesh well," Szubanski said. "Jane has a completely different rhythm from me as if one of us is doing a foxtrot, while the other is trying to samba. Luckily, we are deeply fond of each other and are capable of making each other cry with laughter."

Getting the giggles

As Glenn Robbins (who plays Kel) revealed to news.com.au, filming an episode of Kath & Kim could take a long time because of Turner and Riley's propensity to get the giggles on the set.

"They're by far the worst," Robbins said about the pair.

"The sad part about that is, I usually don't get what they're laughing at. It's usually some sort of domestic reference to a line of underpants or a product that's available online. So Peter Rowsthorn (who plays Brett Craig) and I end up going the other way and giving each other little weird looks going, 'I don't know what the f**k they're laughing at?' But they'll be on the floor crying."

Szubanski added that once she started laughing during a scene, she often found it hard to stop.

"It can be 15 minutes before I recover but if I try and stop, it just makes it worse so I just have to laugh it out," she told news.com.au.

"Usually, the producers are breathing down your neck so you can't walk away because you don't have time, but you've just got to laugh it out. I've cost producers quite a bit of money over the years."

Dressing Kath and Kim

Kath and Kim's "foxy" outfits were one of the highlights of the show.

The task of dressing the ladies from Fountain Gate fell to costume designer Kitty Stuckey, who opened up in 2003 about sourcing the characters' clothes.

"My idea, especially with Kim, is that I like to dress her in what is available in the malls at the moment," Stuckey told the Sydney Morning Herald.

"So I shop in the 'cheap and cheerful' women's type shops and get the worst of that end of the fashion.

"Basically, it's like any girl who's reading the women's magazines and seeing what Kylie Minogue is wearing and aiming for that, but not quite making it, as many aren't — there's a million Kims walking around shopping malls!"

As for Kath, her outfits were "definitely second hand," Stuckey said. "I go to Savers stores for them … She likes her jewellery to match her shoes and thinks of dressing as 'teaming with a theme'."

Where the magic happened

Turner and Riley wrote all the episodes of Kath & Kim together at Turner's house.

"We tried to have an office once, but we just couldn't do it," Riley told The Herald Sun. "There was no food on tap; we have to be in domestic surrounds, I think."

The pair often got distracted during their writing sessions, with Turner telling The Herald Sun, "I'll go, 'Do you want a coffee?' Or 'What about lunch? It's 10.30am. Let's have lunch'."

"Yes, I think our record for lunch once was 10am," Riley laughed.

"We have deleted whole episodes by mistake, too. We've done that twice. We weren't able to get them back, so we had to rewrite them straightaway so we wouldn't forget. It always happens just before school pick-up as well."

Theme song

The theme song for Kath & Kim is The Joker from a musical called The Roar of the Greasepaint — The Smell of the Crowd.

And the version you hear on the show is performed by one of the stars, Gina Riley.

"I had classical training for years, but I am no classical singer," Riley told The Australian about her impressive voice. "It was good grounding in understanding your voice and breathing. I've done a few musicals; I love to have a bit of a sing."

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