Elouise Eftos, Australia’s most attractive comedian, is having the last laugh

It was in the middle of COVID lockdowns when Elouise Eftos realised she needed a job title.

Like everyone, the actor and comedian was ”pivoting” to online. Instead of telling jokes onstage to rooms full of people, she was plying her trade one social media post at a time — and getting attention.

“I noticed people were writing articles about me but they didn’t know what to call me,” Eftos explains. She is chatting to PLAY via video call from a hotel room in Melbourne, where she is performing in the local comedy festival. “In lockdown, Instagram became like our CVs. All of a sudden it was like, ‘oh you better put something in your bio’ because I didn’t have actor or comedian in there because I was still quite fresh to comedy, so I just put ‘Australia’s First Attractive Comedian’ in there because I thought it was funny. And that really upset people.”

The tagline has become Eftos’ calling card, part of an overconfident, high-status comedy persona she has created which many people find very funny, although she admits many others simply don’t get the joke. While a lot of stand-up comedy, especially in Australia, is dominated by self-deprecating blokes, Eftos saunters onto comedy stages as the world’s best-looking funniest woman wearing tight dresses and defiantly bra-less: “I can see you going, ‘what the hell is she doing here?’” she tells the audience during a performance at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival. ”’She’s way too hot to do comedy,’” Eftos squeals and dances in delight at her own cleverness. “Thank you very much!”

“It was really funny to me how other comedians would get really uppity,” Eftos says of the response to her Australia’s First Attractive Comedian persona. “In my first show, I have the emails and messages and phone calls I got from other comedians — it really rocked the boat because tall poppy syndrome is just so cooked here.”

That show won Eftos, who is a WA Academy of Performing Arts trained actor and dancer, a best newcomer nomination at the 2025 Edinburgh Comedy Awards. It was named the fourth-best comedy show of 2025 by The Guardian UK and she was invited to perform it at London’s Soho Theatre and New York’s Soho Playhouse, giving Eftos an insight into just how different parts of the world view stridently confident women.

“There’s one part in the show where I say: ‘When I first started stand-up, I was the best at it. I was so good at it.’ It’s such a silly line,” Eftos says. “I think it’s so funny to say: ‘when I first started, all the comedians told me it was really hard. I’m like,’” she adopts a look of shock and surprise, “‘is it?’

“In Australia (the audience) laughs uncomfortably. In the UK, they laugh at the cheekiness of it a bit more. And in the US, they don’t really laugh, because their culture is, like: ‘Good for you! Oh, you’re, you’re the best at it? OK, cool.’” She cackles with laughter. “There’s something about it that’s so endearing to me,” she says of American confidence. “I wish that we were a bit more like them.”

Eftos says behind the laughs Australia’s First Attractive Comedian is making a point: why are people — especially Australians — so uncomfortable around confident women?

“The tall poppy syndrome thing is so funny to me, and I made a whole show about it because I found it fascinating,” Eftos says. “The show is about me in comedy and my experiences in comedy, but it’s also about women in general, in society, having to put ourselves down to please other people, because when you know that you’re attractive, or you know that you’re smart or you know that you’re funny, there’s almost like this lack of control. You can’t be manipulated. You can’t be controlled. You can’t be told you’re this or that and feel ‘less than’ and not take up too much space.

“When you take up space as a woman, it’s so punk rock, it’s like a protest.”

Eftos is touring to her home town of Perth next month with her new show, which is something of a sequel to Australia’s First Attractive Comedian. Called Aphrodite, she says it’s the second in what she sees as a trilogy.

“The first show is about why I called myself Australia’s First Attractive Comedian. It’s about how I believe self-deprecation is dead, and why do we have to put ourselves down as women?” Eftos says. “Whereas Aphrodite is a bit more about the consequences of playing my persona. It’s about how I’m not sure I’ve ever been in love, and I don’t think it’s real. And this fear I have that the more successful and powerful I’ve become, the less likely I’ll be able to find true love, if it exists.”

Eftos says the show explores some big themes — being the child of immigrants (Eftos is from an Australian Greek-Macedonian family), sexual liberation, human connection, ego, modern dating, love and feminism — all to a pumping disco backdrop.

“I set it in this Aphrodite discotheque, it’s like a Studio 54, Mt Olympus fever dream,” she says. “Aphrodite represents sexual liberation and freedom, and this idea of power. She guides me through the show.

“I don’t know if this show is a Greek comedy or a Greek tragedy, that’s what I say at the start. I like the idea of saying to the audience, if this is a tragedy I, as a hero, am supposed to fall because of my hubris, because of my pride. And it’s this thing of: is that what they want? Do you guys want me to fall because I’m proud? I think that’s unfair. Because as women, we grow up with humility our whole lives.”

Eftos says she hopes Aphrodite is an anecdote to what can at times feel like a negative, adversary culture in modern dating.

“I’m hoping I can bring people together on the dance floor. I’m hoping I can question all of these attitudes and this change in modern dating,” Eftos says. “It’s quite an emotional show. It’s a very personal show, but I think it’s right for this moment to let my armour down a little bit and let my guard down — to show that I am human.”

Aphrodite is on April 23 at the Astor Theatre, Mt Lawley, as part of the Perth Comedy Festival.