How Billy T winner Hoani Hotene uses te reo Māori in comedy

When comedian Hoani Hotene walked into his house and saw the iconic yellow towel prize laying on his couch, that's when it hit home that he had bagged the 2025 Billy T award.

"If I don't get any more awards, I'd still have this one and that would still be pretty huge,” Hotene says, days after winning the award that celebrates emerging talent in the New Zealand comedy industry.

“You know, if I don't achieve anything else that had that little tagline in it I still have this and it kind of feels like, man, this is big."

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Hotene (Ngāti Haua) won for his show It's Getting Hotene, So Tell Me All Your Jokes, in which he asks big questions like 'how do you become a better person?' and 'why does everyone pick on gingers?'.

He joins the likes of Kura Forrester, Jermaine Clement and Taika Waititi as past Māori winners of the award, which began in 1997 and honours comedy legend William James Te Wehi Taitoko MBE (Billy T James).

Hotene says the lengthy process, from being nominated to the announcement of winners on the closing night of the NZ International Comedy Festival, means his feelings about winning are combined with relief and exhaustion.

"As it got closer and closer, you are not only doing the show, which is kind of its own sort of exhaustion, but the Billy T nomination it's like a small thing that just stays in your mind pretty much every day.

“I mean it's so good to be able to win it, but also there's this relief of like, oh, it's over and now I can kind of go back to life without worrying about this competition too."

Billy T played on Hotene’s mind, giving him an appreciation for how difficult it must have been in a time when he was one of the few mainstream Māori voices on TV.

"Being a comedian is quite a unique thing that you go through, your own unique experiences doing it, but then to have been a Māori comedian as well, you know the niche just gets smaller.

“Trying to imagine what that must have been like for him, it's actually made me inspired to try and find out more about his life.”

Hotene scatters te reo through his stand-up and as a former kurakaupapa kid he says that feels natural.

One of his first big jokes was about Māori SpongeBob (SpongeBob TarauPorowhā), which came from his experience as a child watching the cartoon dubbed in te reo.

"Seeing a cartoon character speak te reo Māori when you're a kid, it blew our minds … it's not even about trying to draw from the stuff that is about speaking te reo Māori, it's like what are those big impact moments in in your life that you found funny and cool and stuff, and those always lend themselves to comedy."

In one joke that Hotene remains proud of, he recalls growing up as a Māori kid with fair skin and asking his dad: “How Māori are we?” His dad responded: “What part of you isn't Māori? - The outside.”

"What I like about that joke, I think, is that it doesn't try to offer an answer. It just kind of gets people to think about the question, which is sometimes a more important thing to do, but I don't think I can do that very often."

Hotene says he can’t explain what exactly Māori comedy is, only that Māori voices in comedy are diverse.

"It's absurd. It's observational. It's silly. It's serious … it's much more broad I think than it used to be.

“… All the other Māori comedians who are around now, it's very interesting and it's very cool to see how different everyone is. But you know, there's still some element that keeps it together.

"I think it's all those things coming through your own world view, like there's this particular Māori world view through which you do your absurdity, or you do your observation or you do your banter."