Australian Story: Nov 27

Monday’s Australian Story profiles comedian Annie Louey who came to discover sisters she never knew she had.

After her father’s death, comedian Annie Louey discovered a bombshell that made her question everything about her family. Cleaning out her parents’ home, she uncovered an innocuous looking briefcase. Inside were hundreds of black and white photographs, passports, letters, and library cards belonging to two girls who looked a lot like her and her sister, Anna. It didn’t take long for them to realise their father had a secret family he never told them about.

“The mystery of who my dad is only started unravelling after he died. The secrets were there all along in plain sight,” Louey tells Australian Story.

As Annie follows the threads of the past, she begins to grieve the sisters she missed knowing.

“In Chinese culture traditionally, it’s quite taboo to go digging up the past. I’ve opened up a can of worms and I can’t put them back,” she says.

As a teenager she’d come to understand the fragility of life after an accident left her with severe burns to her face and neck.

Spurred to live an authentic life she launched herself into a career of stand-up comedy while she was still wearing bandages on her face. Now she uses the stage to share family secrets and uncomfortable truths.

“I think I was inspired by his taking secrets to the grave that I want my life to be the opposite. I’m like an open book. Like, what do you want to know?” Louey says.

8pm Monday on ABC.