Kate McLennan

Kate McLennan (born c. 1980) is an Australian comedian, writer and actor. She has performed in Australia and internationally, including at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She is known in Australia for her work on television and web series such as The Katering Show, Get Krack!n, The Mansion, and Deadloch (2023). She produces most of her work with Kate McCartney, which has led to their being dubbed the Kates. McLennan moved to Geelong at the age of ten and a decade later moved to Melbourne.

McLennan performed in her first sketch comedy show at the age of 21 at the 2001 Melbourne Fringe Festival. She rose to fame writing and performing her solo comedy show The Debutante Diaries, which won her the Best Comedy Award and Best Emerging Artist Award at the Melbourne Fringe in 2006. She co-created the web series Bleak with Kate McCartney in 2010, which won the Kit Denton Disfellowship for Courage and Excellence in Performance Writing at the 2011 AWGIE Awards, worth A$30,000.

McLennan and McCartney formed their production company, Lead Balloon TV. They wrote, produced and starred in the cooking-based web series The Katering Show, which screened on their YouTube channel in 2014 and later on ABC TV and ABC iview in 2016. In 2017 they collaborated on the ABC Television comedy Get Krack!n, playing exaggerated versions of themselves as breakfast show hosts, which ran for two seasons. In June 2023, the eight-part crime comedy Deadloch, starring Kate Box, premiered on Amazon Prime Video and became a worldwide hit, reaching the top 10 on Prime in over 165 countries. Its second series, set in the Top End, premiered on 20 March 2026.