Stephanie Tisdell

Steph Tisdell is an Aboriginal Australian comedian, actor, writer, author and presenter. A Yidinji woman, she was born in the early 1990s in Mount Isa and grew up in Brisbane, Queensland. After studying a dual degree in human rights law and journalism at the University of Queensland, she dropped out halfway through, then spent four months backpacking in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Tisdell first performed stand-up at a pub in Dublin after a group of Australians dared her to, and she began a stand-up comedy career in earnest in 2014, winning the Deadly Funny Award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival that same year. She then relocated to Edinburgh, where she lived for two years developing her skills. In 2018 she debuted her first solo show, Identity Steft, which earned a Best Newcomer nomination at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and won Best Emerging Talent at the Adelaide Fringe. Her 2019 show The Pyramid was a co-recipient of the Pinder Prize, and a viral clip from her 2019 Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala set attracted the attention of Rachel Griffiths.

In 2021 Tisdell became an actor, appearing alongside Deborah Mailman and Rachel Griffiths in the ABC political drama Total Control, and she went on to appear in the Prime Video apocalypse comedy Class of '07, the Stan series Bump, and the Netflix rom-com Love Is in the Air. She co-hosted the podcast Ms Represented with journalist Annabel Crabb, hosted the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala in 2022 and co-hosted the NAIDOC Awards in 2024. In 2024 she became a published author with the young adult novel The Skin I'm In.