If you asked Laura Daniel and Joseph Moore how they met, the genuine reply would be, “It’s a funny story.” The two halves of New Zealand comedy duo Two Hearts met, worked together, and fell in love all thanks to comedy.
“I went to acting school,” Daniel begins the story. “Then I founded an improv group with Joseph and Rose [Matafeo] called Snort. I wanted to start doing stand-up to get better at improv, and Joseph had already been doing it. We both ended up working on the same writing team for a TV show in New Zealand, and were always gravitating towards one another. Then we were also writers on 'Funny Girls', a show starring myself and Rose.”
“Joseph and I would always team up. We wouldn’t call ourselves professional musicians at all, but we wrote original songs, it was low-key a side passion. We found a real love for it, and thought ‘what would this be like if we did it live?’ The live act started from there and we tried it out and were like, ‘this is our favourite thing we've done’. So we started Two Hearts.”
Working with your spouse can often bomb, but since Daniel and Moore had the unique situation of being workmates first, the only adjustment was falling into the relationship.
“We weren't together when we started Two Hearts, we were just collaborators. We spent so many all nighters working together that all of a sudden it was like, ‘Oh!’ I feel very lucky in the sense that we were strong work partners and collaborators before we tried to date each other. People always ask, ‘how do you work with your spouse? I’d get so pissed off’. It's always been that way for us.”
Their love story was explored in 2024’s show ‘Til Death Do Us Hearts’, proving successful across comedy festivals worldwide. 2025 sees the pair offer ‘Don’t Stop Throbbing’, a pop-culture musical show inspired by a trip down a questionable London laneway. It also reflects the duo’s commentary on the state of the world, in between hilarious original songs.
“It’s essentially listening to a fresh EP of Two Hearts. Last year's show was about our wedding and the personal side of us. This year, the songs are deeply silly, fun, but also political as well. Stand-ups reflect on what’s happening in the world. Most of the songs are pop, but we’ve also always wanted to do a proper musical, so there’s a little thru-line in there at points.”
“We'll find a joke or story that we want to tell and then we'll think about what's happening in music at the moment. So there's Sabrina Carpenter, Doechii and Kendrick. Sometimes, the music can inform the joke as well. That's what you can expect to see in our show, a lot of references.”
A seasoned writer across many formats, Daniel offers her tips for constructing thru-lines in comedy shows.
“We try to live by the rule of just make it funny, go with whatever makes you laugh. It’s always easier to write to a theme and then go on tangents from that. I often write the end and come back to the start. So think, where do you wanna leave people by the end? And then work your way backwards.”
As good as a comic can be, sometimes a joke that tore down the roof last week, doesn’t land for this week’s crowd. Daniel suggests why that can be, and how Two Hearts handles it.
“There's no exact science. It depends what type of line-up you're doing, sometimes it's completely out of your control. Because we have the element of music, at the end no matter what, people always have to clap. It's a cheat code,” she laughs.
A constantly evolving landscape, Daniel reflects on the future of comedy, and what she sees looking out from the stage.
“With social media at the moment, there's so much crowd work, because people don't want to burn their material online. I've noticed in the last couple of years, there's been a change with audiences that come through and how they think they can act in a comedy show.”
“People are way more interactive and heckling, when it's like, oh no, just because you saw a crowd work clip online doesn't mean that's what the whole show is gonna be like. People have put heaps of effort into their shows. It's a bit tricky. It's more of a challenge for comedians to hold the room and take them with them. They’ve spent ages planning, and they’ve planned really cool stuff, so audiences should go with them.”
“On the other side, I recently did a gig with an all-female line-up and it was such a buzz. It was sold out. When I first started comedy, it was never like that. Comedy is really accessible nowadays, there’s something for everyone. So there's really positive things happening as well.”
Two Hearts celebrate not only the union of two hilarious and eccentric minds, but also the union of the original cool couple – music and comedy.
Two Hearts play Factory Theatre (Sydney Comedy Festival) 25-27 April, and Brisbane Powerhouse (Brisbane Comedy Festival) 3-4 May.
