Kate McCartney

Kate McCartney is an Australian comedian, writer, actor and illustrator. She is a frequent collaborator with Kate McLennan, which has led to their being dubbed the Kates.

Early and personal life
She was born in Perth, moved to Sydney but grew up in Camberwell, Victoria. She later moved to the Melbourne suburb Preston and had a daughter, Millie, in early 2015. In 2022 she became engaged to Sally Rugg.

Career
McCartney worked as a comedian and also worked in animation. Her television writing credits have included Big Bite, Hamish & Andy, Adam Hills Tonight and Spicks and Specks.

She met Kate McLennan in 2011 after McLennan voiced a character in an animation for her. Due to the number of subsequent collaborations with McLennan, the pair have been dubbed the Kates in the media.

McCartney co-created the web series Bleak with McLennan in 2010, about being a single 30-something, which won the Kit Denton Disfellowship for Courage and Excellence in Performance Writing at the 2011 AWGIE Awards, worth A$30,000.

With McLennan, she created a cooking-based web series called The Katering Show which screened initially on their YouTube channel in 2014. A second season of The Katering Show was screened on the ABC TV and then on ABC iview in 2016.

In 2017, McCartney collaborated with McLennan for ABC Television to create the comedy Get Krack!n, in which they played breakfast show television presenters.

In 2021, they created Slushy, a workplace comedy set in the Australian Antarctic research base, that was available as a podcast on Audible.

McCartney and McLennan wrote the 2023 Amazon Prime Video series Deadloch starring Kate Box, which garnered positive reviews, and won McCartney a Best Television Script Writing Award and Box a Best Actress Award, at the AACTA Awards in February 2024.