Jemaine Clement sets sail on 'Uncle Bertie's' podcast

Jemaine Clement’s kooky characters are usually a sight to see and now a pleasure to hear.

The New Zealand comedian and actor, who’s also one-half of the music group Flight of the Conchords with Bret McKenzie, lends his signature deep voice to the new serialized podcast The Mysterious Secrets of Uncle Bertie's Botanarium, which launches Wednesday on the Howl premium service via iOS, Android and howl.fm. (New subscribers can try Howl using the promo code BERTIE.)

“I love doing radio,” Clement says. “I used to work in radio a lot so it was a good chance to do that again. You can create anything you want to.”

Created by writer/director Duncan Sarkies, musician James Milne (aka Lawrence Arabia) and artist Stephen Templer, the alternate-history fantasy adventure stars Clement as Lord Joseph Banks, a dimwitted 18th-century scientist who sets sail on a nutty mission to find the holy grail of plant life, Heaven’s Clover, and runs into dangerous oceans, cannibals, religious zealots and the occasional cheesemonger along the way. (There was a real Joseph Banks who went on an expedition in the 1700s but it wasn’t nearly as interesting.)

In voicing Joseph, Clement, 42, admits he was aiming for “a mixture of stupidity and confidence, which often go together but not always.” He also plays Bertie Banks, Joseph’s infamous botanist uncle, and for him “I just try to sound like I eat a lot of rich food,” Clement adds. “I just hope that people can tell them apart.”

Clement’s known for an odd bunch of characters that range from the deadpan version of himself on HBO’s Flight of the Conchords to his vampire Vladislav in the horror comedy What We Do in the Shadows. They might not always be the brightest guys but there is some warmth to them — and while Joseph Banks isn’t the smartest dude, part of why he goes on his mission is to redeem his relative.

“Whatever their main trait is, I try and think of what’s in conflict with it, what’s opposite about them,” Clement explains. “Most people are like that. The most arrogant people are often insecure.

“Also, it happens to be what I’m asked to do quite a bit — 75% of the time,” he adds with a laugh.

Before Flight of the Conchords became an HBO series — and after they became a musical troupe when Clement and McKenzie were in college — Conchords was a radio show they did for the BBC.

The joy of doing radio — and creating podcasts like Uncle Bertie’s Botanarium — is “you can create a world and reveal things as needed to the audience,” Clement says. “It’s between television and a book: Part of it’s created for you with the performance, but like a book the audience fills in another part. It’s a more unique experience for each person who hears it because they’re creating some of it in their mind.”

Clement is a big fan of podcasts in general. Some of his favorites include This American Life, British comedian Adam Buxton’s pod, Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour, The Worst Idea of All Time, word-centric The Allusionist, and Song Exploder, where “they take a track by a musician or band and the musician will take it apart and talk about it track by track or how they got the sound,” says the actor.

He’ll catch up on some when Flight of the Conchords begin their summer tour, though music’s much more important when they hit the road.

“Everyone on the tour who’s on the bus with us will pass over their phones and connect them up to the stereo,” Clement says. “That’s our tradition.”