ScreenTalk

Oscar Kightley is a celebrated writer, actor, director and television presenter. He is a key part of comedy theatre troupe The Naked Samoans, whose members are behind the successes of hit TV animation series, bro’Town and the feature film, Sione’s Wedding. Kightley talks to NZ On Screen about:

• His early days working in the theatre: “we wanted to play Islanders and there weren’t really many plays around where we could do that so we wrote them ourselves, that’s where it all started”.
• Being spotted by Dave Gibson while acting in play Fresh off the Boat and being offered a writing gig on comedy TV show Skitz (where he worked with Jemaine Clement, Dave Fane, and Raybon Kan)
• On meeting Elizabeth Mitchell at the Auckland Star newspaper (where both were working as journalists). Mitchell came up with the idea for bro’Town after watching a Naked Samoans theatre show.
• On the challenge, and unheralded success, of bro’Town: “they say it takes a village to raise a child … it takes a village to make an animation as well! … we had to learn a different way of performing [to the theatre] … you have to put it all in your voice. We will get older, get less hair and gain more weight, but those 14-year old boys will never grow up! … It’s pretty awesome to be able to have fun with your friends, get paid for it, get free lunch and create things that people like!”

This interview is available to embed and distribute on YouTube.

Credits: Direction and Interview – Clare O’Leary, Camera and Editing – Leo Guerchmann

Celebrated actor Jennifer Ward-Lealand began her career as a child and made her screen debut on Paul Maunder-directed Gone Up North for a While aged nine.

In her teens she played rebellious Jan in soap opera, Close to Home, attended drama school, and on venturing into the professional world, started winning roles, including TV series Seekers, with Temuera Morrision. She played unhappy working class wife Raewyn in an award-winning performance in Danny and Raewyn, an episode in the About Face series, directed by Gregor Nicholas.

She met her husband and fellow actor, Michael Hurst, at drama school and they have collaborated on many theatre, film and television projects: from a theatre adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial, to the colonial glamo-drama drama of feature film Desperate Remedies.

Ward-Lealand talks to NZ On Screen about her wide experience: in theatre (including with innovative eighties theatre company, Theatre Corporate), comedy (with Harry Sinclair and Don McGlashan in The Front Lawn and in Aussie sketch comedy series Full Frontal), to feature films including Leon Narbey’s The Footstep Man and Larry Parr’s Fracture.

Ward-Lealand also discusses her applauded theatre shows reprising Marlene Dietrich songs and cabaret classics. For details, including Auckland festival performance dates, visit Ward-Lealand’s website here.

This interview is available to embed and distribute on YouTube.

Credits: Direction and Interview – Clare O’Leary, Camera and Editing – Leo Guerchmann

Kiwi acting icon Sam Neill (The Piano, Jurassic Park) talks to NZ On Screen. Neill recalls the time in his twenties when he apprenticed as a director at the National Film Unit (“about a hundred thousand years ago”) after being inspired to join by his university mate John Laing. He reflects on the unofficial film school it provided:

• there was an attitude of making “one for them – the post office, railways or banana company – and one for yourself”.
• the challenge of getting through personal projects under the auspices of tourism – the NFU was mandated with making promotional films for the tourism dept. Neill, a skiing fan, remembers the challenges they faced shooting retro classic ‘ski ballet’ Flare atop The Southern Alps and Ruapehu.
• on how he’d do things differently with hindsight (“I’d cut them quicker!”)
• “there were one or two I quite liked”; he fondly remembers a doco on innovative NZ architect Ian Athfield: “‘Ath’ was fizzing with ideas … he was one of those outstanding New Zealand individuals.”
• on ditching pretensions to direct as his acting career took off. Neill muses that he hasn’t quite decided (between acting or directing) but remarks that “the acting seems to have taken precedence over the last thirty years or so …”

Neill offers a precis of his career, from debuting as a priest in Barry Barclay’s Ashes, which was seen by Ian Mune and Roger Donaldson, which led to him being cast as the lead in breakout feature Sleeping Dogs, which in turn saw him cast in Aussie director Gillian Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career and … the rest has been “a weird game of dominos …” through to his latest film: starring alongside screen legend Peter O’Toole and Bryan Brown in Toa Fraser-directed Dean Spanley.

Watch Neill’s NFU docos on NZ On Screen:
Flare – A Ski Trip || Architect Athfield || Red Mole on the Road || Surf Sail

This interview is available to embed and distribute on YouTube.

Credits: Direction and Interview – Clare O’Leary, Camera and Editing – Leo Guerchmann