ScreenTalk

Alison Bruce is an award-winning actress who has played a diverse range of film and TV characters. She has starred in New Zealand’s long-running soap Shortland Street and some of our biggest TV dramas such as Shark in the Park, Mercy Peak and the kidult comedy Being Eve. Her film career includes roles in The World’s Fastest Indian, An Angel At My Table, and Reckless Behaviour. She last graced our television screens playing Agnetha in The Almighty Johnsons.

In this ScreenTalk, Bruce talks about:

• Creating chaos for the production company of Shark in the Park
• How appearing in one episode of Xena made her a sex symbol
• Working with a young and ‘geeky’ Ryan Gosling on Young Hercules
• How the lead role in Majik and Rose changed her career
• Fighting over a toilet seat with Steve Lovatt in Being Eve
• Working her real pregnancy into the storylines of Mercy Peak
• Being too nervous to speak on the set of The World’s Fastest Indian
• Feeling anxious about the scripts on The Almighty Johnsons
• Always feeling she’ll be caught out as a ‘fraud’ as an actress

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence.

Nick Ward is a prolific and award-winning screenwriter. He attracted notice with the hit feature film Stickmen, a Wellington lads-on-the-make tale that potted him the best script gong in the 2001 New Zealand Film and TV Awards. He originated, and then co-wrote, popular recycling relationship comedy Second-Hand Wedding (2008); and wrote the original script for Love Birds (2011). His TV screenwriting credits include Outrageous Fortune, Burying Brian, Nothing Trivial and The Cult. Ward has also worked in front of the camera, co-presenting The Big Art Trip with Douglas Lloyd Jenkins.

In this ScreenTalk, Ward talks about:

• How he plagiarised his own life in writing Stickmen
• Creating a fake bar for the film that everyone seemed to know
• Acting a ‘hurtful’ sex scene with Luanne Gordon
• Driving Douglas Lloyd Jenkins up the wall in The Big Art Trip
• Basing the script of Second-Hand Wedding on his own family
• How all of the second-hand props in the movie belonged to his Mum
• Resisting pressure to change the film
• Bringing his obsession for pub quizzes into the scripts of Nothing Trivial
• Realising he is still learning the craft after 10 years writing

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence.

Selwyn Toogood is still remembered as Mr It’s in the Bag, despite a broadcasting career which ran more than 50 years. Karyn Hay is known as Miss Radio with Pictures, despite being reborn as a DJ and award-winning novelist. And Russell Smith will be forever associated with milk-mad vampire Count Homogenized, despite a long career acting on stage and screen.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Smith talks about his career inside and outside of the count’s cape, including:

• How audiences greeted Count Homogenized with admiration, terror and profanities
• Mad Count encounters with cows, live on Telethon
• Count Homogenized’s birth at the hands of children’s TV producer Kim Gabara, on late 70s show A Haunting We Will Go
• Hanging upside down in a telephone box as the star of It is I Count Homogenized
• The unvarnished, unpasteurised truth over rumours the NZ Milk Board were the power behind the Homogenized throne
• Smith’s time on pioneering comedy series A Week of It
• Voicing truck-driving hippie Tussock on puppet tale Woolly Valley
• His delight at playing “arsehole cop” Bernie Gregory on police show Shark in the Park
• Directing children’s shows Mel’s Amazing Movies and The Nosey Parkers

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence.

Veteran actor Bruce Allpress has had a long career in theatre, film and television. His television credits include Close to Home, Hanlon, Shark in the Park, Duggan, The Cult, and the lead role in the series Jocko. His many film appearances include The Piano, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and, most recently, Rest for the Wicked.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Allpress talks about:

• Getting a dressing down from a producer on the set of Close to Home
• How being ‘laconic’ at his audition got him the lead role in Jocko
• Having to learn how to use a bullwhip in four days for the show
• How the character of Jocko was a quintessential New Zealand character
• What happened when his mate Ian Mune lost control of a horse on set
• Getting the role of Sparky on Mortimer’s Patch by removing his teeth
• Almost wrecking a camera while riding a quad bike on Duggan
• Finding The Piano an odd film to be in
• Not really understanding his role in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
• Acting with his ‘over 60s mates’ in the film Rest for the Wicked
• How the best has yet to come in his career

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence.