Screentalk

Petra Bagust - presenter extraordinaire

Posted on 15 March 2010

Petra Bagust grew up in Christchurch, studied fine arts at Canterbury University and waited tables before being lured into regional TV station Cry TV. And so began a screen career during which she has hosted many of NZ’s most popular shows, including madcap youth series Ice TV from 1996, and its sequel Ice As, travel show Travel.co.nz, real estate series Hot Property in 2003, the feel-good Dreams Come True, game show Snatch our Booty with Oscar Kightley and Nathan Rarere in 2005, Sing Like a Superstar (2005), and The Perfect Age (2006). Fronting big live shows like Christmas In The Park and Fight for Life (2001, 2004), Bagust became a regular live anchor for TV3. More recently Bagust fronted daily news satire show @Seven, as well as the factual series What’s Really In Our Food, for which she was nominated for a 2009 Qantas Best Presenter award. In this ScreenTalk interview, Bagust talks about:

• Considering a TV career over a career as a painter
• Her first experiences at regional station Cry TV
• How she landed her initial audition for Ice TV, and what it was like working on the show
• One of the golden rules of doing travel shows
• Hosting big live shows like Christmas in the Park
• Making What’s Really In Our Food, and the follow up show to come
• Her love of NZ design

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

• Tweet this
• Facebook