ScreenTalk

Tandi Wright spent some of her childhood in the dressing room at Avalon TV Studios – waiting for her actor parents to finish work on Close to Home. But rather than encouraging her to follow suit, Wright insists they were always “realistic about how nearly impossible it is to make a career out of acting”. She agrees – but seems to have pulled off the “impossible” anyway. Wright has been acting for television since the age of six, playing lead roles in some of New Zealand’s top productions including Shortland Street, Willy Nilly, Being Eve, Serial Killers, Outrageous Fortune, This Is Not My Life and Nothing Trivial. Her film credits include Not Only But Always, Black Sheep, and Out of the Blue.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Wright reveals:

• How she learnt to cope with the disappointment of “hitting the cutting room floor” from a very early age
• How she felt about her time at Shortland Street and her reasons for leaving the soap
• Her experiences on the set of Street Legal
• The joys of working with Mark Hadlow and Sean Duffy on Willy Nilly
• An insight into the characterisations on TV series Serial Killers
• What it was like to join the cast of Outrageous Fortune in series six
• Her feelings on playing Julie Ann Bryson and the grueling subject matter in the feature film Out of the Blue, based on the Aramoana shootings
• Her impressions of the production and her character in TV series This Is Not My Life
• The benefits of an ensemble cast in Nothing Trivial

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

Geoff Murphy is the trumpet-player who got New Zealand yelling in the movie aisles. After boning up on filmmaking on the Blerta bus, Murphy turned out a triple punch of local classics: 1981 blockbuster Goodbye Pork Pie, historical epic Utu and last man on earth tale The Quiet Earth.

The director’s rollercoaster screen ride has included everyone from Wild Man Bruno Lawrence to Mickey Rourke; from varsity safe-crackers to hobbits, with time for nail-biting hijinks both in Wellington railyards, and atop the LA Metro train.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Murphy talks about:

• The days when there were so many film reviewers in New Zealand you could easily “make a national idiot of yourself”
• Fighting to handle local distribution (and publicity) for Goodbye Pork Pie – and realising the movie wasn’t the work of genius some thought
• How the famous line “We’re taking this bloody car to Invercargill” had audiences erupting in cinemas
• Making movies on the Blerta bus, and how working without dialogue proved helpful in his latter career
• Casting union delegate Zac Wallace to star as Te Wheke in Land Wars epic Utu, and Murphy’s happiness at the high turnout of Māori viewers
• Comical tales of filming Utu on location, with 1000 extras
• How sci fi cult legend The Quiet Earth was forced into production, thanks to its investors
• The challenge of making a movie where for extended scenes only one character (Bruno Lawrence) is on-screen
• Working in Hollywood, and the perils of taking the honest approach

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

Actor, acting teacher, and artist Grant Tilly has played cow cockies, assassins, missionaries, and German villains in funny hats. And that’s not even counting his long-running stage career, which has included a run of classic Kiwi plays, one of which became acclaimed movie Middle Age Spread.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Tilly talks about:

• how people sometimes still recognise him from 60s TV show Joe’s World, and the topics he was told never to mention on early series In View of the Circumstances
• acting in 70s mega production The Governor, and the challenges of competing on screen against his bad haircut
• being allowed to go solo by director John Reid while making two farmers and a dead Dad comedy Carry Me Back, for a memorable scene in which his character finally tells his father what he really thinks of him
• squaring off against Men in Black star Tommy Lee Jones for a fight scene in movie epic Savage Islands
• how his career as an actor, stage designer, and co-founder of Wellington’s Circa Theatre has intersected with the works of writer Roger Hall – including his acclaimed performance as a philandering headmaster in Middle Age Spread
• playing a repressed accountant who becomes obsessively interested in a masseuse in movie Skin Deep
• the challenges of portraying real life people on screen
• the similarities between war and movie-making

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

Miranda Harcourt got her screen break playing the bitchy Gemma on iconic 80s soap Gloss. Since then the versatile Harcourt has hardly taken a break – directing, teaching, plus acting in prisons, tele-movie Clare, and feature film For Good, among many other titles.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Miranda Harcourt talks about:

• the joys of playing Gemma on Gloss, as the character journeyed from being a “really nice girl from Hamilton” to a “bitch from hell”
• the over-the-top reactions of some Gloss viewers when they met Harcourt in person
• reinvention in London
• interviewing prisoners about violent crime and murder for Verbatim. Harcourt performed the play in prisons across New Zealand, as seen in Shirley Horrocks documentary Act of Murder
• the genesis of award-winning feature film For Good – directed by Harcourt’s husband Stuart McKenzie – the tale of a woman’s fascination with a teenager’s abduction and murder
• playing Phillida Bunkle in tele-movie Clare, based on the disastrous gynaecological study at Auckland National Women’s Hospital
• her time as a “terrible” student at New Zealand Drama School, and her return to spend seven years at the school as head of acting
• embracing variety in her career, including her recent work as acting coach on Yvonne Mackay’s series Kaitangata Twitch

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

Credits: Direction and Interview – Ian Pryor.  Camera and Editing – Alex Backhouse

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