ScreenTalk

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