44 MAY 2017
imagine having an Asian onscreen in
1994! I wasn’t playing someone who
couldn’t speak English, I was just
playing a person, a surgeon. You got
lots of fan mail in those days and
young girls were writing in and
saying, ‘It is nice to see someone like
me.’ It really made me feel good that it
made a tiny difference in the world by
making people feel comfortable,
because when I grew up there was no
one like me. We struggle I think, in
New Zealand, getting different
coloured faces on screen, particularly
Asians; I think we were progressive
back then. We were doing really well.”
Peter Elliottarrived as Dr David
Kearney, the clinic CEO, in 1996. He
had an on-again, off-again relationship
with Nurse Ellen Crozier (Robyn
Malcolm). Thecouple married and
had baby Rose, who died from cot
death. When David went blind as the
result of a rare illness in 1999, he and
Ellen moved to Hawke’s Bay, seeing
the end to both characters’ roles in the
show. Peter now stars in800 Words.
“ShortlandStreetchanged the public’s
mindset about listening to our accent
- I think that is the greatest thing it
ever did. We got used to hearing and
seeing ourselves and since then shows
like800 Wordsare finding a really
happy audience.
It is a sausage machine – you are
taking lines in and giving lines out and
it is so fast. You had to learn to care
and also not to care, because if you
cared too much about your character
you went insane, but if you didn’t
care about your character it showed
onscreen – so you had to be able to
find a happy balance.
Often David’s office scenes would
be Friday afternoon, and you would
do 16 scenes at once. Things went
wrong on an hourly basis. Lionel
would come in and the tea towel
would attach itself to the trolley and
muffins would fly everywhere. I
remember doing a scene with
Marjorie Brasch [Elizabeth McRae] at
the reception desk. I had to hand her
something from my pocket but there
wasn’t anything in there and so I
went, ‘Here, read this’ and gave her
the lining out of my pocket. We didn’t
think anything of it but next thing I
got a cheque for £189 from the UK,
where it had been on a bloopers tape- I made more from that bloopers tape
than I did from the episode.
I think the show has stayed relevant
because of the storylines – and
because it is a major training ground
for writers and crew, so it gets a lot
of new blood coming in.
It is one thing that does stay stable
in our lives and there is bugger all of
that – even the news has changed
format. There is still a certain stability
about it that we look forward to, it
has momentum to it but they are not
messing with it – it started off in the
right way, it had social relevance and
it’s continued at that level.
Lucy, my daughter, did her stint on
it for four years and she learnt a
phenomenal amount about her craft.
I learnt in the theatre and brought that
experience to the show, but Lucy had
her apprenticeship onscreen, and her
feedback wasn’t a live audience at night,
it was social media, which can be as
cruel as buggery because it is faceless.
She learnt the hard way to have a bit of
a skin but also to deliver the best work
she possibly could because the best way
of dealing with that feedback is to just
do better work.
Shortland Streetgave me a stable
income when I had kids, which is
beyond rare as an actor – it is like
winning Lotto.”AWWThe feature-length anniversary
episode ofShortland Street will screen
on May 25.“ You had to learn to care
and also not to care... to find
a happy balance.”
Joy and tragedy were
scripted for Peter Elliott’s
and Robyn Malcolm’s
characters.
PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF SOUTH PACIFIC PICTURES. DANIELLE AND CLAIRE WEAR CLOTHING FROM GLAMOUR BOUTIQUE, JEWELLERY FROMSWAROVSKI AND SHOES FROM MI PIACI. JOHN AND PETER WEAR CLOTHING FROM WORKING STYLE. LYNETTE WEARS DRESS FROM TK STORE, CHAINNECKLACE FROM YVONNE BENNETTI, SHOES FROM MI PIACI. THERESA WEARS DRESS AND SHOES FROM YVONNE BENNETTI, JEWELLERY HER OWN.