THE CASKETEERS
The real life of the Kiwi couple who became global superstars
The gently humorous and compassionate approach of a pair of Kiwi funeral directors saw their TV series The Casketeers go global. They tell Emma Clifton about their new book, how seeing so much tragedy made them fear for their own children’s safety, and why they’re happy New Zealanders are finding it easier to talk about death.
If you think selfie culture is getting out of hand, try spending a day or two in the shoes of funeral directors Francis and Kaiora Tipene. Since the 2018 launch of their TVNZ show The Casketeers, and its subsequent release on Netflix, they are frequently asked for a photo. On the street, out in public, or while they’re working. Yes, that can often mean in the middle of a funeral. “After the first season, people would come around and be like ‘can we have a selfie?’ and we thought, ‘Really? With a funeral director?’” Kaiora, 36, says. “But even now, at a funeral with Francis, he’ll be placing the casket inside the hearse and we haven’t even closed the car door and the family will want a selfie. It’s happened so many times, even when he’s going down the aisle with the casket, people will be like…”
“‘Can we have a selfie?’ Francis, 36, says, making a camera click gesture with his hands. “Sometimes I’m like [his voice drops to a whisper] ‘Shall we have the funeral first, and have a selfie after?’”
A full-on juggle
With five children at home, there is already a lot of juggling going on – even before you throw in the fact that the Tipenes also run their own business and are now global television stars. When HarperCollins first suggested the pair could write a book, it’s easy to understand why their initial response was a flat-out no. Never.
“We didn’t have the time,” Francis says. “Plus our grammar is bad,” Kaiora laughs. But then the publishing company suggested a ghost writer. So in came journalist Paul Little and, between them all, Life as a Casketeer was born – covering not only the Tipenes’ present lives, but also the path that got them there. The book is as delightfully irreverent as the series; in the glossary of te reo terms, “hongi – greeting”, sits alongside “hua – prick”.
Both the Tipenes come from humble beginnings. Francis was mostly raised in his grandparents’ rural Northland home, where there was no electricity and getting fresh water required going up the hill to the bore. For Kaiora, being one of 12 kids meant that money was always tight. Being able to send their four school-aged children off with lunchboxes that are always full is still something that brings the Tipenes a lot of joy. “When I look at my kids these days, I’m like, ‘Man, you kids are so spoiled,’” Kaiora says, before adding, with incredulity, “Sometimes they come home with an apple uneaten!”
You would imagine there is no great risk of their kids not being grounded though; the Tipenes’ success has come as the result of an immense amount of work. It’s telling that, when asked what his long-term dream for their company is, Francis replies that one day he would like to be able to work a typical 40-hour week. In response, Kaiora laughs softly. “That’s impossible.”
The very nature of death is inconvenient – people do not die within regular working hours, so the Tipenes and/or their employees must be available 24/7. “You work Christmas, you miss birthdays and anniversaries with your family because you’re looking after other families,” Francis says. It’s a reality, not a complaint. If you’ve ever watched an episode of The Casketeers, it’s clear to see how much they love their jobs. The line between home and work has been blurred for a long, long time – something anyone who has started their own business will understand. For a while, the family lived above the funeral home. Then they lived within a couple of blocks. Finally, last year, they moved to a different suburb. The move has helped provide a semblance of separation between work and home, but even then, the boundaries are movable. It seems home imitates work in one small way – tissue boxes are scattered all around the Tipene household, just as they are in the funeral home. But that could be as much a product of having five kids as it is the occupational hazard of having a job where people cry, a lot.
One of the key philosophies behind their business is how they care for their clients – both living and dead – with equal compassion. “Just because a person is dead, it doesn’t really change a lot,” Francis says. “We run it like they’re still alive.” What, exactly, does that look like in a funeral home? Well, it means that everybody is greeted and chatted to and nurtured.
“We don’t have to treat them, like Francis said, like they’re dead,” Kaiora says. For example, if any of the staff are in a dressing room with a body, then they’re talking to them, explaining what’s happening in the dressing or preparation process. “Sometimes in the morning, I’ll walk past one of the dressing rooms and I’ll hear talking and then I open the door. It’s Nona [one of the Tipene staff members] talking to Mrs Smith. So then it’s just ‘Morning dears’ to both of them,” Francis says. “We didn’t force the staff to talk to them, it’s just become a natural part of working there. Especially when you’re lifting the body into a casket, it’s ‘All right, Mrs Smith, we’re just going to lift you on three.’ Giving them a bit of warning about the movement, we don’t want to upset her.” Kaiora says they still often feel the spirits in the dressing room. “Like when I’ve put on a certain shade of lipstick that isn’t right, and I’m like ‘Oh, sorry Aunty, you’re growling at me now!’”
This is part of the gentlest kind of dark humour the series is known for, as it deftly moves between scenes of great pathos and scenes of great comedy. It’s hard to imagine another TV show that could take you through the entire breadth of the human experience in just 30 minutes. It’s a company – and a TV show – of tremendous heart and levity. They pride themselves, Francis says, on having a chapel where there is more laughter than there is crying. But the real power of the show is taking away the fear factor from death. “We certainly have people wanting to talk more,” says Kaiora. “There is a lot more dialogue around the idea of death and funerals, and people
are so grateful they can talk about it.”
And the show itself has brought the subject out into the open, becoming an immediate hit, both here and overseas, for its unique blend of content and the fact that the entire staff are such natural on-screen talent.
It’s also uniquely Kiwi. Te reo is used frequently throughout the show, and Ma¯ori practices around death are shown often. You couldn’t ask for better representatives of what New Zealand, and in particular Ma¯ori culture, have to offer the world – both in life, and in death. The pair are regularly asked to lead funerals outside Auckland, sometimes even outside
New Zealand, by fans of the show who want the Tipene treatment.
The show is compassionate, but also unflinching in what it shows, not only covering the deaths of people who have died of old age or long-term sickness,
but also including the heartbreak of dealing with the tiniest caskets; the loss of babies, toddlers, teenagers. One of the early episodes follows the funeral of a teenage boy who died by suicide, and the shell-shocked family he left behind. It was important, the Tipenes and the show’s producers felt, to show the reality that many, many New Zealand families face, as we deal with one of the highest rates for suicide in the Western world; particularly for males, and particularly in the Ma¯ori and Pacific Island community.
“It’s this attitude of not talking,” Francis says. “There is too much pride. And with the young ones – and there are a lot of young ones – their parents might not know how to open up and talk to them. It’s a big cycle we’ve got to change. We’ve got to teach the parents how to listen and the children how to talk.”
Kaiora adds: “I’m grateful that our boys are always able to come to us and be open. It’s when they don’t talk to me at the end of the day that I know I’ve got to go in and check on them, so it’s important for us, as parents, to check in on them.
Francis jokes: “The boys go, ‘Dad?’ ‘Yes?’ ‘Where’s Mum?’” he laughs, and then shoots a joking look at Kaiora.
“But when we have our daughter… she’ll be like ‘Mum, where’s Dad?’ and I’ll be like ‘Awwwww, yes.’”
The quest for a daughter has been a constant in the Tipene household. Francis and Kaiora have five boys – Nikora, 14, Moronai, 12, Mikae, six, Mihaka, five, and Francis Jr, one. Francis still really wants a daughter, but Kaiora says after baby number three, she accepted she was “only going to breed kings… What I’ve learned over time is to have a baby to have a baby. Don’t have a baby to have a girl.”
Anxious times
When your job is dealing with death, it stops becoming a rare event and starts becoming something that happens every day, in every way. And that’s a reality that’s hard to reconcile with being a parent. “Even I still wonder how I do it too,” Kaiora says softly.
“It’s only recently that we’ve let our children ride bikes, climb trees, go swimming,” Francis admits. “Two years ago, we got counselling to help us… because our kids were being suffocated.”
“They want to be kids, but we were too over-protective because we’ve seen so many accidents,” Kaiora adds, before Francis lists tragedies they’ve dealt with: “Falling out of trees, hit their head and die. Pushbikes, playing at the park, crossing the road… we’ve seen it all,” he shakes his head. “But then we got help with our anxieties and it was really beautiful. We’ve seen the change in the kids, too. They’ve just flourished.”
It was easier for Kaiora to say yes to counselling, she says. “I’m a woman, I’m happy to be open and express whatever, whereas I find it’s harder for males to open up.” When she first asked Francis if he would consider therapy, it was a flat no. But then, he relented. “The fact that this person sat there and listened and dug into us and got to the core of the issue; that had me angry, and happy, and sad… because it was so confronting,” Francis says. “I understand that it’s not really a Ma¯ori male thing for us to talk about our feelings like this. All I really wanted” – he drops his voice, jokingly – “was for my wife to stop pestering me to go and see this person. But after the third or fourth time, it was clear it was working. This person was there to mentor our little world.”
Not all couples could manage to work together and raise a big family at the same time – and the pair are open about the fact that it takes patience to make it work. But it does work – they are a team, at home and in business. They finish each other’s sentences and many of Francis’ observations end with ‘Eh, darling?’ as he nods to Kaiora for her input.
They faced an unexpected challenge at the beginning of last year, when Kaiora was diagnosed with post-natal depression. Having already been on the
“The most, meaningful funerals are when the family have been involved.”
whole baby journey four times, Kaiora didn’t expect to have to deal with this with baby number five. Francis Jr turned up on December 13, five weeks before he was due. “When I came home with this baby, I was so happy,” Kaiora says. “And then I found myself just crying almost every night. I didn’t know that I had some form of depression.”
They were in the middle of a work-related firestorm: season one of The Casketeers had just been released internationally on Netflix, making the Tipenes a global sensation. As well as that, season two had just launched on TVNZ and they were preparing to start filming season three, while also running their normal, extremely full-on business. “Everything happened so suddenly, and I realised I had too much on,” Kaiora says. After the diagnosis from her doctor, she was in denial for a long time, she says. “My children could see what was happening, they knew their mother was upset. I didn’t want to be down all the time – they would come home and I would have to lock myself away. I stayed in my room for so long, and my husband would come to check on me, and even he didn’t know how to help me. I was in an ugly space I didn’t want to be in, and that’s when I knew I needed to get some help, for my family.”
Eventually, she went back to the counsellor she had seen earlier with Francis and they helped her work through it. Being able to have time to herself, even if it’s just a walk, is what keeps Kaiora afloat now, in a relentless schedule. “It gives you time to appreciate yourself a little more and be grateful for what you have, so that you can continue to perform the way you need to. I’m grateful for the experience I have. I’m grateful for everything.”
By lifting the veil on what happens in the funeral home, the Tipenes have given voice to something that usually stays silent. The majority of families they ask agree to having their funerals covered in the TV show; so much so that they have more families willing to be featured than they need. Francis thinks people say yes because they’re proud; they want to show who their mother, or husband, or daughter was.
The Casketeers also demonstrates the many possibilities for saying our last goodbyes. The idea of bringing the body home with you for a couple of days is big in some cultures – such as Ma¯oridom, or as part of a prayer vigil in Catholic families – but it’s also a practice that the Tipenes say more Pa¯keha¯ clients are asking for as well. “I just really love it when we get to take the bodies home,” Francis says. “It might not be for long, maybe just one night, but it’s lovely – the space is familiar, people are more relaxed.”
The show has also opened up the conversation of family being involved in the preparation of the body as well. “We have people saying to us, ‘We didn’t know we could be a part of the dressing,’” Kaiora says. “It’s wonderful – it’s so beautiful for them to be a part of that.”
Planning a funeral for someone you love is never easy, but it’s best to keep front and centre what the person would have wanted, the pair say.
“If that’s what they would have wanted, then do it,” Francis says. “The most meaningful, beautiful funerals are when the family have been involved.
The grandchildren have collected the flowers from Pop’s garden, that kind of thing. That’s healing in itself.”
Despite the fact that they run an incredibly successful business, they don’t take it for granted.
“At the beginning, we thought, ‘Will anyone want us? Will anyone choose us?’” Francis says. “So to have people choose us now, it’s all we could ever ask. For families to want to send their loved ones to us, that’s so beautiful.”