Kiwi star shines in wilderness horror
Fresh from starring in her first feature, Kiwi Rebecca McFadzien talks to James Croot about living her Hollywood dream.
Aformer Shortland Street actor and Rugby World Cup dancer is celebrating the international success of her first feature-film role.
Rebecca McFadzien, who played Veronica Greenwood in the long-running Kiwi soap in 2013, is the star of low-budget United States horror Quarries, which recently took home the award for Best Narrative Feature at the Women’s Independent Film Festival in London.
Written and directed by Nils Taylor, it’s the story of a group of women on a wilderness expedition, who find themselves attacked by a vicious group of predators.
Back in New Zealand to promote the release of the movie on iTunes, the US-born, 5ft 6 (1.6 metres), triple-threat (actor/ singer/dancer) McFadzien talked to Stuff about Quarries and her career. I’d been in Los Angeles for about a month. I was taking an acting class that I had fallen into by good fortune and someone said they had heard there was a casting call for this really awesome film and that I might be really good for a role.
I hadn’t done an audition in Los Angeles before, but I thought ‘‘what a good way to start’’. So I put on my best Cali-Girl accent and a couple of days later I found out I had been successful. Yeah, it’s a funny thing. I thought it would be a good challenge for me to use my American accent that I’ve been practising my whole life. But, I think it was during a costume fitting, when I was feeling tired and getting comfortable, that I accidentally let my Kiwi accent out.
The people that were there were like, ‘oh, that’s NOT an American accent’. I tried to reassure them that I was used to maintaining an accent, but I was still kind of nervous that they might worry I might flake out halfway through the shoot.
Then they called me a few days later and said they actually wanted me to use my real accent because they were looking to distribute the film in New Zealand and Australia and what better way to do that than to have one of their own in the film. I guess it was how action-packed it was and the fact that these women are really fighting back and not just flailing their arms. They’re punching and scratching and saving their own lives. Probably trusting that my character was interesting enough.
I came to LA thinking that I needed to fit in and sound American and it was a big learning process to discover that actually me as a Kiwi girl was interesting enough and acceptable in Hollywood. Because we were outside every day and working together in such close proximity in the forest there was a bout of food poisoning that went around and a poison ivy epidemic.
I did some hiking and running before we started shooting, but unfortunately I didn’t think to wear in my hiking boots from the costume lady.
So if I ever wince in pain in the film, it’s real pain from the shoes. But we did all of our own stunts and we trained beforehand in how to do basic stage combat and practised falling from heights onto mats. That was one of my favourite parts of the shoot.