Playing Teina Pora
Newcomer lands lead in Teina Pora movie before graduating from drama school
New acting talent Richard Te Are has landed the lead role of Teina Pora in a telemovie about the miscarriage of justice case. Pora spent 22 years in prison for the rape and murder of Susan Burdett before an ex-cop came to his rescue.
Te Are, 28, was plucked straight out of drama school after he was spotted by agents who recommended the Toi Whakaari student audition. He got the part before he had even graduated and plays Pora at the ages of 17, 25 and 35.
Both men are softly spoken and judging by a scene shot in Pora’s old hood of Otara yesterday, Te Are has Pora’s rolling gait down pat.
“I met him in the first week of filming,” Te Are told the Herald. “We played some guitar and hung out a bit. I was trying to feel his groove and he was trying to feel mine.
“He pretty much just said, ‘Do your best bro’.”
“It’s been a tornado of learning. It’s quite a huge journey. It will be amazing to see all of our work come together.”
Six weeks of filming comes to an end on Friday for In Dark Places, a 90-minute film that will play on TVNZ1 in the Sunday Theatre slot next year.
Production company 10,000 Company received $2.9 million to make the movie from New Zealand On Air.
Co-written by Jane Holland and Michael Bennett, with Bennett directing and Holland producing, it is framed on the relationship between Pora and Tim McKinnel, two people from different sides of the tracks who in normal circumstances would never have known each other.
The lives of both Pora, a car thief from Otara, and McKinnel, an ex-cop raised in a middle-class family in the Manawatu, are transformed through their unlikely union.
Pora’s diagnosis of Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder helped explain the apparent confessions he made and a diagnosis of cancer prompted McKinnel to throw himself into trying to prove his strong belief that Pora was innocent of these crimes.
Bennett made the documentary The Confessions of Prisoner T which screened in 2013 and wrote the book In Dark Places, The Confessions Of Teina Pora And An ExCop’s Fight For Justice, winner of the Ngaio Marsh award for non-fiction.
Experienced actor Craig Hall ( Outrageous Fortune, King Kong, A Place To Call Home) plays McKinnel, the film’s hero.
Hall plays the role of a doctor in the Australian series A Place To Call Home, and so says he is used to playing “good guys”. He found McKinnel quite different in person to how he presents in the media. On camera he was “reserved and very humble” whereas in person you see the fuller character, Hall said. “He has quite a sense of humour. He is warm, generous, open, smart and thoughtful.” Hall, who is married to Sara Wiseman, who plays his wife in the Australian period drama, is a veteran of 23 years as an actor. He says his aim is to do an interpretation of McKinnel rather than “try to do a mimicry of him”. “As Teina said to us, ‘You haven’t walked in my shoes and I haven’t walked in your shoes’.” The third major role is that of serial rapist Malcolm Rewa, played by Calvin Tuteao ( Once Were Warriors, The Last Saint). Rewa was convicted of raping Susan Burdett but twice acquitted of her murder. The police recently applied to the courts for permission to try Rewa for murder a third time. Pora’s lawyers, Jonathan Krebs and Ingrid Squire, who represented Pora at the Privy Council in London, are played by Cameron Rhodes ( Rake, Dear Murderer) and Aidee Walker ( Outrageous Fortune and Step Dave). Pora was awarded $2.5 million compensation by the National Government. Following a court direction, the Labour Government added another $1 million to reflect inflation.