Satan comes to Tawa

Actor and comedian Josh Thomson is virtually unrecognisable as Satan, a comical character who turns up in a Tawa shopping mall in the Wellington Paranormal Christmas Special.

What does it take to look like Satan? Time and patience, it seems.

In the Wellington

Paranormal Christmas Special, Josh Thomson has a guest role as Satan, and thanks to the clever folk who work behind the scenes of the local mockumentary series, Thomson looks nothing like his usual self.

‘‘The costume is impressive,’’ he says. ‘‘There is a lot of latex and fullface and head prosthetics stuff.’’

Auckland-based Thomson says he went to Wellington a couple of times to have the makeup done for the part.

‘‘It was maybe four or five hours in the chair each time,’’ he says.

‘‘To make the cast of your head, they literally just slather plaster casts around your head. It’s quite disorienting. Some people freak out.

‘‘I fell asleep several times and I’m a big guy so they had to prop me up and wake me up by knocking on the plaster. That was the only way I’d be able to hear anything.

‘‘That was quite weird. Someone would go, ‘Hi, you’ve fallen asleep.’ It sounded like a door but it was your head. At the time, we had a newborn, so I was out like a light with all that missed sleep. All of a sudden I was like, ‘This is great.’ ’’

Satan isn’t normally associated with the festive season. However, Thomson’s Satan appears at a Tawa shopping mall when – spoiler alert – a dyslexic man books Satan rather than Santa to entertain children.

Like a typical mall Santa, Satan is sitting on a chair conversing with children and wearing a red coat. But unsightly features like large devil horns and claw-like fingers, coupled with a menacing voice, are giving shoppers cause for concern.

Wellington Paranormal police officers O’Leary (Karen O’Leary) and Minogue (Mike Minogue) are assigned to deal with the situation.

Thomson has previously dressed up as Satan for Halloween parties but he has been Santa, too.

‘‘I was Santa at The Warehouse in Timaru because I worked there and they thought, ‘Oh, you can be Santa.’ Because kids get to have photos on your knee, I thought, ‘This will be great fun,’ ’’ says Thomson.

‘‘Unfortunately, it was a Santa suit you could buy at The Warehouse. It wasn’t necessarily the best quality and the pants tore right open but I didn’t know. If you look at the photos – because it was the old days when you had to send away for them – it would be me with a kid on my knee with a huge torn pair of pants and you could see my yellow undies.’’

This Christmas, Thomson, his wife Liz and their 1-year-old daughter Soana will visit family in Timaru and

Christchurch. ‘‘Our little daughter will be able to experience the farm where I grew up.’’

The actor and comedian has been open about the struggles he and his wife faced to have a child.

When asked what fatherhood is like, Thomson says: ‘‘Every day when I leave the house for work, it’s so hard because she’s just so wonderful. I think what I like best is that sometimes I forget that I’m a dad just because I’m busy doing something. Then I’ll suddenly remember and I’ll feel so happy.’’

Thomson was in the original hosting lineup of The Project. He quit last year but occasionally makes guest appearances.

This year he has been busy with filming the second season of The New

Legends of Monkey, a guest role on Peter Helliar’s Australian sitcom How

to Stay Married and appearances on comedy panel show 7 Days.

But now that Soana is walking, Thomson’s latest project is at home. ‘‘I’ve got to figure out a way to stop her from running out into the street,’’ he says. ‘‘So building a fence is my main concern right now.’’

Wellington Paranormal Christmas Special, TVNZ 2, Thursday, 8.30pm.