Bitter pill
for Shortland Street’s Rachel
Rachel McKenna’s fall from grace has been a bitter pill to swallow in more ways than one for actress Angela Bloomfield.
As the Shortland Street CEO struggles with an addiction to the painkiller codeine, the actress admits she was as surprised as anyone to find her character’s life spiralling out of control yet again.
“I came back in a little bit of a drunken mess so to speak and the producer at the time said, ‘We won’t be doing that again’ and I thought that’s probably quite good,” Angela says, of her character’s return to the drama in 2009.
“However, it’s great to play a character with flaws and I suppose in a way they have shifted her addiction (from alcohol to codeine).”
What she didn’t count on was the difficulty in swallowing those fake drugs – which, in reality, were artificial sugar tablets.
“They’ve got aspartame in them which is bad for you,” reveals the actress, who says she became adept at pretending to take the pills.
“I would only have them if I absolutely had to.”
Rachel has no such qualms. Her addiction is at the point where it threatens her job, her marriage and even her life.
Could her days in Ferndale be reaching their end?
“It’s all just great for me because for the last couple of years, I’ve just been a sort of middleman for running the hospital and other people’s storylines,” Angela says.
Rachel started taking codeine months ago after suffering a neck injury when her stepson Dr Finn
“We’re speaking a true language and we’re telling a story that I think lots of people will look at and be able to relate to.” – Angela Bloomfield
Connolly (Lukas Whiting) rear-ended her car.
However, as the work stress piled up, she kept taking the drug long after the injury had healed.
When Lucy’s (Grace Palmer) father Glen (Will Wallace) – a man Rachel once had a drunken one-night stand with – arrived in Ferndale, her pill intake escalated into addiction.
“She has no memory of Glen at all and that makes it tricky because he has very strong memories and still holds a very strong torch for her,” Angela says.
“She’s happily married and doesn’t want to have too much to do with him as it’s a reminder of a time when she was very unhappy.
“He’s a bit of a low-blow kind of dude and, if things don’t go his way, he’ll be spiteful, which is all just great for me because for the past couple of years I haven’t really done many of this sort of storyline.”
Glen’s obsession with Rachel – and her attempts to support him as a fellow alcoholic – puts a strain on her relationship with her doctor husband Chris Warner (Michael Galvin) who warns Glen off – but can’t quite get over his doubts about his wife.
“Chris doesn’t want to acknowledge his wife has issues,” Angela says. “They’ve been through so much and everything has taken its toll. They haven’t acknowledged each other as individuals and gone, ‘I really love you, flaws included’.”
She believes Chris and Rachel’s relationship is no different to many real-life ones.
“That’s what I really love about all this. We’re speaking a true language and we’re telling a story that I think lots of people will look at and be able to relate to,” Angela says, adding she has her own ideas about what Rachel should have done when Glen turned up in Ferndale.
“She should have walked the other way because you can tell quite early on that he wants something from her and she’s not dumb, she gets that. I would have gone, ‘Don’t be around him on your own’.
“And she should have talked to Chris about it, been more open about what Glen being there is doing to her.”
Rachel’s refusal to share her problems proves disastrous when Chris leaves town to visit Trinity, his daughter with Grace Kwan (Lynette Forday).
“She’s got to the worst point she could with the codeine but she doesn’t want to reveal to him how close she is to the edge,” Angela says.
“It’s just a really bad sequence of events in that if he didn’t go, then the things that happen wouldn’t have happened.”