Wolfe at the door:

Why Katie Wolfe was tempted to go back in front of the camera.

Katie Wolfe was one of New Zealand’s most popular actresses, starring in shows such as Mercy Peak, Shortland Street, Cover

Story and Marlin Bay. Keen for a fresh challenge, she disappeared from the small screen for 15 years, electing to work behind the scenes in film, theatre and TV.

Turning her hand to producing, directing and now writing, Wolfe has shown her versatility in a relatively small industry.

“It’s kind of what you have to do these days,” she says. “Everybody does it. When I started out in the industry you’re either going to be one thing or the other.

“But these days you really do need to do the whole thing and I think more and more people are making their own stuff ... If I could operate the camera and be the editor I’d do that as well. It’s next on my list.”

Wolfe became a director and then a producer for Shortland Street. She worked on short films and on the Sunday theatre show Nights In The Garden Of Spain.

After being drafted in to help with the writing of a new Maori Television comedy series called The Ring Inz, Wolfe, who had a guest role last year in an episode of The Brokenwood Mysteries, was talked into appearing on camera again.

The Ring Inz centres on a lacklustre kapa haka group and their leader Teepz (Hori Ahipene), who wants to whip its members into shape for the national competition.

Wolfe plays Nanny Fanny, a domineering older woman who gives mostly unwanted advice to the group when she is not trying to rekindle a long-dead romance.

Publicity material describes the show as “Pitch Perfect meets Modern Family set on a marae”. “I was brought in on the writing team so I wrote a couple of the scripts and it wasn’t until quite late in the piece that I slotted into the acting side of it,” says Wolfe.

“One day they looked across at me and said ‘Is it time to strap on your acting boots?’ and I was like ‘Oh my God. Alright’ but I made myself audition for the role. I didn’t want them to offer me the role. I thought ‘I have to audition. I have to be sure in myself that I can do the role because it’s a really tricky role. She’s quite a tricky character’.

“She is one of those formidable matriarchs that a lot of people know and have in their iwi. I talked to a lot of people who knew these matriarchs who are often connected with their kapa haka teams and absolutely tough as tough. You can’t get anything wrong. They don’t hold anything back in telling you where you went wrong.”

While playing Nanny Fanny, Wolfe wears a grey wig and glasses with bright pink frames.

“I’m playing much older which is liberating to be perfectly honest,” she says. “I didn’t have to try to look younger so that was quite good.”

Wolfe says she based the character on “lots of women”.

“I had a pretty strong idea about who she was and it was quite interesting when I got out of costume at the end of the day, because often the extras, they didn’t even recognise who I was.”

Some of the show is in Maori, which was challenging for Wolfe.

“I probably put this pressure on myself because I wanted to get it right,” she says. “I was acting alongside some really skilled Te Reo Maori speakers. Maori Television has a really high benchmark as well. The Reo that is spoken on the channel has to be top notch so it was very important to me that I put my best foot forward there.”

Wolfe, who has two children – Nikau, 11, and Edie, 16 – with her actor and screenwriter husband Tim Balme, is of Ngati Mutunga descent on her maternal side. Her father was former All Black Neil Wolfe and she grew up in Taranaki.

“When I was brought up in the 80s there was no Reo anywhere so only when I went to drama school and beyond that was I able to reconnect with the culture,” she says.

“Even when we were kids we never went to the pa or anything like that. I am now quite strongly affiliated with the pa back home.

“That’s really only because the ties between me and my Maoritanga are so much stronger mainly because of the industry that I work in. I predominantly work in Maori theatre and I’ve learnt to speak Te Reo Maori in the last 10 years.”

“When I was brought up in the 80s there was no Reo anywhere so only when I went to drama school and beyond that was I able to reconnect with the culture.” – Katie Wolfe (in pink below centre with the cast)