Desperate days:
Four misfits navigate their way through the complicated job of finding love in the new TVNZ On Demand comedy I Date Rejects. Kerry Harvey reports.
A new local comedy series throws the spotlight on dating.
Actor Tahei Simpson didn’t initially see her starring role in I Date Rejects as a match made in heaven.
In fact, the mortgage broker and M ori Television’s On The Ladder presenter who flirts with acting now and again, admits it took a lot of persuasion – and flattery – from the show’s writer Paula Whetu-Jones (Waru) to get her on board.
“I’ve known Paula for ages and she kept pestering me saying, ‘I wrote it for you. Who else is going to do it? Nobody else can possibly do it like you’,” says Simpson.
“Sure, you might think I have logic and I’m quite sensible these days, but I’m still vain and full of ego and she just knew to stroke that ego.”
But even then, Simpson – who played Shortland Street’s Dr Cassie Moore in 2000 and went on to roles in What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted?, Whale Rider and The Matrix Reloaded – was not sure what to expect from the comedy.
The 10-part TVNZ OnDemand series centres on the love lives of four flatmates in their late 30s. Pania (Simpson), Vinnie (Jarod Rawiri), Petulia (Amber Curreen) and Elena (Katerina Fatupaito) are super-intelligent but socially awkward professionals.
When all four are rejected by I Date – an exclusive dating agency – they decide to steal the other rejected profiles and create their own agency, The Love Club. Pania is the unluckiest of them all and is routinely dumped for
being “too nice”.
“Paula made me feel like Pania was just this desperate character who your heart just went out to,” says Simpson.
“However, as we were filming, my heart sank a little bit when I realised how similar to her I am. Obviously not in the desperation sense but some of the nerdiness and the neuroticism that she has.
“To be honest, I didn’t really have to dig very deep. It was a bit like looking in the mirror sometimes and going, ‘Oh my god, is that what it looks like? Oh dear’.”
Simpson, who was a professional actor in her 20s, spent her 30s having babies and – after separating from her partner – went back to university in her 40s, is typical of Generation Xers (those born from mid-1960 to 1980) that make up this series’ target audience.
It was the awareness that there were thousands of Kiwis in similar predicaments to Pania and her flatmates that encouraged her to take on the role. “This is why I found the, not confidence, but the bravery to get on screen. I once did an onscreen course run by Ilona Rodgers and she taught me the one thing that has been the
most valuable thing in my entire career and that is that it is not about you,” Simpson says.
“She said you couldn’t waste your time and energy worrying about what you look like to yourself because it’s about bringing integrity to the character and the production. I thought, ‘I’ll hang on to that. That’s a piece of gold. So if I look like an idiot then it’s OK’.” Simpson admits to a brief fling with Tinder after her own relationship ended.
“I was doing statistics at uni and it was all about data and how they use it and so I was really fascinated,” she says. “My kids were between six and 12 years old so I couldn’t exactly rock up to the local bar or go nightclubbing and so it was convenient for me to sort of have a look around, if you like, from the comfort of my bed in my jimjams. I didn’t stay on it very long though, because I just got tired of it and my life was too busy and my kids were older.”
Simpson says while filming I Date Rejects she often felt she really was on a real date as the show’s guests – many of them well-known Kiwi actors – were encouraged to improvise.
“When it’s something you don’t expect then your own reaction is far more genuine. You don’t know what they’re going to do and you are a bit nervous because you think, ‘Wow, I really thought it was going to go this other way’,” she says, admitting she is also apprehensive about how the series will be received.
“I am a little bit nervous about it coming out because Pania is so desperate but I keep thinking, ‘It’s not you Tahei. Remember Ilona Rodgers’.”
“As we were filming, my heart sank a little bit when I realised how similar to her I am.”
– Tahei Simpson