LOVES & HATES
Cooking: I just love the creative element of cooking. I’d consider myself a foodie. I’m big on nutrition. I’m always looking for new and creative ways to make tasty food. I love having dinner parties and things like that where you can try some new culinary delights.
Competition: Whether that’s sports or watching or participation or a games night or quiz night, I’m very competitive. And any reason to have a competition is a good reason, in my view.
Socialising: I love to have a good laugh. I think that laughing is great for the soul. I love my girls’ trips away. I love it when my face hurts because I’ve laughed so hard. And I like parties with my friends and my family.
Mess: I hate mess or lack of order. I think I’m verging on a problem. I walk around picking up mess and making sure everything’s in its rightful place. It’s probably the one thing that I hate the most and I wish I didn’t because it’s a bit of a curse.
Not being able to exercise or be outside: I hate being cooped up. I have to get out.
Auckland traffic: Sitting in traffic is a bugbear of mine, probably because I’m sitting still. It drives me up the wall.
There was a timeliness behind the release of the 1947 psychological drama Black Narcissus, about an order of nuns sent to establish a convent in the Himalayas.
The site of the convent was a rundown, eerie palace which had once housed the ruler’s harem, and the nuns struggled with the strangeness of their new home and its inherent eroticism. A lack of self awareness led them to behave somewhat arrogantly towards people who already had their own religion and rich culture.
That year, 1947, was the year India achieved independence from Britain and some people back then regarded Black Narcissus as a metaphor for colonial failure. The censors of the day rather saw its eroticism as walking a fine line, reportedly ordering that certain scenes be cut.
Fast forward to the present day. Black Narcissus has been remade
as a steamy three-part mini-series by FX and the BBC and, of course, the context which was contemporary is now actual history. And what caused blushes back then wouldn’t raise so much as an eyebrow today.
Central to the story is a love triangle between convent leader, the somewhat controlling Sister Clodagh (Gemma Arterton, Tamara Drewe, Gemma Bovery), a European administrator called Mr Dean (Alessandro Nivola, American Hustle, A Most Violent Year), and the unstable Sister Ruth (Ailsing Franciosi, Game Of Thrones).
Other notables include Diana Rigg as Mother Dorothea, Jim Broadbent (Harry Potter’s Horace Slughorn) as Father Roberts and newcomer Dipika Kunwar as Nepalese teen Kanchi, a role taken back in 1947 by an 18-year-old Jean Simmons.
Nivola has a connection with Black Narcissus going way back.