IN THE GENES
Paul Little meets three New Zealand show business families
Does talent run in families? It probably depends on several factors. After all, for every Michael Douglas there’s a Jason Connery. For every Stella McCartney there’s a Julian Lennon. But last year some local second-generation names scored conspicuous local and international successes. We asked them what it’s like carrying the torch of fame down the generations.
THE LEONARDS
There’s never been a night quite like it at the NZTV Awards — three siblings collecting prizes for not one or two but a total of five shows. Multi-camera events specialist Wayne Leonard, producer-director Susan and producer Carmen are the offspring of a man who almost singlehandedly created Maori TV in New Zealand, presenter and programme-maker Ernie Leonard.
Together Susan and Carmen Leonard make the hit show The Casketeers, which not only won Best Original Reality Series but more recently scored a Netflix deal, which has attracted attention to the show from around the world. Their older halfbrother, Wayne, is currently doing one-off events for Sky Sport but took the award for Best Live Event Coverage on the night for his work on Maori TV’s Anzac Dawn Service coverage.
Ernie Leonard was a kaumatua of TV in general and Maori TV in particular, determined to get more of his people on both sides of the camera. That included his children, who were immersed in that milieu from the beginning. “One time he made me eat some kina on screen with a bunch of kids and I spat it out,” says Susan. “And he said: ‘That was good, darling, now we’re going to do it again and pretend you like it.”’
When you talk about the Leonards you really talk about the history of Maori television. Their father’s central role in that was brought home in moving fashion when Ernie died.
“We had him at home, then on the way to Rotorua for the tangi we stopped into TVNZ,” says Susan. “In the foyer there’s the atrium where you can see all the levels in the building. We walked in with him and there was haka on every level and the whole place was shaking.”
All the siblings acknowledge their father as a trailblazer. Carmen sums up his legacy: “There was not a lot of money to make programmes. It was all about ideas. His quest was to set the Maori Department up. He did that by himself — put together all those people and they made all those shows. It’s very different now to how it was then and that makes what he did even more special. He suffered a lot of racism but he had a real sense of determination to create programming for our people.”
Wayne is the eldest and Carmen and Susan are his half-sisters. He got his start when his dad, who was freelancing at the time, asked the head of sound at TV2 to employ Wayne. He became one of “only two brown people in the operations area of TVNZ in 1978. The interesting thing was Ross McDonald, the sound supervisor, took a lot of flak for employing two Maori.”
It was a rough start and Wayne ended up leaving. “It was to get away from the shadow of my father, because people told me that I only had a job because of him. I’d even topped the courses I did that they ran, but I got accused of cheating. So, I had to go and find my own space and I got a senior
His dream was to have the Maori language and Maori programmes in mainstream prime time and he never achieved that. But we have, with The Casketeers.
Carmen Leonard
sound position at Channel 9 in Sydney. Ninety people applied and I was the youngest, at 21.”
Carmen started work driving cast members from place to place, “which is probably the lowest position there is apart from runner.
She went from project to project, ending up as a producer. A couple of years ago, I needed someone to come in to fix and finish a show. Annie Murray from Prime said, ‘Talk to your sister,’ so I did, and it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me career-wise. Not only did her coming to work for us help with the project, it established a relationship between us that I never imagined we’d have.”
Susan, who is six years younger, concurs: “I’m the hippie and she’s totally different. We spent years not really gelling when we were little because I was a pain in the arse. We’ve got so much closer since we started working together. Our mum is stoked and Dad would have been so happy.”
Says Carmen, “His dream was to have the Maori language and Maori programmes in mainstream prime time and he never achieved that. But we have, with The Casketeers.”
Not that anyone’s counting, but her achievement in collecting awards across four shows last year was impressive by anyone’s standards. They included The Dance Exponents — Why Does Love?, Coast New Zealand and New Zealand
Wars. But that wasn’t the best bit.
“What was so exciting,” says Carmen, “was that we all won in one night and there was a huge amount of talk about our father from us and from other people. Talk about legacy families — the Leonard one is pretty big, and it was never more evident than on that night.”
THE CASKETEERS, SEASON 2, TVNZ 1,
MONDAYS, 8PM
THE HARCOURTS
Just about every Hollywood “Ones to Watch” list last year singled out Thomasin McKenzie as among the brightest new stars on the scene. She picked up several acting and breakthrough artist awards and was nominated for a clutch more. On the international film festival circuit, of course, the judges didn’t know she was the daughter of writer-director Stuart McKenzie and multiskilled writer/actor/coach Miranda Harcourt, who, in turn, is the daughter of actors and broadcasters Peter and Dame Kate, and sister to television journalist and Fair Go alumnus Gordon Harcourt.
This is one family that can trace its talent across several generations. Even Thomasin’s great grandfather Gordon, who started the high-profile Harcourts Real Estate chain, has a show business connection — he ran the Miramar Roxy cinema in the Depression when property sales slumped.
His son Peter, who died in 1995 and Peter’s widow, Dame Kate, now 91, were among the first people to carve out freelance careers in broadcasting here alongside acting work.
Naturally, Kate has been a big influence on her granddaughter.
“I don’t know if it’s been anything she’s said,” says Thomasin, “but more what she does — watching her and learning things from her by osmosis and being really inspired by how much she loved her job and how alive she is when she does it. My mum’s parents and my dad’s parents have all had a beautiful effect on the world.”
Kate has taken her granddaughter’s success in her stride. Of her Leave No Trace performance she says, “I found it extremely moving and most satisfying. It wasn’t a surprise.”
That film was directed by Debra Granik whose early independent success Winter’s Bone made a star of Jennifer Lawrence at a similar age to Thomasin’s. Coincidentally, sometime ago, when Thomasin was showing interest in acting, her father showed her Winter’s Bone as an example of the sort of performing it was possible to do in film.
“Thomasin,” says her father, “has a huge and deep talent because she is the kind of person who realises performance isn’t about putting on an act.”
My mum’s parents and my dad’s parents have all had a beautiful effect on the world.
Thomasin McKenzie
Perhaps talent attracts talent: Stuart McKenzie and Miranda Harcourt were the first people each other met on their first day at university — though they did not become a couple until many years after that.
Miranda says there was never pressure on her or her brother Gordon to do anything other than what they wanted. Pushy showparenting didn’t come into it.
“We just wanted to see them get a good education and start in life,” says Dame Kate. “And we didn’t have a lot of money to give them. I was pleased when Miranda won an apprenticeship at Fortune Theatre when she left drama school.”
“They were very relieved,” says Miranda. “I had a couple of years of being a bad-ass. My choice of becoming an actor was a conventional one to them because it meant they knew where I was and what I was doing.”
At the age of 11, Miranda appeared at Downstage Theatre with Kate in a music hall production that ran for months. And she