Elisabeth’s poignantt mission for Mum
Her proud homage to a documentary pioneer
Elisabeth Easther and her documentary crew are bumping through the bush on Tiritiri Matangi Island in a jeep when suddenly a trio of dinosaur-like birds rush out of the long grass and give chase in a scene reminiscent of Jurassic Park.
It’s a hungry takahe mother, father and chick, and soon they’re almost literally eating out of Elisabeth’s hands on the Hauraki Gulf nature reserve.
“This is extraordinary,” she whispers to Woman’s Day as the endangered, flightless birds creep closer. “Especially considering they were thought to be extinct until the 1940s. And they’re so fearless, despite their history with people. I’m going to carry takahe food in the glovebox of my car from now on!”
Most famous for her role as murderous nurse Carla Crozier on Short land Street in the mid-’90s, Elisabeth, 47, is still acting and working in radio, as well as writing award-winning plays and travel stories. But her latest gig is the one closest to her heart.
She’s hosting the TVNZ 1 series Islands of the Gulf, a reboot of New Zealand’s firstever locally made documentary series, which explored the diverse environments and communities of the Hauraki Gulf. It was written, hosted, directed and produced in 1964 by our first female TV producer, the late Shirley Maddock. Also a stage actress and author, Shirley just happened to be Elisabeth’s mother too.
The former Shorty star wasn’t born when Islands was made, but she recalls, “As a child, child I was very aware my mum was famous. People would stop her in the street and she’d been on magazine covers with my brothers, which I was really miffed about – I had to put that right by being on the front of your mag quite a few years later!”
Career change
Though both her parents worked in theatre, growing up in Hamilton, Elisabeth wanted to be a pilot or a doctor, but when she left high school, she studied law and Maori at the University of Waikato with the dream of becoming a bilingual barrister. But all that changed when she fell in with the theatre crowd, dropped law and went to drama school.
Post-graduation, she played a dinosaur in the Australian children’s series Johnson and
Friends, then landed the villainous role of Carla on
Shorty, where she recalls being starstruck by Temuera Morrison, who played Dr Hone Ropata.
After one year on the show, show Elisabeth ran off to Central America, where she was recognised while climbing a Mayan pyramid by a soap fan, who yelled, “Hey, Carla, you are in Guatemala now!” She later worked as a casting assistant in London, then as a tour guide in Turkey, before returning to Aotearoa when her mother’s health declined.
“She’d been sick ever since I was 14, after contracting a flu that attacked her heart,” explains Elisabeth. “At one point, we were told she needed a heart transplant and had only three days to live, but she lasted another 15 years.”
Elisabeth was 30 when Shirley died of heart disease at age 72.
Retracing her mother’s steps for Islands of the Gulf was bittersweet. “On one hand, it was the best job of my life and it really made me come to terms with how amazing my mother was,” she tells.
“As a young person, you
don’t really think too toomuch much about your parents’ lives before you were born, but I’ve realised that, as a woman, she really had to fight to be named producer and to make this show happen. She was so talented and it’s only now I truly comprehend it.
“While we were making our show, as much as I loved it, I was gutted on a daily basis because I constantly wanted to ask her questions about her own adventures and tell her how proud I was of her. I dearly wish she was here to see it for herself.”
Newsorrow
Adding to Elisabeth’s anguish, her beloved father Michael – a doctor, actor and author – died earlier this month at age 90, just over two weeks before her doco’s February 24 premiere.
“He was ready to go, so I’m all tangled up in grief and relief at the moment,” she says. “But I’m absolutely heartbroken I won’t get to watch Islands with him, so together we could be reminded all over again how clever and gorgeous Mum was. He was very proud of her.
“I’m so grateful to have had the parents I had – they left some pretty fabulous footsteps. It’s funny that I ended up in radio, writing, theatre and now hosting the same television show as my mum. It wasn’t intentional. It’s like my mum made a map and I followed it.”
Now following in Elisabeth’s footsteps is her 12-year-old son Theo Head, who is already working as a voice-over artist and joined his mum for much of the doco shoot. Will he be making his own version of
Islands in a few decades? “We have fantasised about that a lot,” tells Elisabeth. “He’s quite adamant he wants to do it, but he wants to do it when I’m alive. The only fly in the ointment is his grandmother isn’t here to see what a great gift she’s given us.”
My mother gave me, unwittingly, the best job that I could ever have imagined’