TODD’S GREAT ESCAPE
Taking a walk on the wild side
For most people, a decent holiday would be a week on the beach in Fiji, but Westside actor Todd Emerson is a more adventurous soul – he’s in the middle of a nine-month holiday with his husband Kip Chapman.
It was 10pm New Zealand time when Woman’sDay finally caught up with the star over the phone from Porto, Portugal, where he’s sitting in a bar and using their free Wi-Fi after hiking for five weeks across Spain.
The famed Camino de Santiago trail pushed Todd, 34, to the limit, but it has strengthened his two-year marriage to TopoftheLake actor Kip, 38. He confesses, “When we got to the end of it, we were like, ‘This is a really amazing thing we have experienced together.’ It has definitely deepened our relationship.”
After years of juggling his role as Bilkey on Westside with his and Kip’s acclaimed stage show HudsonandHalls
Live!, the couple decided they were overdue a holiday and started their adventure in March, when filming for the latest season of the hit Three series wrapped. The first stop was New Orleans and they’re now soaking up the sun in Italy.
“Kip and I have both
travelled quite a bit, but it was mostly for work and neither of us did the classic Kiwi big OE,” Todd explains. “We’re doing that now, in our 30s, which is a much better time to do it. We’re a bit older, we don’t have kids and we’ve got more money.”
Itchyfeet
The star pair will return to Aotearoa just after New Year’s, but the homecoming will be short-lived, with Todd and theatre director Kip planning a move to Sydney in 2019.
Todd tells, “We could stay in New Zealand and keep on doing the same stuff we’re doing, working with the same people for the next 50 years, but
this is about new experiences and meeting new people.”
However, Todd assures us he’ll be back on this side of the Tasman to reprise his role on the fifth season of Westside. “We might be away for a few years – we might be gone for ages – but we’ll always be going back and forth,” he says.
“Moving to Australia is such a new start. Both of us have been super-busy for the past five years, so there hasn’t been an opportunity to experience this sort of thing. It’s the perfect time for us.”