‘The reviews were damning’
The only character left standing from Episode One, Michael Galvin’s Dr Chris Warner, has seen hundreds of other characters come and go but is still the series’ linchpin.
‘Every actor in New Zealand had auditioned for Shortland Street. I was doing a play at the Mercury Theatre when I found out. Just before I went on, my agent had a call put through to the dressing room. I went quite pale and people thought it was bad news. ‘That thing we all auditioned for,’ I said. ‘I got the part.’
I felt good about the audition because I was hungover when I did it. Instead of being nervous, like normally, I was extremely relaxed and my voice had a hungover tone that was good for Chris Warner, er, instead of my usual nasal tone.
It had ad come down to me and Marton Csokas, who I was flatting atting with and who is now w a successful international nal actor. He got a role in n the show himself, as Leonard ard Dodds, soon after that.
On the first day, Caterina ina De Nave, the producer, oducer, gave us a pep talk. There was a clear r vision from her and her writers. rs. She was really protective with us and a great producer. ucer. You felt safe with her. She wanted us to succeed.
She was also good about telling you how to improve, which was important because no one had done this fast turnaround TV before in New Zealand.
We were shooting for a couple of months before it went to air. We watched the first episode together and felt good about it. And the next day, the reviews were universally damning. No one had a good word to say about it. But by the end of three months, it was starting to get a following. And after a year, it was a real hit.
As far as day-to-day life on set 30 years later goes, I try to be a good person to work with, not one of those actors who think you have to be a prat to do a good job. I don’t subscribe to that.
Early on, I knew it wasn’t in my interest to say, ‘Chris wouldn’t do that.’ The nature of the show was that there was a high volume of scenes and you would have to do everything at some stage, so the thing to do was to fully commit. People actually do strange things in real life. They do something and you think, ‘Why did you do that?’ Shortland Street is like real life in that way.”