REBECCA McEWAN
SKATEBOARDING
After a long day on the set of Shortland Street, there’s nothing Rebecca McEwan, who usually goes by Becky, likes more than to grab her skateboard and cruise around the smooth paths of the school in her neighbourhood.
“It’s something I can do that clears my mind. After a long day on set, if I go home and it’s still sunny, I can just go down to the school and skateboard around. It’s relaxing,” she says, adding, “It lifts my mood. I know that it’s time for me. There are no other pressures.”
The 26-year-old loves being active and is about to be a qualified personal trainer.
During lockdown, Becky and her husband, fellow Shorty actor Jay Kiriona, 30, were forced to find new ways to keep active.
“Lockdown got us into going for massive walks,” tells the actress. “We discovered that we loved going for giant walks and we got to watch the seasons change because we were outside every day.”
Shortland Street has its fair share of traumatic events, and even though it’s not real, Becky says that dark storylines still take their toll. A particularly heavy storyline last year, coupled with an intense work schedule, pushed her to the brink, and she struggled to leave her character behind at the end of the day.
“Because I was filming back-to-back each day, there was no time for Becky to reappear and feel happy and be myself. I’d go to work, be sad, then go home, eat and go to sleep, then come back and be sad.”
Things got so difficult that Becky started having panic attacks for the first time in her life. It taught her an important lesson about how vital exercise is to her mental health.
“That was when I realised that even though I might be working 12 hours a day, five days a week, I still need to at least include a 10-minute walk at the end of the day, just to have that ‘me time’.”
“My husband and I often go for a walk at night after dinner, just to clear the day and reset for the next.”