Kiwi Keisha takes on the Unabomber
Keisha Castle-Hughes talks to about her first TV role since her Game of Thrones exit, playing a tough cop in Manhunt: Unabomber.
Keisha Castle-Hughes knows something I don’t. We’ve been chatting about movies, TV and being Kiwis in the United States. Today, she’s in New York to meet the East Coast press ahead of the release of the Discovery Channel series Manhunt: Unabomber.
Castle-Hughes appears alongside big-screen heavy-hitters Sam Worthington (Hacksaw Ridge) and Paul Bettany (The Da Vinci Code )as Worthington’s partner in the FBI’s hunt for Ted Kaczynski (Bettany), who waged a one-man campaign of terror from 1978 to 1995 via mailbombs sent to American businesses and universities.
So we’re up here in the slightly baroque Fifth Avenue splendidness of New York’s Peninsula Hotel, when we find ourselves talking about how being a TV actor is no longer anything like second tier to being in a movie, and how the TV roles have recently become often the more prestigious.
With TV shows now often having the best scripts, best directors, and best budgets, it is completely possible in 2017 to be a major star without ever being on the big screen.
So I say to Castle-Hughes something like ‘‘and you must know that better than anyone here, you’re on Game of Thrones after all...’’
I swear she gives me the tiniest of frowns before her usual grin reappears.
Two days later, at home in Brooklyn, I’m curled up on the couch with the cat and a beer, watching with some embarrassment as Castle-Hughes meets a typically gruesome fate at the hands of current Thrones‘ boo-hiss villain Euron Greyjoy and some slightly sadistic writer’s imagination. Keisha would have shot those scenes months before. Of course, she couldn’t say a thing. But it must have stung a little to be reminded.
Castle-Hughes has been a working actor since she was 12 years old. In 2002, despite having no on-screen experience, she was cast in Niki Caro’s film adaptation of Witi Ihimaera’s novel Whale Rider.
It’s the stuff of New Zealand legend now that her work in that film led to Castle-Hughes becoming the then youngest ever nominee for an Academy Award for Best Actress. She lost out to Charlize Theron – who was the favourite by daylight for her role in Monster – but the recognition put Castle-Hughes firmly in the sights of directors and casting agents all over the world.
Parts in numerous movies and highend American TV have followed, with that recurring role as the ill-fated Obara Sand in Game of Thrones – aka, the biggest TV show in the world – surely being a highpoint.
In Manhunt: Unabomber, CastleHughes plays a tough, streetwise, whip smart and irrepressible woman who serves as a worthy foil and coconspirator to Worthington’s slightly maverick FBI agent Jim Fitzgerald. Her role is a composite character, but based closely on a couple of agents. As she says, ’’it’s there in the writing. As soon as I started to read the script I was like... I’m fighting for this one. She’s a brilliant woman to play’’.
Which, coming from an actor who scored an Oscar nomination the first time she set foot on a film set, and has played Jesus’ mum (in 2006’s The Nativity Story) to great critical acclaim, is some high praise.
Graeme Tuckett
‘‘I think a lot, maybe most, of the best roles are being written for the TV shows now. Especially as the movies play it safer and safer, the roles written for women in Hollywood seem to be getting... I dunno, more cliched maybe? But over a season of TV, every character has to develop and grow, and the interactions between the characters have to be believable. Otherwise, we’ll just switch off. It’s kind of a golden age, I reckon. I just hope it keeps going.’’
While she says this, the table falls silent. The other four reporters, along with Worthington and Manhunt: Unabomber writer and producer Andrew Sodroski have all paused their own conversations to listen to what Castle-Hughes is saying. It’s a nice moment, a genuine breakout in a media forum that usually makes it hard to get a word in edgeways.
Castle-Hughes notices the silence and looks around the table. She grins. ‘‘Kiwis...’’ we both laugh. Manhunt: Unabomber,
October 5. Discovery,
"Over a season of TV, every character has to develop and grow, and the interactions between the characters have to be believable. Otherwise, we'll just switch off. It's kind of a golden age, I reckon." Keisha Castle-Hughes