David Fane has aged well
The former Naked Samoan tells Sam Brooks about his role in Auckland Theatre Company’s first show of 2023, being involved with cult hit Our Flag Means Death and what those letters after his name really mean.
Whether it’s as a radio host on Flava, on stage as part of the Naked Samoans, in an ad campaign keeping New Zealand green, onscreen in queer pirate comedy Our Flag Means Death, or as a voice in early game of the year contender Hi-Fi Rush, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a project David Fane’s been involved in.
While he rightfully made headlines for his recent ONZM honour, that’s only the start of what is looking to be the actor’s biggest year yet.
He starred in the Sione’s Wedding prequel series Duckrockers, just wrapped filming on the second season of OFMD, has a new Taika Waititi film in the can and is just about to star in Auckland Theatre Company’s first show of 2023, The Heartbreak Choir.
He’s in rehearsals for that when we sneak off to the green room and he puts two warm beers in the freezer.
In person, Fane is how you expect him to be based on his characters: gregarious, chatty, always with a gag within reach. He’s what every stand-up comedian wishes they were like, which is what makes it surprising when you learn that he actually failed his comedy module at Toi Whakaari Drama School. That he failed the comedy module is well known. Less well known is the detail that he was playing Stevie Wonder commentating a horse race.
Since graduating in 1992, Fane has never stopped working. His list of credits reads like a list of seminal New Zealand – and more crucially, Pasifika – work. He hasn’t just played roles in the canon, he’s created them.
Even so, his role in The Heartbreak Choir – ‘‘a quiet Australian cop with a sad secret’’ seems a bit of a departure. ‘‘I wouldn’t have hired me!’’, he cracks.
The show revolves around a group of women in a small town who form a choir after a disagreement leads to their original one splintering. Fane plays Peter, a cop who has his own history with the choir that slowly reveals itself. Peter’s not the soul of the play – that comes from the five singing women – but he’s the gentle undertow that gives the play extra heft.
He might not be the best singer (his words) but what actually makes him a perfect fit for the quietly supportive Peter is a quality that recurs throughout our chat: he loves to gas other people up.
In just over half an hour, with one barely-chilled beer knocked back, he praises the Ma¯ ori theatre stalwarts of the 90s (‘‘They should all have letters after their names’’), his Heartbreak Choir cast (‘‘they’re powerful women and they bully me’’) and his Our Flag Means Death co-star Con O’Neill (‘‘easily my favourite pirate!)’’. He even throws a few choice compliments my way, and I can confirm there’s few better feelings in the world than having David Fane (ONZM) gas you up.
He’s less keen to gas himself up, though. When he speaks about his past work, he’s more pensieve, reflective. That’s surprising, given how well much of it has aged: Sione’s Wedding is still a fun romp, his bits of Outrageous Fortune hold up, and it’s a crime that the Naked Samoan live shows aren’t preserved for the public to watch.
It’s that work that he speaks of with pride, particularly The Naked Samoans Go Home, which tackled the topic of suicide unflinchingly. ‘‘We weren’t making comedy about suicide, we were doing social commentary about suicide using comedy. That’s probably one of the most affecting times I’ve been onstage.’’
He’s more ambivalent when it comes to Bro’Town, inarguably one of the most successful New Zealand series of all time, but one that can be a tense watch now. Some of the bluer jokes about gender and sexuality wouldn’t fly today, and you could argue they didn’t exactly go well then.
‘‘The stronger the LGBT voice became, the more I realise when I look back on it, I think how much it has aged. The fart gags still work, the clever, banal jokes still fly, but it’s aged, and rightly so!
‘‘The world changes and we all have to change it, whether you like it or not. If a person says, ‘No’, and stands up, you’ve got to clap. You’ve got to clap for them.
‘‘If you don’t, then you’re putting them down. F... that.’’
One way the world has changed is that we probably wouldn’t have seen Fane in a queer pirate comedy at the start of his career, because nobody would have made a queer pirate comedy back then. However, in 2023, his role as Fang on OMFD has brought him his biggest audience yet, especially once it became a cult hit thanks to people realising it was very, very gay.
Someone on the cast, anonymised for their own dignity, was a bit slower on the uptake. They had shot four episodes, almost half the season, before they came up to Fane and asked him: ‘‘Is this show gay?’’
Fane affirmed that yes, it was. The cast member remained unconvinced.
‘‘I laughed and we’d all hang out. He apologised to us later, ‘I’m really sorry! I was mis-saying the lines, I didn’t understand the context!’’’
The cackle he follows up this story with is one you’d be familiar with, no matter whether you’ve seen Fane on a stage or on a screen, heard him on the radio or in a video game, or probably even run into him on the street. It’s a little cheeky, it’s full of heart, and like the letters after his name, it’s wellearned.