Change of scene
Actor and comedian Jonno Roberts swapped Broadway for a cottage on his mate Rhys Darby’s lifestyle block. It’s a new stage of life, he tells
Jonno Roberts was playing Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway when Covid-19 hit. He’s now as far from New York as you can get, living with his young family in a cottage on mate Rhys Darby’s Matakana lifestyle block.
JONO
When Covid-19 shut down the theatres in New York, I flew back to Los Angeles to be with my wife Georgia and kids.
Rhys and his wife Rosie called me up and said: ‘‘We’re going back home man, this thing is getting crazy – come and stay with us for a couple of weeks.’’
We landed in Auckland with a couple of suitcases, 16 hours before the borders closed.
Going from life in a tiny East Village apartment for one, to a cottage on 11 acres
(4.5ha) of bush, in a town with a population of
500 could not be more different.
I left New Zealand in 98.
I have spent most of my adult life in America. I’ve lived in New York, Boston, LA, Chicago and Washington DC. For the past few years I’ve been saying to my wife: ‘‘I can’t take cities any more.’’
Missing home happens when you get older. It’s not just missing New Zealand, but missing the childhood I had, and wanting that for my own kids. But when you have your entire life somewhere else, it is hard to wrench yourself out of everything. Like a lot of Kiwis overseas, coronavirus made the decision for us – but it was not entirely unwanted.
We have 7-year-old twins who thought they owned Manhattan and LA. Now they play rugby for the Pakiri School club, a school that has 30-something kids total.
The housing market sucks.
We would like to buy a place of our own once we get some income going. But every time we look at a house, in between the time it gets listed and sold, the price goes up 10 per cent.
I’ve had a good career, but theatre does not pay big bucks.
The first thing I had to do to the cottage was pull the vines out. There was one room where the floor had collapsed, but I’m holding it together with paint. Georgia immediately went full Venice Beach hippie and bought loads of furs and pillows, and we brought in a bunch of plants and painted the whole place white. She has always made our homes beautiful.
I was a lone Kiwi until Rhys and Jemaine Clement showed up.
Rhys, Rosie and I were really tight throughout university. Rhys and I started doing comedy together, and Rosie and I did theatre together. They’re two of my dearest, oldest mates. I think that I introduced them, they don’t agree.
It wasn’t until Jemaine and Rhys arrived in LA that I began to have Kiwi friends in the States. Rhys and I put on a monthly show at this venue called Largo. After a terrific gig there, I admitted to a friend that I really enjoyed being on stage. It was the first time in 20 years of performing I had said so. Being a Kiwi, I thought that implied a kind of ego, and I didn’t want to sound like I had my head shoved up my bum.
Americans are loud, and Kiwis are more reticent. It’s not that people here aren’t enjoying themselves as much, they just don’t create mindless noise.
There has been culture shock.
I would say I still have a Kiwi sense of humour, but the Americans have made my comedy a lot more personal. Generally speaking, they are a lot more emotionally curious.
My brother and I used to write songs
about shagging sheep, silly nonsense. Whereas now, the songs are still utterly outrageous, but they come from a place of self reflection.
Kiwis really do think that therapy is weird, and that self-examination means there is something wrong with you. I think there is an epidemic of mental illness in New Zealand. People like John Kirwan come out and talk about depression, and it’s great to deal with that.
But the vast majority of people who function fine, don’t realise that they can do some work on themselves to function really well.
I had to bring my guitar and hats.
My comedy is musical. I like writing songs, and a 1963 Danelectro Convertible was the coolest guitar I’d ever seen. It’s as old as rock music, and crappy. They were sold in the Sears catalogues for $12. It’s made of pressed wood and it sounds wrong.
Everything about it is not cool, and I just love that. I’m much more interested in things that are wrong. I look at Stratocaster electric guitars and I get that, they’re the guitar. But mine has a janky soul.
I have far too many hats, and it drives my wife crazy. I left a bunch back in the States, but the little one is an Italian hat that I got in New York. I ended up putting bottle tops into it for a web series called the Alone Rangers that Rhys and I did during lockdown.
I could probably wear my boots until I get buried in them.
My boots are handmade by a company in Washington called White’s Boots that predates the American Civil War. They’re built for firefighters.
I wanted to kid myself that I was cool enough to wear them. I used them when I did a lot of motorcycle riding up into the South West, Texas and New Mexico and Arizona. They’re great boots for tramping around the farm in, practical, but also completely overbuilt. I love things that are going to get old with me.
I always missed the ocean.
When I was first in New York in the late 90s, I used to get on the Staten Island ferry and just ride back and forth for hours.
DaFins are Hawaiian bodysurfing fins. The Taylor’s Mistake HandSki is a similar thing that this guy Steve Mander in Christchurch started building back in the 70s. When I was a kid I wanted one so badly. And then recently, I saw a guy with one in the surf with one at Ta¯ wharanui.
You know how, when you bodysurf, you catch the wave and ride the white water into the shore? Well that thing is like a barrel magnet. So rather than going straight down the wave, you actually surf along the face of it like you would on a board.
The thing about where we are in the Auckland Harbour and Hauraki Gulf is the coastline. There are so many things to see. Southern California is one big sweep of beach from Ventura to San Diego. There are none of the coves and bays and hidden nooks. I had no idea how lucky we were to have an area like that on our doorstep.
Rhys served in the army in the Corps of Signals, so when he saw an old Signals truck come up for sale, he thought it could have been one of the trucks he drove.
We use it for towing boats around, rescuing cars that get stuck on the driveway, and as a surf rig.
Jonno Roberts in the NZ International Comedy Festival, performing Jonno Roberts Knows What He Is Doing. Totally. He’s at The Fringe Bar in Wellington from May 18-22.
See comedyfestival.co.nz.