The net is closing in on Shortland Street’s unlikely serial killer Kylie.
Killer Kylie’s death toll on Shortland Street is growing but Kerry-Lee Dewing, the actor who plays the serial murderer, is well aware that such criminal deeds will eventually catch up with her character, as she tells Kerry Harvey.
Ferndale’s killer nurse Kylie Brown (Kerry-Lee Dewing) has claimed her third victim and now both she and actor Kerry-Lee Dewing are fighting for survival.
Many Shortland Street fans want Kylie stopped and some have even suggested she, too, be killed off.
“That doesn’t sound great,” says Dewing, one of Shortland Street’s longest-serving cast members and, until now, a firm fan favourite.
“If I’m going to stay around something has to happen to redeem me. But, in saying that, TK (Benjamin Mitchell) has killed as well and in the same kind of way as she did. I can survive.”
That said, Dewing is still in the dark about what the future holds for Kylie.
Meanwhile, she is making the most of what she says is an incredible opportunity.
“Most of the time some guest cast will come on and go crazy or kill a few people and then they get arrested or killed off or something like that, whereas this has been a whole development for a core character,” Dewing says.
“I’m absolutely relishing in the work. It’s incredible.”
So far, Kylie has killed Ferndale rapist Ian Reid (Phil Vaughan), her serial killer husband Dr Dylan Reinhart (Ryan O’Kane) – who killed her sister Julia (Jessica Joy Wood) and the baby she was carrying for Kylie – and now she has
added another wife killer, her one-time high school teacher Leighton Gilmore (Phillip Brooks), to her list of victims. “At some point it has to catch up with her,” Dewing admits, “especially now the police are becoming involved.” The police, in the form of Detective Natalie Mahoney (Monique Bree) – last seen getting hot and heavy with Constable Curtis Hannah (Jayden Daniels) – are not satisfied Gilmore died naturally and start asking questions. Mahoney quickly sets her sights on Kylie but struggles to persuade anyone else her suspicions are valid. Dewing believes there are several reasons that Kylie has been able to get away with her crimes, undetected by those around her. “For a start, medically, she’s clued up and knows what she’s doing,” Dewing says. “But also, I just don’t think people would ever presume that she’s capable of that kind of thing. “They know that she’s had this broken past and all the hurt, but I don’t think they would for a minute (suspect).” Kylie’s life has never been easy but in recent years she has lost her mum Norelle (Luanne Gordon), a terminal cancer sufferer who committed suicide in her final days, found her marriage to Frank Warner (Luke Patrick) was bigamous, then discovered her new husband, Dylan, had killed her sister – at the time his wife – and the baby she was carrying for Kylie.
“If I knew someone who had been through a hard time, I still wouldn’t think they were capable of murder.”
There is no doubt that Kylie is totally committed to what she is doing – and Dewing says she has worked hard to understand her character’s motivation. “She’s sorting out the good from the bad in the world,” she says. “She’s killing the people that are out there walking free that no one’s doing anything about. She feels like it’s justified. She has to because she’s still a good person at heart.” She pauses. “Yeah, she is.” However, Dewing believes Kylie needs to be stopped.
“More than just being stopped, I think she needs to have a moment for herself where she realises that she’s actually transformed – that she has the ability to do the same things as the people she hates.
“I don’t think she’s had her moment of being faced with herself and how she’s changed and how broken she’s become, how fractured she is.
“I think there will be an intervention at some point because people will see she’s not OK. But, of course, they all think it’s to do with Dylan and Frank and her mum and sister and baby and all of the stuff that’s happened to her. It can all kind of be justified.
“She can’t go back. Even if she does sort of come out of it OK, it still doesn’t take away what’s happened.”
“At some point it has to catch up with her.”
– Kerry-Lee Dewing on her character Kylie