I feel his pain:
Actor Ben Barrington has every sympathy for his Shortland Street character, who can’t have more children. Kerry Harvey reports.
Shortland Street star and infertility heartbreak.
When Shortland Street’s Drew McCaskill found out he couldn’t father any more children, actor Ben Barrington felt his character’s pain. “To discover that you are not able to have any more kids and you really want to – it’s crushing,” says the 43 year old who has played the often over-the-top plastic surgeon for more than five years. “Since I’ve become a father all these storylines involving kids are just so much easier to play because it is so relatable for me.” Barrington and his wife Kristie have a daughter Harley, four, and Kristie’s son Ollie, 18, also lives with the couple. They have no plans for more children. “But I totally understand what it feels like to want to have another one,” he says. “I know people who have battled for years and they can’t have any kids and they just desperately want to have babies.” As Drew and wife Harper (Ria Vandervis) come to terms with his infertility, they consider adoption as a way of providing their child Billy (Louis BrunelMorvan) – who is intersex – with a sibling. Lo and behold, within days of making the decision, a little boy falls into their arms. Five-year old Marley (James Allan) is brought into the hospital after his father is killed in the car crash that injures newlyweds Nicole (Sally Martin) and Maeve (Jess Sayer). Drew and Harper soon realise they want to include the boy in their family and – despite real couples having to wait years to adopt – there is every chance they may get their wish. “On Shortland Street, time is always condensed and things happen really,
“He’s got an intersex child and he’s always accepted that child from the beginning.” – Ben Barrington (pictured with Ria Vandervis and Louis Brunel-Morvan)
really quickly,” Barrington says. “From Marley showing up to us deciding that we absolutely love him and want him to be part of our family and we’re going to try to adopt ... that all happens in about three weeks.
“Such storylines don’t always wash and sometimes viewers point it out on social media saying, ‘Oh this is crazy’ or ‘This would never happen’.”
However, crazy is something Barrington – who has previously starred in shows including Top Of The Lake, The Almighty Johnsons and Offspring – has become used to since he moved to Ferndale. Drew provides many of the show’s more comedic moments, frequently rocketing from one ridiculous situation to another, often aided and abetted by the hospital’s geeky IT guy Damo Johnson (comedian Grant Lobban). Barrington says viewers lap it up. “It’s always what people comment on like, ‘I saw the one where you drank too much’ – people enjoy all that light, funny stuff,” Barrington says, adding Drew has evolved over the years.
“I think it’s just something that came out of the combination of Drew’s general air of idiocy and the writers years back figuring out that this was actually quite a good character to have – this ostensibly alpha-male figure who kind of takes himself and his own masculinity quite seriously but who is always getting the rug pulled out from under him.
“His own sense of self-importance and superiority just keeps letting him fall into these same traps again and again. And it will always end up blowing up in his face – he never learns.” Barrington does, however, believe while Drew might be an arrogant buffoon, he has his good points. “On the surface he’s very kind of alpha male, old fashioned, kind of right wing, privileged and arrogant but at the same time he’s not. He’s very modern, he’s quite liberal,” the actor says. “He’s got an intersex child and he’s always accepted that child from the beginning and protected that child. “He completely dotes on Billy. He didn’t grow up privileged. He struggled, brought up his brother, his dad b ****** d off when he was little, and Mum was a hippie who went off and joined a commune. Drew is sympathetic underneath it all.”
Which is lucky given Barrington says it is becoming hard to work out where he ends and Drew begins.
“Pretty much now it’s just me in different clothes. Sometimes I feel like the writers have bugged my house. It’s literally just scarily like my real life,” he says.
“The thing for an actor on Shortland Street is that there’s no end to the story. If an actor does a play or a TV series there’s a final episode or a final act and then it ends, but Shortland Street just keeps going on and on which means you’re just living two lives which become eerily overlapping.”