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[Music] kiwi's Love at First like Finn we're making [Music] waves generate switch online
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[Music] today Michael gelvin welcome to my podcast thank you Dom it's a great
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pleasure to be here I've um I've it's a great pleasure to have you here I've
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been so excited about this all week I had a few people asking me um who have you got coming in for a chat this week
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and I um to a few of those people I said Michael Galvin and they they had a look
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on their face like Michael galin Michael galin I know the name and then you say Dr Chris Warner and everybody every
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single person knows exactly who you're talking about okay that's good that's
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good is it yeah it's been around for a while so you know yeah May May 25 1992 that's when shortland Street
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started and you were there for 5 years then had a three-year break and you've
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been back non-stop since 2000 that's correct yeah yeah and just some of the story lines by the way this is this is
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um Dr Warner not you Michael gin oh my god um five marriages over 20 romances including one in episode one
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which we'll get to uh six children a car crash resulting in drug addiction nearly
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getting murdered by his brother-in-law losing his wife to his drug addicted brother uh ending up in jail after being
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framed for murder surviving Cancer and a heart attack a controversial abortion storyline um and 2024 ended with your
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son taking you hostage and threatening to stab you in the neck I I think he left out being shot
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through the heart as well yeah I was shot through the heart but here I am I'm
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I'm stronger than ever yeah yeah it kind of sounds a bit crazy when you string
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them all together like that but um the the fun thing about that is that when you're in the middle of a story line
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you're just focused on the storyline you know F focused on making it as real and
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as credible as you can and um and I think we get away with making these things work really well and look
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realistic the only problem is when you do what you've just done and like string
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them all together and look back on someone's life and say how many people do you know have been married is it five
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or six I felt I feel I've been married six times but um I'm not the best person
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to ask you that that's over 30 years and um the last episode with your your son
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taking you hostage and threatening to stab you on the neck episode 8,078 wow um is that what it was okay
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yeah how many of would you have been in you had a threeyear Hiatus like 5,000 6,000 I don't know yeah maybe five or
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six even if it was just like one scene or yeah yeah I'm usually somewhere in
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the episode even if it's just you know popping in just in one scene or two you
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know that's a great thing about Shand street is that it's kind of real swings
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and roundabouts in terms of the story so you might be very busy you know with a quite intense storyline like I was at
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the end of well it wasn't really the end of last year but the Christmas Cliffhanger that we shot halfway through
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the year with you know all the Warners coming back and we're deciding what to
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do with Harry and should we put her in prison and and then in a situation where I'm at the moment when we're introducing
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the new characters for the new Blood season I'm not quite so busy because we're wanting to really push story lines
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with them so I'm more of a kind of a support player in those but it's really
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nice to be able to do both do do you prefer being the center of a story arc or do you like um just having a having a
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breather I like both I like both yeah yeah it's great it's you want you want
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the um you want the variation cuz it can get exhausting if you're the center of
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the story for too long and and that does happen with our characters you know the
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writers will fall in love with a with a certain character and it's usually a she
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and they'll they'll just give her storyline of her storyline and she'll
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just have month after month after month after a month where like she is just working you know 10 hours every day and
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it it can get too much so it's better when you can when you can mix it up so
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so we're we're recording this at about midday on a Friday and you had you had
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work this morning you came straight from surgery so to speak so the like the the episode the
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stuff that you were filming this morning like how how many weeks from now will that be on screen oh look that's not
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going to be on for a few months we're at the situation now because shortland
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street is only um when it when the new season begins it's only going to be played three times a week but we're
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actually shooting four time we're actually shooting four episodes a week so we're kind of getting really ahead of
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ourselves yeah it means it means we'll probably have finished shooting the year
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worth by maybe July so we're actually really far ahead um we used to only ever
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be um you know kind of two months at the most because of because we were shooting
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five episodes a week and they were playing five episodes a week when when it came to co we got down to about like
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one and a half weeks between when we were shooting it and when it was going on air and that was too close man that
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was too that was a bit crazy bit stressful but um at the moment it's because it's kind of difficult because
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you're shooting we're shooting in summer but really it's going to be not played
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till winter so that kind of affects the way when you you know you're shooting
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outside and you got big coats on and all the rest of it listen it's remarkable you know this
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this TV show that's been going what 33 years now um and just the whole broader
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you know shortland Street or South Pacific pitches team like the the amount of content that you guys are producing
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it's incredible it's so much right yeah oh yeah um and how how was that last
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year the like the it was sort of knife edge stuff right as to whether or not Shand Street would continue and the
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compromise was a drop back to three episodes a week I think I think look I'm
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not privy to these decisions I I only know what everyone knows about these things and yeah it looks like they've
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been you know been cutbacks all over with TV andz and so now we're down to three and as to how long it's going to
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go for I mean I hope it goes forever obviously but there's no there are no certainties in life and it's C certainly
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not in in this industry as you know yeah yeah no must must be been quite distressing
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for I guess I guess I guess it is I guess it is you're super chill and you're quite well I I don't know if I
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most of the people I mean the thing about the TV industry is that is that most jobs don't last for very long you
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know you'll do a show and that'll that'll be like shooting for seven
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months and then you'll leave and do something else and maybe if if it's a TV
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show maybe you'll be back next year or maybe you won't so I I feel like most
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people in our building are used to the idea of jobs not lasting forever and it's only people like me who are used to
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the idea of this thing going on indefinitely so so I think if anyone's going to be suffering it's me but um
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until it actually happens I'm fine yeah oh that's a good attitude what's what's
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your relationship with the show like how often how often do you watch it I try yeah I try I try to keep up with it I
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must I go through phases to be honest I might you know watch it for a few weeks and then drop off and and then not see
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it for a few weeks I certainly watched the um all the stuff the Christmas Cliff stuff which I thought was just fantastic
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it's nice it's nice to watch it and be you know be inspired by it and see that
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see everyone else doing terrific work you know I love it I love it can are you able to watch it objectively or do you
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just like see see your your flaws or things that you could I feel I can watch other people's scenes objectively I I
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certainly can't watch my own scenes objectively I'm generally just thinking
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like how bad I look it's like oh really you could have sucked your tummy in for
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that one or you know you could have lifted your chin a bit you know I'm just
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thinking that kind of stuff it's very superficial thing but yeah that's all I
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noticed I think yeah it's funny to hear that you know if anyone would be used to
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that or used to the idea of sing themselves on on screen it's you you've
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had more screen time than anyone but uh it's refreshing to hear that you were
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used to have those self-conscious yeah no definitely no okay um we'll cover off a little bit of
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lwh hanging fruit then I want to go back to the early years of Michael Galvin um the the the deck pack is that the
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most iconic please tell me that's not your penis I think it has become that it
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is now supplanted you're not in Guatemala now Dr opata yeah which is weird which is weird certainly when we
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did it when I got the script I I was like oh great that's really funny you know I just I just got to do it the
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right way and so we did it we ended up doing three takes of it because it's like oh no you know it was like
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Goldilocks one was too much one was not enough and the last one was right and then um and then we didn't think anym
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about it and then it kind of Hit the Airways and you you know was on screen you think I wonder if there'll be any
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reaction and the reaction was absolutely nuts and I can't quite put my finger on
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it so to speak but I think it's that I think it's that word penis because it's
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a funny word it's kind of a rude word but it kind of isn't and you're kind of
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not allowed to say it but you kind of are because it's just an anatomical thing you know so I think it hit that
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sweet spot of being rude but not too rude and also I guess yeah and I also I guess I it's it's a um it's a relevant
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thing dickpics and so but it hasn't really been addressed and certainly not on shortland street and this was
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addressed in a kind of an amusing way so but when when you're when you're doing
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that scene um like how much practice do you put into the delivery of it or the execution of the line you you you just
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you don't want to you can't over prepare for that kind of thing but you want to
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give it enough energy so that so that it's amusing but you don't want to give
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it so much that you're remove moving yourself from the reality of the scene you know it it always has to be a
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reaction that someone would actually give in real life you know but the fact is in real life sometimes we're
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unintentionally funny so that's the kind of the place you want to be you want to
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kind of you want to be this as this this this character who is unintentionally funny but of course the actor is trying
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to make it funny you know but you always want to play it straight you want to play it straight and how many takes uh
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well just three like I said yeah yeah because um because we just had to cuz I think the first time I I was over
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excited about it I overplayed it and then I underplayed it and then the last one the director quite liked and and the
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the the like the camera people on the other side of the camera like are they like how do you keep a straight face are
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they laughing no they're pretty used to that kind of stuff yeah you the the the
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crew are great about if there's something funny in the scene usually the people wait at the end of the scene
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that's when they'll let the laugh out you know we have so much that we're
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shooting that that the the crew are really great about just not about just wanting to you know make sure we're
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getting through it and um yeah yeah and then but the and the other thing about that was when it ended up on the Kimmel
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show and Alec Baldwin was playing Chris water and I'm like and I still to this
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day I can't I can't I can't put that anywhere in my head I don't know where
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to put that that's just so weird and so unexpected and kind of is it a good thing or a bad thing I don't know I just
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it's just a strange thing is the only yeah yeah you saw that hewin on the Kimel show yeah I loved it
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it made me sort of proud to be a kiwi okay good good good good but then then the way they they managed a perfect
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reproduction of our set you know they obviously just used the the screenshot of our but it was like they were in our
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set too you know Alec bordwin and Jimmy kall it was just yeah it was too much yeah was that amazing for you or no no
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it wasn't amazing it was just well it was amazing but not necessarily in a good way it was just strange like I said
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and it was just kind of like it's not our little show shouldn't be on that in
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that environment you know and H and also I felt they were kind of being a bit a bit unfairly kind of mocking us when as
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if we weren't in on the joke you know which we were we knew it was a funny scene but um as I say it's funnier if
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you deliver it straight and I felt they thought that we were that we were we weren't aware of that it was funny but
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oh no it's it's it's a very funny show and I feel like it's got funny
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as it's got on like it's it's definitely a show that doesn't take itself too
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seriously yeah it always says I mean goes anything that goes for 30 years it's going to have ups and downs and
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yeah and we did and and certainly when we had um you know Doo and Desi oh you you I don't know if you watched the show
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but yeah certainly there are characters that come and go that are that are really funny and and and beef up the the
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humor and also for for me you know sometimes they they let me do some funny stuff so that's nice yeah oh yeah um
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it's speak funny stuff like that and also I supposed speaking of like um you
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know Jimmy Kimmel and late night American talk shows Conan O'Brien oh yes so he he was on the show last this was
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an amazing moment yeah it was F first of all how tall is that guy so tall he's so
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tall he would Tower over you even he's just so tall yeah but he's just so
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bright you know he's amazing they tried to kind of bamboozle him by well it was
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kind of he was in on the joke but by just like flooding him with all this medical dialogue these these crazy
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medical terms and he just nailed it you know he had one nights to learn all he just nailed all of it he's uh he's quite
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incredible but he's he's very funny like he comes on to he comes onto the set and
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everyone in the building I mean usually when we're shooting something there's
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like the shooting crew maybe at the most maybe 15 people but you have seen like it's just everyone in the building
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there's like 150 people there and so that's kind of slightly intimidating for
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a start like shooting a scene but he's able to just on the one hand entertain
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everyone and just come out with these funny lines and just kind of live up to that image we all have on him but then
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for me the the great part was cuz it was just me and him and the scene and so we
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were waiting you know behind the the scenes as it were to come on and I was just able to ask him about stuff and you
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know the Simpsons and and he was just so is that what you asked yeah I couldn't help it
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he was probably sick of but I it's so cool that he was the head head writer when on when the Simpsons wrote the um
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the monal episode which is one of my favorites so yeah so but I was to be able to ask him about you know the other
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other soaps that he did for part of this crazy show that he's got but just talking to him and he was just so
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forthcoming and and just nice and he'd ask me questions as well like he's just
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he's just one of those nice guys that that's that could just just it could
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just all be about him but he's chosen to go the other way yeah it's just lovely
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yeah you love Simpsons hey I read some old interviews about you you Simpsons obsessed yeah yeah no they cuz used to I
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think back in the old days you know when everyone watched TV it was either on the
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other channel against the Shand Street or sometimes it was after Short Street it was on at a very similar time and it
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was really one of those um water cooler shows which don't really exist anymore
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and the next day you'd come into work and you did you see the Simpsons did you
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see that it was so funny and it kind of it changed mainstream comedy that's for
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sure made it allowed to be a bit kind of sharper and a bit nastier in a way yeah
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the term that you just said water cooler show that's that's a thing I haven't
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heard in a while and I suppose you don't have water coers anymore because everyone's got their own you know Frank
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and green bottle of water um but also yeah just the fragmentation of um the media that you've seen over the last um
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three three decades you don't have those shows anymore everyone's streaming their
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own thing in their own time yeah yeah and um and you know shows like shte street is as popular as they are it's
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not it's not the same as it used to be cuz yeah there there so much competition
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so many other streamers and everything yeah yeah but you know luckily sh Street's really holding its ground and
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has still got a a really strong viewership so that's kind of reassuring in a
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way it's a wonderful show and it's a wonderful um piece of the New Zealand
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Fabric and I I suppose like from my personal perspective as someone that hasn't watched it religiously in a very
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long time um there was like a sense of like alarm or Panic or sadness from me last year when I heard that it might be
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on the chopping block or and you know ultimately drop back to three nights a week like it's um it's what don't
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necessarily realize you know what you've got until it's too late exactly we got
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and we you know the country needs we everyone needs their own you know homegrown drama and everyone's you know
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Aussie's got two and England's got you know four h so we we need it you know we
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need we need it we need it obviously for the industry so that there's always
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something there employing people but I think we need it for culturally we need it so that people are always being can
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turn on this TV and see themselves reflected back you know which I think sh Street has done a really great job at
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being able to reflect all of New Zealand you know yeah much as you can we'll take
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a a detail from Short Street but I do want to get back to that because um yeah when it launched I think it was a time
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where there was this real sort of cultural cringe thing in the country and new zealanders um we felt awkward about
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seeing ourselves on screen um so I want to like get into that and what that was like being in the firing line yeah oh
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very much so yeah this is this is the thing I keep harking on about is that that some of the the because when it
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came out okay I admit it it wasn't very good and when it started uh but the thing that people that we got really
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criticized for was our accents you know the these accents that you and I are talking in now these kiwi accents people
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were not used to hearing them so so in a way we we all just as a country had to get over that and just start
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appreciating these voices as our own voices and these stories as our own stories and that happened and I really
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feel it happened because of shorten Street you know five nights a week people got got used to it you know and
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then they started to love it because they they got used to themselves you know it was uh but certainly when it
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came off there was a big cultural CR you know all the it's not a thing anymore
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but but for quite a while all the all the um all the radio announcers all the TV announcers they all had to talk a bit
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like this like they' been to rer or somewhere in England you know everyone spoke like this and you know Short
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Street I hope kind of cured us of that yeah and yeah I I watched episode SE season 1 episode one of Shand Street
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last night was that um well I had this Vision in my head that it was um appalling like yeah because we just
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remember it being being terrible but it's I thought it was quite good yeah look I'm glad you said that because I I
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just just now dropped in the thing that wasn't very good when it started but
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then yeah well I for some um because it's just hit YouTube I had to rewatch the first ones and I was like this is a
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this is fine what what was everybody being so nasty about I think it's just the cultural cring I'm glad you said
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that yeah yeah no no we'll get back into that like it's straight into it like
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it's you know you're you're having sex with a yeah aerobics instructor in
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episode one season one and like there you've both got your torsos out it's a
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very very steamy I yeah an actual nudity in there right nearly yeah well you saw
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her naked back which which you don't see very often anymore yes on sh Street
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anyway yeah so back to Chris Warner but first of all U Michael Gavin so um yeah tell us about your early years so you're
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born in the UK your dad had what was your dad something in the government something he was he
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was an economist and and um at the time he was an economist and so he was over there working for Gat or some
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International agreement I can't remember but it was great because a Mento was
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born in London so I've got a a UK passport and also so as my daughter so that's cool because I was born there um
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yeah then and then uh yeah he had a great career he was he was the head of the prime minister's Department under
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Robert moldun who old people will know who that that is and young people won't
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and then he was the head of Treasury so he he he he was a very um significant person around Wellington circles so I
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was very proud of him but it but it kind of encouraged me like both of my brothers are in the in the Civil Service
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uh but I I kind of wanted to go do something else you know so that that that was different from that so that
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maybe one of the reasons I'm an actor is is just to do something that was different from that yeah what are your
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Recollections of the early years in the UK how old we when you moved to New Zealand I have no none I was two so I
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have no I have no Recollections yet although I was watching this um Beatles The Beatles documentary when they were
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um up in the um you know they're shooting the uh what's called get back the the one get back and they were in
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London and they were doing the concert on the roof and and that they were shooting the London streets and I was
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like I could have been on that London Street because I was in London at that exact time so I was looking for myself
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but I wasn't there well my mom at least so there was a todle of there with a
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with a quiff a quiff of here there was are you are you a beetles guy yeah yeah yeah crazy beetles fan crazy obsessive
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Beatles fan that Peter Jackson series get back some people complained it was like um like to Peter Jackson in terms
00:20:46
of the length but for me not long enough I loved it the interplay between um i i
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s of bought into this narrative that um like John and Paul had some beef and they hated each other and then you see
00:20:56
the interplay between them and it was a wonderful relationship sh was I'm glad
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so you're beetles fan too oh massively I'm get Goosebump oh good on you wasn't
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it amazing and and also that how unfairly maligned Paul had been like you know they were like oh he's just a
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control freak but he was clearly just trying to keep the boat afloat and everyone else is like about it and that
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Wonder there's a wonderful conversation that you didn't see but you could hear
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they obviously recorded it where he's talking to John Lennon and he's saying
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you're the you're the leader of this group come on you know you're the leader
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we to follow you and so it wasn't like he was trying to take over at all he was
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just trying to keep it going and and and and and he was trying to kind of G John
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Lin along who yeah yeah it's wonderful about all day yeah and Yoko just like sleeping
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there like a cat yeah Lu she luckily she wasn't singing yeah have you seen that clip of
00:21:49
her singing along with the the Chuck Barry performance and I have yes yeah I mean there's some things you can
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write off his art and there's other things that's just poor singing um okay
00:22:01
so yes you born in London move here to Catholic Family yeah Catholic yeah big on the Catholicism you know we're quite
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quite a staunch Catholic Family I got church every Sunday and all of that and Confirmation and uh what's the other
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thing confession all of that all of that weirdness all of that Catholic weirdness
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yeah you you still what do you consider yourself now no no no uh agnostic I don't know yeah agnostic means I don't
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know so I don't know know yeah it was very I got to University and I was still
00:22:32
all kind of yes I believe in God and all the rest of it and and I just in a philosophy J because I studied
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philosophy and and the and the philosophy Jor just said oh you know if you believe in God is probably because
00:22:44
you were brought up to believe in God he was just talking generally I'm like no
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no no I believe in God because God is real and then I thought wait a minute he's and I thought about it and I
00:22:54
thought he's probably right I probably that is probably the only reason I believe in God and all these other
00:22:58
things cuz I was brought up to believe in them and then I thought well what I'll do is I'll just kind of put that to
00:23:04
one side and if it's true I'll be led back to it you know this kind of allseeing all powerful om omnip kind of
00:23:12
single omniscient single being and I haven't really been LED back to it so I
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I had a similar upbringing very religious family the whole the whole work what religion Catholic here okay uh
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yeah yeah yeah so first communion baptism confession the poor pre like 10-year-old Dom didn't have a lot didn't
00:23:31
have a lot of good [ __ ] to share in but I um I I I sort of gave it up as soon as
00:23:36
I was old enough to make my own my own decisions really because I realized I don't know like the I think the essence
00:23:40
of of the Bible and the Ten Commandments is good it's basically don't be an
00:23:43
[ __ ] um but I realized you you can be you can be a bad person and go to church
00:23:48
every weekend and you can be a good person and not go to church every weekend oh yeah AB do you still have
00:23:52
like um elements of Catholic guilt and stuff and you find like a very much so yeah yeah you are kind of you do have
00:23:59
that innate feeling that things are your fault sticks with your ey yeah yeah no it's hard to it's hard to shake off yeah
00:24:05
definitely definitely I I think there's a lot of a lot of bad things about it
00:24:09
and some good things too but yeah it's not my own daughter I didn't raise with
00:24:14
any kind of religion or anything and just let her Discover it if she's going
00:24:18
to and yeah cool yeah so you get a pH Philosophy degree yeah yeah and and then what do do you because you you get the
00:24:27
Philosophy degree then go to drama school the amazing drama toy I applied for toy farari and which wasn't toy
00:24:33
fatti then it was just New Zealand drama school and I didn't get in and so I was
00:24:37
like oh and so I I spent a year uh in the civil service at the external Aid Division and um I hated it and then I
00:24:46
reapplied for drama school and luckily I got in and I guess until shortland Street my life was kind of full of these
00:24:54
um kind of deadlines that i' give myself cuz like if I didn't get into drama
00:24:58
school that second time I'd be like I'm going to do something else and and then
00:25:02
when I got out of drama school I had a few jobs and then have you know a big period four five months with nothing and
00:25:07
then I'd like I'd have a deadline okay so if I don't have a job by this time I
00:25:11
got to start doing something else and luckily each time something would come up but uh yeah and then sh Street came
00:25:18
up and then there were no deadlines anymore it's um yeah it's not a career
00:25:22
path for the faint is it I had um I had cam Jones on the podcast last year who played Dallas uh and like you he went to
00:25:28
toy fatti um and and he's still like chasing that acting dream like he spent
00:25:32
some time in LA like on the on the audition treadmill he's in Sydney at the moment like it's horrible it's horrible
00:25:39
he keep he keeps moving the goal post yeah it's it's it's horrible it's
00:25:43
horrible like um our our uh our producer Oliver driver who's also a friend of
00:25:48
mine he's he's got a great quote he just says saying you want to make a living as
00:25:52
an actor is like saying you want to make a living as a Lotto winner it's like
00:25:56
saying that it's like saying yeah I'm what I'm going to do with my life is I'm
00:25:59
going to win Lotto and then because it's it's you're just not in control of of of
00:26:04
luck of of good fortune or bad fortune you're not in control of that you know
00:26:08
and I you know and there's a lot of talk around isn't there about manifesting and
00:26:14
you know and it will and it will happen it will happen but I've just seen too
00:26:18
many super talented people you know who you can't fault as having a negative
00:26:22
attitude or whatever it is who just are not have not made a living you know in their my age and and they've just and
00:26:30
they're really poor and they can't afford a car and they certainly can't
00:26:33
afford a house and they're terrific you know really talented people but it's
00:26:38
just it's just the cruelty of the profession especially in this country you know because the the pay rates are
00:26:43
so much lower because the population's so much lower so yeah economies of scale
00:26:48
um yeah you must have seen yeah some like incredibly talented people who you thought are that person's going places
00:26:55
and then the flip side of that as well someone's like H I did not see that coming yeah okay so he's got his own
00:27:00
show in the States now okay okay right KJ or no no they are all actually terrific
00:27:08
they are all actually terrific it's but yeah just go to show I suppose the lottery aspect of um this career part
00:27:13
yeah it is a lottery although KJ is extremely good-looking and so is Martin Henderson and you know I think that that
00:27:19
helps yeah atstar he's got a great he's got a great quality too you know he got
00:27:24
got a sexy quality about him yeah yeah that kind of confidence helps but but you're
00:27:30
right there's no people come through and I go wow that person they're going to
00:27:34
set the world on fire and then you just don't hear of them again it's uh it's a
00:27:39
cruel profession and it's not fair it really isn't I mean life isn't fair but
00:27:44
acting certainly is even more unfair than life well you learn that when you get to our age like into your 50s you
00:27:50
realize you know yeah bad things happen to good people [ __ ] happens to everyone
00:27:54
yeah yeah um yeah okay so you you graduate from TW which like so yeah I suppose like knowing that about you now
00:28:02
like I watched um episode one of shortland Street and I thought this guy's [ __ ] good like you first of all
00:28:07
you got to be good to get into toy fat yeah so it's like no I sort of I suppose
00:28:11
I watched it from a p um protective sort of aspect it's like like none of us that
00:28:15
were sitting there criticizing it could have done any better like this was this was top-notch acting at the time yeah I
00:28:21
that's what I you you're watching it again yeah then it is interesting I I
00:28:25
did think the same thing I was like oh it wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered
00:28:28
it and some of it was great and but I certainly didn't remember it some of it
00:28:32
as being great I think um yeah I think you're right I think that was it was a
00:28:35
cultural cringe at the time that was just like wanting to diss it yeah yeah so you you're dailing some um some
00:28:42
theater shows you did the evly brothers show with Tim Barm yeah yeah yeah and um
00:28:47
shark in the park which I remember no one El New Zealand cop show said in Wellington no one else would remember
00:28:52
probably no unless you were actually on it then you remember it but it's only
00:28:55
the people who are on it who remember it that's right and I even this it's funny
00:28:58
because we had an actor on yesterday Called Bruce Phillips it's lovely lovely
00:29:02
brilliant actor from Wellington he says I remember I was in your neighborhood watch episode in neighborhood watch was
00:29:08
the sitcom written by Roger Hall who's a very successful comedy playwright in New
00:29:13
Zealand it's like oh God that's right but these are all things that happened
00:29:16
before Short Street the interesting thing for me is that like coming out of drama school or even when I join drama
00:29:22
school the picture in my head of of of a career as an actor in New Zealand was focused mainly on theater I thought well
00:29:31
I'll mainly do theater and then I'll pick up the odd TV job because that's
00:29:35
all they were and there weren't many of us wanting to be actors and then shortness stre came along and after I
00:29:41
don't know if they still exist but certainly after SCH streen had been on for a couple of years all these drama
00:29:47
schools started to pop up everywhere because kids were suddenly thinking oh you can make a living as an actor you
00:29:53
know it's not just about those plays that I'm never going to go and watch
00:29:57
it's like the TV which I watch every night oh there's some kiwis and they're
00:30:01
actors and well I can do that too and so I so shorton Street For Better or Worse
00:30:06
definitely introduced that concept of being having a career as an actor I I feel whereas before it was it was um it
00:30:15
was a kind of a very Fringe kind of theater thing it suddenly was more mainstream yeah which probably is a bad
00:30:21
thing yeah well there was so little um New Zealand made TV shows at the time eh and and the ones that were they were
00:30:27
they were you was sort of H and misses as with that they're going to be successful like I'm thinking Melody
00:30:31
rules which I think started about the same time as Shand Street um then there was gloss in the late 80s which was
00:30:36
reasonably successful gloss preceded sha Street and that was a big deal at least
00:30:39
in Oakland it didn't quite kind of Ripple out inside of Oakland so much but definitely in Oakland because when we
00:30:46
started shortland Street we were kind of hanging around with all the gloss people
00:30:48
like you know Simon press and all that and G Ling and and that was exciting because they were really famous in in
00:30:54
Oakland and we were kind of like you know maybe we were going to be that famous maybe we weren't and that was
00:30:59
exciting exciting times yeah yeah so so um you were living in Oakland you were living with um Martin Chalker yeah who
00:31:06
who ended up um he went for the same role as you but he's he's had a great
00:31:10
career yeah a great film career over in Europe he's done terrifically well but
00:31:14
yeah weirdly it was down to me and him for Chris Warner and we were flatmates um and you know I I got that I always
00:31:21
say you know I won the battle but he won the war is because he's had a brilliant
00:31:24
career over in you know over in Europe doing all these wonderful film and everything he wouldn't he came back and
00:31:30
he did like months as this character called lard dods who was a proctologist and he was brilant and very funny but
00:31:36
but Maron is not the temperament to do what I've done which is just like you
00:31:41
know stay with the same role and he he he's a very he that that would that would bore him he loves to have you know
00:31:48
new challeng and new yeah variety yeah me it's not that I don't have challenges
00:31:53
because I do but they challenges within this kind of um you know the same character yeah I think longevity in any
00:32:01
sort of career takes a certain amount of mental tenacity as well which um I suppose you need to be the right person
00:32:05
to do it yeah there are definitely types who are suited to it you know there's a
00:32:11
um oh I can't remember the name of the film it's a wonder it's something like
00:32:15
hero Love Sushi or something it's this wonderful film about this um this Japanese Chef who's got this tiny it
00:32:22
seats four people that's this tiny sushi restaurant in a train station in in
00:32:26
Tokyo and it's the the the waiting list is three years long because he is the
00:32:32
best sushi chef in the world and so you wait and you finally and and and he's
00:32:37
just and he so he just does the same thing he only serves sushi but he's just
00:32:43
kind of dedicated his life to perfecting it and you know there are artists like that because like when I was over in
00:32:50
London my partner was an artist and she was she loved this artist called Morandi
00:32:54
who was I I can't I think it was Spanish but he would just paint these paintings
00:32:59
of kind of slightly abstract paintings of bottles and that's all he'd paint and
00:33:03
that's that was all he ever did and people would say can you paint this can you paint that and he was very famous
00:33:08
but that's all he did because that's he wanted to get that right you know what I
00:33:12
mean and I kind of feel that maybe I'm of that temperament where it doesn't I'm
00:33:18
really happy to be in the same role because it's always changing because people are always changing and people
00:33:24
are coming in and I like the idea of just doing one thing and exploring the different facets of it you know and
00:33:33
maybe perfecting an area of it and then trying to perfect a new area era of it and some people have that temperament
00:33:39
and some people don't but I do also I suppose yeah that threeyear break I'm
00:33:44
I'd imagine I'm probably projecting here but I'd imagine that gave you some
00:33:47
clarity so you have 5 years of Chris Warner three years in the the Wilderness and then you're like [ __ ] that yeah
00:33:54
there's a lot of that a lot of that yeah and and kind of it's reassuring too CU
00:33:57
it's like I I don't have that thing at the back of my mind saying ah you should
00:34:01
have at least given it a go you know cuz I gave it a go I went to the wrong place
00:34:05
I I tried to do it in London instead of LA and London was certainly at the time was not set up for people from the
00:34:11
outside you know they've got enough of their own people someone like La is always looking always looking outside
00:34:17
you know for the for the for the newest arrival that's gonna get everyone excited but yeah no it did not work out
00:34:24
for me I was so poor and um and uh so when I got the call I did have to think about it I was like oh that's a bit of a
00:34:33
you know it's a bit embarrassing to kind of it's like admitting defeat you know
00:34:38
like coming back with your tail between your KN yeah yeah but really yeah but yeah that's how I thought but I got back
00:34:43
here and I realized that thing that you know you just have to keep reminding yourself in life is nobody cares
00:34:49
nobody's watching your life and judging you because they're just watching their
00:34:53
own life you know nobody gives a [ __ ] about that kind of stuff because nobody spends that much time thinking about you
00:35:00
because they're too busy thinking about themselves you know I just fell into
00:35:03
that trap of of just thinking oh wow everyone's going to think this and everyone's going to think that well well
00:35:08
that you know the brutal truth is they're not thinking about you at all you know just do what you're going to do
00:35:13
that is that is um I'm finding personally like one of the joys of getting older like you you have you
00:35:18
realize on everyone's busy thinking abouts um they not like an arrogance to think everyone's thinking about you it
00:35:25
is that's exactly what it is and also um yeah also anyone that thinks poorly of
00:35:30
you it's like well [ __ ] those people you're not you're not doing it for them
00:35:33
anyway are you no no and usually it's more of a statement about them and than
00:35:37
it is about you 100% yeah so um yes a short Street starts on May 25 uh 1992 yeah so when does it sort of start like
00:35:48
beginning of 1992 is that when it sort of when would we start shooting it yeah when it would have been a few months
00:35:53
before that yeah so you turn up hung over to the audition to the audition I was hung over yeah not not to the first
00:35:58
day of shooting to the audition and that's I'm sure that's why I got the job
00:36:02
you know cuz I didn't have that that kind of anxious energy that you have when your audition and certainly at the
00:36:08
time you know when I had more energy because you know in my early 20s I had too much energy and and it just it just
00:36:16
kind of knocked the uh the top off it and the other thing was is it lowered my voice you know so I had because you know
00:36:23
was Chris Warner is supposed to be Mr Sexy And so just without even trying I was just more relaxed and and my voice
00:36:29
was just lower and I was like this is a really good idea getting hung over for this audition how did you this so you do
00:36:37
you know you apply for drama school you miss out you go back you do it threeyear
00:36:41
course then you you know you hustle around then you have this big opportunity why do you get pissed the
00:36:45
night before I I don't know I think maybe I was getting pissed quite often at the time and so you know um I I think
00:36:57
yeah see nobody at the time nobody knew it was going to be what it was it was just another show and it was like oh
00:37:04
it's they're going to make a uh the New Zealand neighbors and it's like are they
00:37:08
really you know okay and everyone auditioned for it because you know you wanted to be on that train like uh like
00:37:16
I've said this before but I hope you don't mind me repeating but everyone a
00:37:19
lot of people thought they were too good for it but they still audition for it you know in the hopes that they would
00:37:24
get it and be able to turn it down and say oh no no I'm not doing so um but everyone audition for it but it was just
00:37:29
another show no nobody knew that it was going to still be going in 33 years time
00:37:34
you know it was it was just another show and and for all we knew it it could have
00:37:38
just been a a fizzer like so many other kiwi shows well you you predicted at the
00:37:42
time that the show would be dead within a year did I say that there was a quote I read somewhere oops did I say that
00:37:49
happily wrong I was trying to cover my ass and and not sound like I was big noting it or yeah so so so the the the
00:37:56
production you get the RO production starts um what's the feeling like on the
00:38:00
set great the feeling on the set is great we all just thought we were brilliant you know cuz we were getting
00:38:04
all this positive feedback and and the producer who who was the creator over it Karina denave she's a dead now but
00:38:13
wonderful wonderful woman and she was really inspiring and get us and she kept coming back oh the networker watching
00:38:19
the the network thinkers brilliant you know and we're all so excited and then
00:38:23
all these banners up around town you know they really pushed the show all these ads for it on TV and the banners
00:38:29
and everything and we're like woohoo and was like we were so excited and we and
00:38:33
we all got together into the studios we watched the first night together on TV and I was like ah laughing along oh look
00:38:39
at you and then we all went into out into town and and like Yahoo and it wasn't until then that we realized that
00:38:45
that people did not like this TV show they were like oh and and slowly you know over the week and the reviews came
00:38:52
out and we were all kind of like you know crawling back into our shelves just going okay maybe it's not the amazing
00:38:57
thing we thought it was going to be but but the the view cuz back in the day they would they would publish viewing uh
00:39:06
figures and they were done in kind of 10 minute chunks because that's usually
00:39:11
because you'd have like 10 minutes of a show then you have ad break you know so
00:39:15
so every half hour was divided into three and so the viewing figures for the opening night of Short Street was the
00:39:21
first one the first 10 minutes were phenomenal like everybody tuned into to see was like and then it kind of then it
00:39:28
was kind of cut by a half as people and then by the last viewing thing was nobody was watching it so everybody kind
00:39:36
of tuned in and went should we watch the next okay and then just gave up and it thought nah it's not very good we we we
00:39:45
we'll flag it so maybe this is about the time you made the quote about it it's
00:39:48
not going to last a year um based read the reviews yeah yeah how how was that time for you I mean like it didn't all
00:39:55
hinge on on your performance obviously you're part of like a big a big team it's an ensemble absolutely yeah but was
00:40:01
that was that hurtful or did oh we had someone like you know Katarina a producer I mentioned before she she was
00:40:08
very look don't worry about it don't worry about the reviews of course they
00:40:11
hate us it's because they they're a soap we're soap everyone always hates soap
00:40:15
don't worry about it that doesn't count the reviews don't count what counts as a
00:40:19
we you know slowly build an audience which is exactly what happened you know what a leater well yes she was brilliant
00:40:24
she was brilliant she was brilliant Fearless uh and she and so that's what happened you know and it started off
00:40:30
mainly with the the kids because they were more open to it you know they were more open to seeing these kiwis and kiwi
00:40:38
accents and they they really liked that they liked that that there were these you know people their own age like
00:40:43
Martin Henderson he was only 16 at the time and and an dchen who played Kirsty she was just a little older and and they
00:40:51
loved them you know that was like Kylie and Jason but the Kiwi version and and the kids were open to that you know the
00:40:56
adults weren't but but generally because of their enthusiasm the ratings got better and
00:41:02
and that was infectious and and slowly it became and by the end of the first year where I thought it was going to die
00:41:08
the opposite thing happened and it was huge it was really huge yeah it got um it got very very massive um yeah I
00:41:16
wonder if there's an element yeah something you said before about um you being a soap things so soap's
00:41:21
automatically get sort of panned I had um Dame Julie Christie on the podcast recently okay and she talked about sort
00:41:26
of um your cultural cring and just some of the negative feedback she's had um I
00:41:30
feel like there is sort of an elitism there oh yeah you know I feel like like like
00:41:35
in terms of awards and stuff I feel like like shortland Street doesn't maybe get
00:41:38
the flowers it deserves for what it's I've always I've always I've always felt
00:41:42
that you know watching it watching it the the way I do I thought you know when I mean you know there's a lot of it
00:41:48
there's a lot of it you know there was there's only three episodes a week this
00:41:51
year but it used to be five and same amount of drama though I believe this year a same amount of drama just
00:41:56
squished into three epis 40% less episodes but 100% more drama right so each episode is more
00:42:03
dramatic that's right yeah well we got to do that in a way because you want to
00:42:07
keep people hanging on you know it's like the whole thing of the Christmas Cliff at the end of the um of the year
00:42:12
it's got to be big so the people come come back if you've only got three
00:42:15
episodes a week you got to make them a bit more Punchy just to get you know hold people's attention um but what were
00:42:21
we talking about before before Oh we talking about how like I feel like it's
00:42:25
overlooked for awards yeah yeah and and so all right so there's a lot of it and
00:42:30
so you know so some episodes are obviously better than others you know but when it's really good the good
00:42:37
episodes I personally and obviously I'm biased it's it's good or if not better
00:42:42
than other any other kiwi show you know and like our uh the Christmas Cliff that
00:42:47
we did um last year the one with um where harise with and drwan Harper and I thought that was fantastic it was so it
00:42:56
was heartbreaking so so moving and and and and my story line was all these Warners coming back and and it was so
00:43:02
cool I you know I I feel we are not given the Kudos we we uh we deserve yeah and I I know that you don't say that
00:43:10
from a selfish perspective this is you no I'm The Wider team around you yeah
00:43:15
all the all the terrific work I see from all my you know all my fellow actors and
00:43:19
the crew and directors and the writers you know just really trying just to get it as good as they can yeah um so I've
00:43:27
got a quote from you um oh no this is this is like from this is uh 1997 so this is uh what 29 29 years ago okay so
00:43:37
I just left I just I'd left Short Street at this day after four years on Shand
00:43:41
Street there was so much of me and Dr Warner I wasn't sure where he ended and
00:43:45
I began okay yeah yeah I I don't care about that anymore that doesn't as a question you know that
00:43:54
where do you start where does the character again that doesn't I don't find that interesting really it's kind
00:44:00
of you you use so much of yourself in any role you know like I did a little a guest rooll this year uh last year I did
00:44:10
a guest rooll on brokenwood because Tim Bal who is the showrunner on on brokenwood he's an old old friend of
00:44:16
mine they' been trying to be on and it was kind of interesting to do that and
00:44:19
to realize like to play a different character who was very different from Chris Warner but to realize you w't even
00:44:25
use yourself you know and and even the characters who who you know transform the actors who transform themselves for
00:44:31
characters in the end it's you can only use you you know um so so yes of course
00:44:38
it's it's good to to make a to draw a line and go well this person is have has
00:44:44
these responses and I have the opposite response but uh but ultimately it's always you yeah I wonder if if at the
00:44:51
time you thought that because it was um you were so famous when when do you think you were you were the show was at
00:44:57
its peak do you think that would have been like 1997 or after 2000 when was the shortland street magazine out there
00:45:02
was a magazine yeah that was that was that was a kind of 94 95 I I you know I don't want like to use the word Peak but
00:45:10
you know in terms of the quality of the show but maybe in terms of the the the it did have a peak in the
00:45:18
mid90s and uh and then I left and then I had another Peak I feel somewhere in the
00:45:23
in the 2000s you know with the Joey storyline because it I'm I'm just talking about the ratings here I'm just
00:45:29
talking about the ratings yeah the ratings were very strong after about the first year and a half they were really
00:45:35
strong and then they might have tailed off and then after the Joey storyline uh Joey was the was a serial killer um that
00:45:45
that gave it a new lease of life and and the ratings were back up to where they used to be the Joey the great thing
00:45:51
about the Joey storyline okay so what happened was Joey was this sweet sweet lovable nurse and he was a serial killer
00:45:59
but the great thing about that story line was they they they established all these these deaths happening on Short
00:46:05
Street all these murders and nobody knew who was doing it including the cast and
00:46:11
the writers so they just established all these deaths and then they went now who
00:46:17
are we going to pick to be the serial killer so it was kind of like a Russian Roulette thing at work whereas are you
00:46:23
going to get the bullet and be the because of course if you're the serial killer well then you only got another
00:46:28
three months on the on the show you know what I mean and um and Johnny Barker who
00:46:33
played Joey so well he's he's now a very successful director but they chose him
00:46:39
and he was like oh guys it's me I'm the serial killer which in one sense was
00:46:43
terrific because it gave him a an amazing kind of acting challenge but on the other sense meant that he was only
00:46:50
going to be there for a few months but the thing I liked about it was that literally nobody knew who the serial
00:46:55
killer was cuz the writers didn't even know you know they just kind of nominated someone yeah what's that like
00:47:01
for um some of the people you've you've worked with like when you when you get
00:47:05
this yeah if if you're a long character and you've been written written out or
00:47:08
you being Ked off it's hard if it's not your choice it's very hard do you yet
00:47:12
they have a conversation with you first you're not just reading your script and
00:47:15
that would be cruel yeah no I don't I don't think it's I think I don't think
00:47:19
in the 33 years it's ever they've ever been quite that harsh certainly with the
00:47:22
guest that can definitely happen with with with guest characters or characters that have been there so long that they
00:47:27
might just suddenly go oh I'm I die you know but if you've been there for say
00:47:32
let's say over two years they they they C they call you call you down and have a
00:47:37
chat we there there are we have a division corecast and guest cast and so if you're corecast they'll definitely
00:47:44
have a chat to you about um about you know getting rid of your character and it's almost always to do with the story
00:47:51
lines they just can't think of story lines for your character and you may be
00:47:55
a Terri in terrific actor and it's often the case a terrific actor and a and a
00:47:59
lovely character but they just they just run out of storylines for you so yeah what's never personal I guess
00:48:06
say they they say I feel sometimes it is but no one's ever going to admit that
00:48:12
well yeah definitely feel sometimes it is but no one's going to admit to that
00:48:15
but and certainly you take it personally you know um but yeah it's it's it's
00:48:20
always hard hard when it's not your decision it's hard enough when it is
00:48:24
your decision but when it's not it's uh yeah yeah I want to retract that last
00:48:28
statement actually like my n used to say to me you know if you work hard and you're nice to people you will go places
00:48:34
actually D he he said the same thing similar sort of advice from his dad his dad's like if you're easy to work with
00:48:39
you're going to go a long way it does help um so if you're a pain in the ass I
00:48:43
suppose you know yeah I feel we both know people who are [ __ ] pains in the ass who've done
00:48:50
really well you know they unfortunately it's not as simple as just yeah and then
00:48:56
also unfortunately sometimes you know that that um that narcissistic borderline psychotic personality
00:49:02
actually does extremely well uh in life but you know you make your decisions about your own behavior not necessarily
00:49:09
based on is it going to profit you you know you do it because you want to be the you have to live with you you know
00:49:16
you want to be able to do that so I I feel you you make your decisions based on that rather than is this going to get
00:49:22
me a job or it's going to make me Rich yeah for you and I you I don't know this
00:49:26
is like a a hangover from the Catholic thing or just being like a a decent person but if I ever sh interaction with
00:49:32
someone like it kind of ruins my day yeah you know what I mean you don't feel
00:49:35
good about yourself if you yeah no but there are people out there who who who that just that that just that's water
00:49:42
off a duck's back they and some and other people who Delight in that they Delight in in aggravating people you
00:49:49
know and it's kind of like a superpower to to be that way because most of us are
00:49:54
not like that but those people that don't care about who they upset that it's you know they're dangerous they're
00:50:01
and sometimes they're dangerous because they're so effective you know but you do
00:50:05
as a you know you have to avoid them and learn how to deal with them because they're everywhere yeah in every
00:50:11
industry so um did the fame ever get annoying for you did it ever reach a early on it it really did yeah and I I
00:50:17
got very precious about it and um yeah it was really annoying I hated it yeah I hatte well no I loved it sometimes of
00:50:25
course because you know we all love praise and attention but then i' i' you
00:50:29
know when I wanted it to stop it wouldn't it would keep going into times when I didn't want it to be there and um
00:50:36
and I can't remember when I twigged but I think maybe it wasn't until I came
00:50:41
back that I that the the easier you are about it the easier it is you know what I mean I'd kind of like you know have my
00:50:50
cap on on my sunglasses and being avoid oh no don't you know ignore me ignore
00:50:54
you know don't notice me and and and then I'd get all kind of oh you know
00:50:57
this is my time off and I look back now and I just cringe and I just it's just
00:51:02
if someone sees you and they say hi and you just say hi back and can I have a photo sure it's even easier now you
00:51:09
don't have to sign you know that takes maybe four seconds to sign something and
00:51:13
a photo takes even less and it's just so easy and if you are if you receive it in
00:51:19
the way it's intended which is always with Goodwill people always have good willll when they go oh hey hey can have
00:51:25
a photo you know it's always a positive interaction from their part and then
00:51:29
it's up to you to determine does it stay a positive reaction or does it turn into
00:51:34
this ugly nasty thing where you go oh no this is my time off you know or do you just go yeah sure great great and then
00:51:41
you appreciate them because they're appreciating you and and it's all nice
00:51:46
and then it's over and done with you know the the times I remember where it became a real problem is where I'd go no
00:51:51
no no and then they then they'd get really belligerent about it was like well come on you're on TV you know I
00:51:56
don't know you know this is this is my time etc etc and then it was a problem
00:52:00
and if I just gone sure you know sign this thank you for watching it would have all been over in a few seconds and
00:52:06
it would have been a really pleasant experience for both of us and it just took me a little while to click the
00:52:11
other thing that I had clicks to is that is that forget about being shy you can call yourself a shy person that's fine
00:52:21
but just don't be shy and and I realized it was as simple as clicking as but Swit
00:52:27
cuz that's the other thing I thought about myself oh I'm a shy person I don't
00:52:30
like all this unwanted attention and I was mainly through watching some like Tim wara who had been kind of dealing
00:52:37
with it for a lot longer than us Tim Morrison this is because he started the show with us and he was just he was just
00:52:44
so gracious and and and he' just be a normal person when you talk to him but
00:52:48
say the same a bunch of people will be like oh hey Tim or you know H or whatever it is and he'd go ah and he'd
00:52:53
rise to the occasion and he'd be really funny and he tell and he'd be the he'd
00:52:58
kind of command the attention and they loved it and that's what they wanted him
00:53:01
to be and I just thought it's not that hard you know if someone you don't have
00:53:05
to be clever or funny or anything you just have to match that energy so if someone comes at you this really excited
00:53:12
energy oh hey hey it's you and you're kind of meeting that with this kind of
00:53:16
like oh yeah but you know I'm a really shy person especially if there's a group
00:53:20
of them it's like it just feels rude you know and whether you are a shy person in
00:53:26
real life or whether you where you fit on that introvert extrovert Spectrum who cares it's just really as easy as
00:53:32
flipping a switch and going I'm G to be and so there's a group of them oh good
00:53:37
day good day hey what's your name and it's so simple and it just and it's and
00:53:41
it just makes the whole thing a whole lot better and I I realized there were just a few really simple things that I
00:53:46
had to do in my relationship to this you know whatever you want to call it celebrity and it just made everything so
00:53:52
much better for me and also for those people that I was interacting with and and it was so easy to change was was the
00:54:00
thing you know we carry around these ideas of who we are and if you just let them go life can be so much better yeah
00:54:09
that's 100% true we we you tell yourself stories and you can tell yourself a
00:54:13
different story especially you you're you're a trained actor today I'm going to be a non-shy
00:54:18
person yeah yeah yeah yeah the best thing of course is no stories but we we'
00:54:22
all we all carry around these stories but if you can let go of them ah you know it's it's it's you're just doing
00:54:28
yourself a massive favor yeah it's great advice so what what do people say when
00:54:32
they come up just y out chis or that's just Chris Chris or or or Scher Street
00:54:37
you know charer Street hey you know like that's my name I like it's cool I don't
00:54:42
mind and also yes that's the other thing and people say Chris and I'd go you know
00:54:46
this is back in the early the Early shameful days and I'd go and I go my name's Michael you know I'm an actor I'm
00:54:52
playing Chris and I'm like oh you [ __ ] [ __ ] you know it's people Chris is great great Chris I I answer to
00:54:58
both that's what I say I answer to both because people at work call me Chris you
00:55:02
know other actors call me Chris and I know because I do it I call sometimes call other actors by their character
00:55:07
name it doesn't mean anything you know so that's great people can call me
00:55:10
shortland street or Chris or whatever sometimes do people people do call me Michael they say hi Michael and I if I
00:55:17
don't know them and it's kind of weird it's like I almost prefer it when people
00:55:20
say Chris CU I know where they're coming from you know um I've spoken to Tim and he said
00:55:25
for maybe 10 15 years after once we're warriors he goes every week when the rubbish truck went past the guy on the
00:55:30
back of the truck would yell out cook the man some eggs outside his house yeah do you eat the penis thing or not so
00:55:38
much no I really don't I really don't I thought I would and I really don't I
00:55:42
think maybe because it's a bit Rudder people don't quite want to say it um
00:55:48
yeah yeah oh that's funny yeah yeah Tim is he's always just been a great model
00:55:52
of you know how to behave in in our situation yeah I got I got a great respect for Tim yeah um no a confusing
00:56:00
thing to go through go to CU like a lot of yeah a lot of people probably find it
00:56:04
hard to like imagine now just how big Shand Street was and uh you were you were you were slightly older um but I'm
00:56:10
thinking for like car Bernett and Martin hon it was like must have been a very confusing time going straight from
00:56:15
school to being household names yeah yeah would have been really rough for them yeah I know it was I know it was
00:56:21
yeah and they had their own you know problems associated with it yeah it was and nobody had really it had never
00:56:27
happened in our country in quite that same way that whole kind of you know um TV
00:56:35
star thing for one of a better phrase yeah and because you know back in those days there were three channels and some
00:56:42
people had sky but not many and so there were there were three channels and TV 2
00:56:47
and TV one were by far what you know the the most popular channels more than TV3
00:56:53
and so everyone watch and if they didn't watch it they saw the promos for it and
00:56:58
they they knew they didn't like it but they knew what was happening on it and
00:57:02
they knew the faces you know because our faces were over all over the there's the
00:57:06
other change in now was the women's the women's magazines you know which were
00:57:10
which have kind of been uh been superceded by social media back then you know pre-social
00:57:16
media the women's magazines were massive Women's Day Women's weekly and that well
00:57:20
you know yeah yeah yeah you're massive um and again like sh I'm pleased they
00:57:26
still going I'm pleased they survived Co and sort of hang still there hang on and
00:57:31
you know Sebastian who's the editor for the women's day and he does a phenomenal
00:57:34
job with very limited resources and a very small team um to keep this product coming out week after week but yeah that
00:57:40
was Messa for a time like JJ JJ and myself like when we were when we were married we do stories we were sort of
00:57:46
like d list I feel like it was like all blacks shortland Street maybe cricketers
00:57:51
netballers and then like radio people s of D or E lists but we we got paid like seven Grand to
00:57:57
for some sh shitty story about our relationship did did you sell your wedding yes in real life you must got
00:58:04
paid bank got so much money for it I'm not allowed to say how much but so much
00:58:09
it's ludicrous how much money they had yeah way way more like cuz then I I like
00:58:16
more recently I tried to I can't remember what my excuse was but like I don't know maybe 10 years ago I tried to
00:58:21
do a similar thing and you know sell a personal story and they were offering about a fifth of what we got for the for
00:58:27
the winning which was yeah they just had so much money because they because they
00:58:31
sold so many magazines you know was the thing yeah now there was that little sweet spot but now we've got social
00:58:38
media which I'm not kind of on in any significant way so I've I've kind of
00:58:43
missed that boat yeah in terms of the um publicity side of it like you you must have seen so many changes in that time
00:58:49
like how how's that dance sort of sort of changed like at the moment we're
00:58:53
doing this podcast which is a long form chat um through the the window your publicist is sitting there did you like
00:58:59
try and like avoid it and weasle your way out of doing it in the early days like radio interviews this was the
00:59:06
thing this was the thing like early on you'd kind of you had to do publicity as
00:59:12
it related to the show so you do an interview about your story you know but anything that was about your personal
00:59:19
life like um you know a marriage for example or you you with your relationship with JJ was it was like um
00:59:26
you got money for that because that was your personal life and and you kind of were protective about it you you kind of
00:59:33
didn't want yeah you you you didn't really it was kind of a necessary evil
00:59:39
but now people with the the whole insta phenomenon and all the social media things which I do not you know I'm I'm
00:59:47
very ignorant of them but it's very much a matter of people are kind of their own
00:59:51
publicists and they're and they're offering that up they're offering up you
00:59:55
know this personal information that we used to be so protective of people are just offering it up because then they
01:00:02
get more viewers and then they can get you know a a sponsorship deal and maybe they'll get you know $5,000 for a post
01:00:10
but part of that is that they need to offer up their private life and here's
01:00:14
with me and with my child and and so that kind of and I'm not I'm not judging
01:00:18
that in any way like I say I'm it's just something I'm not good at um and I
01:00:23
suppose it's the modern day version of you and I selling stories it is but I
01:00:27
felt that was that wasn't every week you know that was once or twice a year I
01:00:31
would have sold a story every week if I could you okay well I you know I only sold maybe two in my whole time there
01:00:37
and there there was there was a wedding one and there was another one when Lily was small we and we sold that one
01:00:42
because we knew we'd get a phenomenal amount of money and um so and but that's
01:00:48
not that wasn't every week you know and now people have just kind of uh yeah
01:00:52
it's just it kind of blows my mind slightly that that's that change that
01:00:57
people people kind of are their own as I say are their own publicists yeah oh social media that's another aspect I
01:01:03
didn't think of so like when it first started I suppose the only sort of criticism you'd get would be maybe a
01:01:09
letter that someone wrote into the TV guy or or something and then suddenly um there's yeah bio Myspace Facebook and
01:01:17
all these other platforms um yeah how how was that for you like suddenly people commenting on your your hairstyle
01:01:24
I remember when I came back in the early O's and there was I can't remember it
01:01:30
was it was early in the century and I and and and um I can't I I can't remember the exact name of it but you
01:01:38
know emails were a thing and and um you know internet Pages were a thing and and
01:01:43
there so there was these comments about like short street that kind of thing and
01:01:49
um anyway it was a response to whatever the previous shorten Street episode was and I was like oh I wonder I wonder what
01:01:54
that's like and it was like you know cuz I'd had a big scene the night before and
01:01:58
I was like okay that's positive comment positive comment and then it's like wow
01:02:02
he got fat and I'm like okay and then the next one was ah saw Chris trying to
01:02:07
cry the women do it so much better I'm like oh okay and the next one is what's
01:02:11
with a stupid accent and I'm like okay I'm GNA stop reading these now you know
01:02:15
because I just I don't want to let that into my head and uh and that's kind of
01:02:21
been my relationship to social media ever since I kind of I don't really really want to to know about that stuff
01:02:29
because it really affects it will affect my ability to do my job you know if I'm
01:02:35
hearing all these criticisms because you know you could have 10 positive comments
01:02:39
and then one person will say and this person will not know what they're talking about but nevertheless the
01:02:45
negative one will stick in there and so um yeah and so I just kind of left it and I and I didn't engage with it and i'
01:02:53
really glad I've I've done that that takes a certain amount of strength way
01:02:57
because it can be you know people say don't read the comments and it's um the
01:03:00
best advice ever but it's easier said than done you want to know feels like your ears are burning in a way you want
01:03:06
to know what people are saying about it's just a habit and you're right you're right you do it's a habit you
01:03:10
need to develop but I'm glad I'm glad I've I've developed that habit yeah yeah
01:03:15
good for you um so how old are you what are you 59 59 are you [ __ ] you look great thank you so do you
01:03:22
I'm just a couple of gents in our 50s 50 52 next week so one thing I've learned
01:03:28
is no one no one gets um the privilege of living to their 50s without going through some adversity like you're
01:03:33
getting kicked in the guts once or twice what about you what's the biggest adversities you've been through you've
01:03:38
been through a marriage breakup as well e was that that was horrible that was horrible yeah that was really really
01:03:44
awful we're in a great place now yeah uh yeah I I don't want to talk too much
01:03:52
about that because it feels unfair to um yeah that was that was that was nasty because it was my decision you know what
01:03:59
I mean and so as you're talking about the Catholic thing I was kind of felt so
01:04:04
guilty to kind of you know ruin this this family but then you know about kind of a year and a half
01:04:13
and it started to come right you know and and I was the pain was healing a bit and and
01:04:20
ever since then you know I've had a terrific relationship with um you know my daughter's ex we we're good friends
01:04:27
and very very respectful and kind to each other and uh she's a terrific terrific woman and awesome awesome mom
01:04:36
um yeah I I feel like big the big demon for me may be uh uh anxiety I suppose you know i' I've I
01:04:48
hate to use you know I hate to call myself an anxious I'm not anymore anyway
01:04:55
but but certainly yeah okay so my my stock phrase is I suffer from a condition The
01:05:03
Human Condition You know I I just think anxiety happens to all of us and so does
01:05:09
sadness you know or and of course the sadness can turn into depression but but but looking back I have to be honest
01:05:16
that I have been an overly anxious person and I'll give you an example when when we came my first scene that I shot
01:05:24
when we when I came back to Short Street and I was just so I just had so many you
01:05:29
know we're talking about the story so many stories in my head about what are
01:05:32
people going to say and they're going to judge me and they're gonna hate this and
01:05:35
and my first scene was an operating scene and I was operating on this lovely actor Chris Hobs I I was operating on
01:05:43
his brain as I had the scalpel and um and something about like the fake blood and the the the claustrophobia of having
01:05:52
this mask and breathing Mo carbon dioxide and all this stress and I had a panic attack that was so severe I passed
01:06:01
out so I'm on I'm on set and they're shooting and halfway through the scene I
01:06:06
just hear this kind of sound and I'm like that's weird and then I can't see anything everything's
01:06:14
fuzzy and then I just felt feel so relaxed so relaxed I'm like oh this is lovely and then two seconds of that and
01:06:24
then I wake up with a really saw a head because I banged my head on the way down and then I realized
01:06:30
I passed out and then I'm like oh my God and the horror of it and the shame of it
01:06:36
you know what I mean just overwhelmed by nothing nothing nobody did that to me except me you know what I mean and it
01:06:46
happened twice it happened again and it was just like wow what what is going on that I can sabotage myself that severely
01:06:55
you know and it's just that it's just those those thoughts and things and so
01:06:59
you know those things are always a you know if it doesn't make you if it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger
01:07:05
you know it encourages you to address the way you're behaving or the way you're thinking and yeah but yeah that
01:07:14
that that that has been a big uh yeah and then yeah so so that that I guess that was the main that was the main kind
01:07:20
of you know dark Beast I've had to um uh defeat yeah yeah and of course the the flip
01:07:27
side of anxiety is depression you know because you you get that and when that goes away in order you're kind of left
01:07:34
with a void and you know I don't know your experiences these things but you see we all experience them this is the
01:07:41
thing of people to say oh I'm a depressive you know oh I suffer from anxiety it's like well who doesn't you
01:07:47
know what I mean we all do and it's it's The Human Experience it's The Human
01:07:51
Experience and and um it's I guess it's a matter of agree but um yeah yeah
01:07:58
thanks for sharing that J how did you um like did you tell anyone at the time what did you say well it was pretty
01:08:04
obvious because I passed out in front of everyone and there was no and you know and people like they make excuses and
01:08:10
like oh you must be exhausted or something they try to find a physical reason for it because that's not as
01:08:16
shameful as the fact that no I just freaked myself out so much I passed out you know uh and so people would kind of
01:08:25
make um well what what actually happened was I so I did this and then we we have
01:08:29
a nurse on set who um who who helps us with the kind of the medical dialogue and make sure the medical things right
01:08:35
and she was kind of like oh you know took me to the room you want a cup of tea and I okay well we'll reschedule the
01:08:41
scenes because I had like four or five of these scenes in a row in the operating theater well we'll reschedule
01:08:45
them and maybe you can do them tomorrow and I was like if I don't do them now
01:08:48
I'm never going to do them so I just had to pick myself up and go back in there
01:08:53
and and they gave me I I did the operating theater scenes but I did it sitting down on a stool cuz often
01:08:59
doctors do that anyway and and that was good because there was less distance to fall and just simple things like that
01:09:05
meant that whole anxiety spiral wasn't quite so bad and and you know I learned
01:09:11
to I learned to deal with it I learned what to do when that when I felt it happening you know it's a very strange
01:09:17
thing it's always the stories that kill you like you you get the you have the
01:09:23
chemical surge the feeling itself but if you just let the feeling be eventually it f and it fades quite quickly
01:09:31
sometimes sometimes it doesn't but it fades quite quickly what what when you
01:09:35
get into trouble is when you engage the story with the feeling and you go oh my God this terrible thing or this other
01:09:42
thing this terrible thing that's going to happen oh my God I'm going to pass
01:09:44
out again how embarrassing will that be la la la la if you can just you can't
01:09:49
control your feelings but you can challenge your thoughts and that that that's been a big thing for me too just
01:09:54
go okay just accept it okay this is happening in my body this this OV excitement you know this kind of
01:10:01
chemical rush but that's okay that's that I can't do anything about that and
01:10:05
that's fine that's not going to hurt me what's going to hurt me is is what's
01:10:08
happening up here own this was at a time um it's worth time stamping this so this is the early
01:10:14
2000s this is before John kwin did his campaign this is before Mike king became an like it was
01:10:21
um no one was talking about this sh like there be some people listen into this now that that um I feel like it's easy
01:10:27
for us to have this conversation now it is easy um but there's still a lot of
01:10:30
people that would consider it Brave this conversation that we're we're having now
01:10:34
so there's still work to be done but at the time massive amount of work to be
01:10:37
done imag those John Ken commercials I thought they were just terrific yeah that someone like oh yeah I'm choking up
01:10:45
I'm choking up someone like him of his standing and his his kind of masculine
01:10:51
standing and he does that beautiful ad with his son climbing on the branch and he helps him and then he oh and then he
01:10:58
fs and he helps him again choking up it's just that was so that was a profound profound thing and
01:11:05
it had to be someone like him someone of his Ma you know as I say that masculine
01:11:10
standing of this Mighty or going sometimes it's too much sometimes you're
01:11:16
too sad you don't know what to do with it and sometimes you're too afraid and
01:11:21
you don't know what to do with it and that's okay it all happens to all of us
01:11:24
and I just got those just profound that those those simple ads I think that's
01:11:29
just some of the best TV I've ever seen just just for what it says and you know
01:11:34
about 10 seconds the Prof how profound that was yeah good on him yeah and the personal risk involved to him as well
01:11:41
because it's like um no one nobody talked about this stuff seen as being weak absolutely so for him to like put
01:11:47
his put it all out there and say hey I'm I suffer you know he must have had so
01:11:51
many voices so many his mates going hey mate that's cool but just don't don't
01:11:55
make a TV ad about it you know no no mate he must had so many of those voices going hey it's cool you know we all know
01:12:01
that you're like that but you know there's no need to tell everyone about
01:12:04
it he would have had so many of those and he just went no no no I I need to do this for the for everyone you know I say
01:12:10
people like me but that's everyone that's all of us we all feel these things you know did you did you did you
01:12:18
see a therapist or anything at that time or did you sort of work it out on your own yes I think I did actually I think I
01:12:24
did and it was really really unhelpful I saw like the good ones were all were all
01:12:32
busy and I ended up seeing a jungian a yian psychologist and it was just so unhelpful and he was just and he was
01:12:42
just asking me about my dream I had to write down this the dream thing and and it was all just so academic and just I
01:12:48
just needed someone to go look you know when you're feeling overwhelmed do this
01:12:52
and this you know take a breath you know allow your your attention to go from your thoughts just into your body into
01:13:00
your breath you know which is like now I meditate a lot and it's just brilliant
01:13:05
it's just brilliant I love it it's and it's so helpful it's so helpful what
01:13:10
sort of what sort of meditation do you do well i' I kind of I've I've been
01:13:13
inter interested in a long time and so I I did I did um transcendental meditation
01:13:19
for a bit a long time ago and then other things and then various mantras and the
01:13:24
the place that I've Got to Now now is just just to do nothing so it's harder
01:13:30
than it sounds and I kind of think that's the best thing of all because sometimes the thing that stops people
01:13:36
from meditating is it's like it's kind of this thing you're doing and I can't
01:13:41
concentrate on that one thing for 20 minutes and picture myself on an ocean and it's tiring and it's ex and you're
01:13:47
absolutely right but if you just so if you just let all of that go and just kind of relax and so my meditation I do
01:13:54
now is kind of it's more like sunbathing you know it's just like you know when
01:13:58
you're sunbathing you don't have to be doing anything else you're just H you're
01:14:02
just soaking up the sun you know it's like that and I just and it just it's
01:14:07
great I love it yeah you don't have to realizing that the less you do the better and yeah that that's the big
01:14:14
thing for me the less you do the better and that's I've you know through more
01:14:18
reading I realized that that's the the Zen Buddhist thing of do nothing you know do nothing and it's like well how
01:14:24
can you do nothing but when you try it's interesting you know and the other thing
01:14:30
is to be um like I I read a few um quite a lot to be honest of uh spiritual kind
01:14:36
of teachers and things and the the thing that the really good ones come back to is that it's your journey and you you
01:14:43
decide and you're the you're the kind of the boss of it and you know these
01:14:47
spiritual teachers can say whatever they want but you decide the path or it's
01:14:53
decided for you but you I shouldn't say you de discover the path yeah that's a
01:14:57
bit fruy isn't it sorry no no no no not at all no I'm just I'm intrigued I I am
01:15:02
you're trained um in TM Transcendental Meditation about 15 years ago I've sort
01:15:07
of fallen off um it's supposed to be 20 minutes twice a day yeah and uh you have
01:15:11
a mantra and the idea is no thoughts in your head and if a thought comes in you just pause remove it and carry on um
01:15:19
yeah I just stopped doing it for whatever reason life gets in the way but I had I had some plane flights yesterday
01:15:23
and I did it twice and it felt really good okay cool felt really good but it's
01:15:27
um do you do it like um religiously like da no I don't I don't I I I now that
01:15:33
I've kind of discovered this whole do nothing do nothing version it's a whole
01:15:37
lot easier so I sometimes I do it at work just if I've got five minutes and and sometimes at at home because it's so
01:15:44
much easier than like a mantra or something sometimes I can do like 40 minutes quite easily because you're just
01:15:52
sitting there really you're just sitting there and relaxing that's what you're
01:15:56
doing as you're relaxing how's how's your your mental health now you like are
01:16:00
you in a good place I feel like I'm in a really good place yeah really good place
01:16:03
I'm not and I feel that that the that the meditation has a lot to do with it
01:16:07
of of course these things come up these the anxiety or the sadness it comes on but um but I know what to do with it now
01:16:15
I know I know that the the what I need to do is allow it you know allow it allow it and don't bu into the stories
01:16:22
that's the big thing just allow the feeling and don't buy into the crazy
01:16:27
stories the brain the brain is incredible it works over time Terri someone said to me once like if you're
01:16:34
um if you're going to entertain the absolute worst case scenario or catastrophize which is what the brain
01:16:39
tends to do you're also obliged to you know figure out what if it all goes right yeah um but your brain only ever
01:16:46
goes to the absolute worst Rock Bottom case scenario 100 100 yeah and I guess you know as we evolved those kind of
01:16:55
people survived you know the the people sitting around the campfire going [ __ ]
01:16:59
what if a tiger came along well I know if I build this thing then the tiger won't be able to get us you know those
01:17:04
those people survived but we're not we're not in that world anymore you know
01:17:08
you seem light today like when you walked on today you just sort of had a like a spring in your step you and I
01:17:13
have gone to the the same gym just a Jets just one of those $10 a week Jets Jets gym for a number of years there was
01:17:19
a period there maybe it was when you about the time of your marriage breakup I don't know but there there was a time
01:17:24
period of time where i' see you in the gym and I think looks like Michael's
01:17:26
carrying a bit of a bit of a weight on his shoulders heaviness about you oh definitely yeah it was that was a rough
01:17:32
time yeah yeah that was a bad time that would have been about 15 years ago yeah yeah I think I think I was going to Les
01:17:37
Mills then and I think you probably were too yeah yeah yeah yeah I could afford Mills then now it's
01:17:43
jet yeah definitely no definitely uh definitely a lightess and and it's as I
01:17:49
say I'm sure it's the the meditation and and and I guess my life is simpler than
01:17:54
than it was then yeah and I don't not carrying that burden of guilt in the same way yeah yeah we're all works in
01:18:02
progress though way and you figure these things out as you you get along absolutely I'm I'm a slow learner very
01:18:07
slow Le so am I yeah that's something I yeah definitely slow this is and this is
01:18:11
the thing about sha street is like you know a character will keep making the same mistakes and some like oh but this
01:18:18
is like their story line I had that other time you know other actors and I'll go yeah but that's life that's like
01:18:24
how many of just keep repeating our mistakes and just you know relationship ways just keep ending up with that same
01:18:31
type and it's the absolute wrong type you know what I mean that's what I love
01:18:35
about one of the things I love about sh street is that it's totally feasible for
01:18:39
us not to learn Life Lessons you know and it's lovely when we do but most of
01:18:45
the time we don't we just repeat our mistakes well yeah even if it's a fresh
01:18:49
mistake you know right from wrong and you might end up doing the wrong thing anyway absolutely that's um yeah you you
01:18:55
you yeah you were choking up a little bit before talking about um the John kin are you are you quite an emotional
01:19:00
person these days I I'd like to think I'm openly emot I think I'm open
01:19:08
to have you always my feelings well I guess that's part of being an actor really is that you is it in a way that's
01:19:15
your job is to feel things so I I guess there I guess you don't have a choice if
01:19:19
if you if you're an actor you you have to feel things and and maybe that's why
01:19:24
you gravitate to acting in the first place is because you wanted a place to put all these excessive feelings you had
01:19:31
maybe I don't know you're you're you're you're a dad of one got one daughter yes
01:19:37
one is a lot that's my that's my uh thing I like to say one is a lot is so
01:19:43
you've been Chris Chris Warner longer than what she's she's been alive so
01:19:47
she's not dead and and Dr Warner I guess um so she's flying the next soon going
01:19:52
to UNI how's that going to be that's right that's W yeah yeah I'm I'm sure
01:19:55
I'll be very bereft you know cuz you know my life is it's kind of simple
01:20:01
simplified down and I got sha Street you know I've got her and um and and now
01:20:06
she's GNA go live and and uh you know go to UNI and so and uh yeah that'll be a
01:20:13
real that'll be a real challenge for me but luckily I'm now at this stage where
01:20:21
I get that life changes you know what I mean I get I get the that happens and so that's a kind of a I feel
01:20:29
it was hard one that um that understanding that life changes and that's a good thing you know what I
01:20:36
mean and so yeah I definitely I'll be sad and I'll miss her and I'm expecting
01:20:40
to be I'm expecting it to creep up on me when I least expect it you know because
01:20:45
that's how these things work you think oh no I'm fine about this but then
01:20:48
something will happen I'm sure and I'll be like oh no she's I can't cook tea for
01:20:52
her anymore and they'll be whole lot of that whole lot of that oh yeah yeah I
01:20:56
can't imagine like um you just how devastating that would be like the the day you phone in for a chat or something
01:21:02
she blows you off or you know yeah I had a moment and I think it was during Co where it was the first time she wasn't I
01:21:09
can't remember how old she was but it was the first time you know cuz she'd
01:21:12
you know go between me and her mom and and she and because it was just me and her there was always very close
01:21:18
relationship but was the first time that she was just doing some stuff and I think maybe she was talking to her
01:21:22
friends on the internet and she um she closed the door of her of her bedroom and it was the first time she ever did
01:21:28
it and I was like oh okay okay so okay so you be in your space and I'll be in
01:21:33
mine because previous to that point would always be interacting you know and um and that started an
01:21:41
avalanche at the time was good and then but then this Avalanche came of like realizing that that that thing that you
01:21:50
have with a child that can't last forever you know and that she has to find her own self
01:21:56
and be her own person and and and that I I'm not yeah that was a big that was a
01:22:02
big deal that was a it was a crisis it was a real crisis and I wasn't expecting
01:22:06
it I thought I'd be fine but I really wasn't yeah and uh and that took a lot
01:22:10
of getting through you know poorly not her fault if she hear well hopefully she won't have the Catholic
01:22:18
guil thing that's no she won't she won't no but what was your relationship like
01:22:22
with your own parents really good I guess um your dad's not around anymore right no he died yeah did
01:22:30
he get to see did he get to see you as as Chris yeah he did he did proud he was proud yeah he was he was always a a
01:22:38
distant as probably an un unfair thing but you know men of that generation very kind gentle man lovely man um but you
01:22:45
know they always it was always kind of at a distance and that's how it was I
01:22:49
don't I don't have those those same you know horror stories that that so many
01:22:54
men our age or older have about their fathers about them being you know bastards basically you know he was a
01:23:01
lovely a lovely lovely man but it was kind of um he had a very busy job you know and so he was he was doing that and
01:23:08
and my parents separated when I was 11 and it was my mom who moved out so then I didn't have her in my life all the
01:23:14
time either I just would stay with her once or twice a week so so yeah so that was when I was 11 so so it was a kind of
01:23:23
a yeah there was a slight distance yeah with both of them I think yeah yeah yeah
01:23:29
it's a strange time yeah it was sort of um a time where women were the Homemakers and men were the bread wers
01:23:36
so this was in the 70s so yeah it was it was quite rare it was very rare for a a
01:23:41
divorce to happen but you know it it needed to happen and um yeah and and so she had to move out yeah did they did
01:23:49
they have I I had Martin Henderson on the podcast last year and his um he reflected on his parents divorce and the
01:23:53
impact it had on on him and he had guilt feelings like maybe he could have done maybe he was responsible for them
01:23:59
breaking up you you didn't yeah how did you reflect on that time I feel yeah it
01:24:04
it really affected me but I don't know exactly how and I couldn't really
01:24:09
pinpoint it as saying guilt feelings I don't think I had those but um I don't know I don't know but I yeah
01:24:19
I haven't maintained a relationship you know like I broke up from Lily's mom and
01:24:27
the relationship to that was maybe five or six years and I haven't maintained a
01:24:32
really serious one since and I'm not in a relationship now so I guess maybe that
01:24:37
has something to do with that you know I have to say I'm very very happy you know
01:24:42
I'm not complaining about this I I'm genuinely regard myself you know as as
01:24:48
calm and happy because when JJ and I got married we're both from broken homes so
01:24:53
my parents broke out here and we will like well [ __ ] we're not going to make
01:24:57
we're there are all sorts of stats that show if you're from a broken home it's
01:25:01
more likely you're going to follow but we sort of thought that makes no sense
01:25:04
like we're going to learn from their mistakes and do better yeah yeah it sucks he it's hard yeah like I have to
01:25:11
say I I'm like that but both my brothers and my sister they had the same upbringing as me and they've been in the
01:25:17
same they've had marriages go go their marriages have lasted decades all three
01:25:22
of them you know so it's not as simple as your own situation you know they they've got wonderful all three of them
01:25:30
have wonderful marriages that have gone on for decades and um so yeah it's just
01:25:35
kind of there's that that's one thing what happened to you but there's also
01:25:40
your disposition you know as a human being your makeup yeah would you would you um consider getting married again
01:25:48
are you hoping to are you holding holding hope to find that one true I have no hope I have no hope I that
01:25:54
sounds like a sad thing but whenever I say it I kind of I just feel are you on your own at
01:26:01
the moment yeah yeah yeah cuz no I'm not on my own I got two cats yeah I'll edit that out I I'll do you a
01:26:09
solid Ed I think there's a big difference between being alone and being lonely like lonely loneliness is awful
01:26:15
awful but there is nothing wrong with being alone I'm never I'm never lonely
01:26:19
yeah I did my the the time I felt lonely was as I say you know when when I felt a distance from my daughter
01:26:28
you know what I mean and then and then those thoughts would come oh you're going to be alone la la la la la but I
01:26:36
love being by myself you know and I've got great a bunch of great friends out
01:26:41
there that I really should connect with more you know and this is one of the things about my daughter kind of moving
01:26:48
on is like well that's what I should put my energy into cuz yeah and that's a
01:26:54
that's a wonderful thing and that's a very that's a that's a great wealth you
01:26:59
know if you've got friends and you can maintain those friendships that's a
01:27:02
great wealth yeah 100% you've been you've been really open and honest here
01:27:07
today and I I can't thank you enough for that are you good at having these vulnerability sort of conversations with
01:27:12
your matate yes yeah yeah that's not a problem I don't know what it is yeah
01:27:17
I've never suffered from that and my my male interactions have never suffered
01:27:23
from that kiwi thing and maybe because it's all my mates are actors and we all
01:27:26
it's aan thing yeah I don't know maybe we all overshare anyway but I I don't
01:27:31
really feel there's anything I can't say to them yeah and and and that way I
01:27:35
guess I'm I'm lucky and that I I don't I don't those walls aren't up really in
01:27:41
any of my and and all of my close friends to be honest are I'm just thinking are male and there's no yeah
01:27:50
none of those Wars yeah like I say maybe maybe I'm lucky just just just cuz thing
01:27:54
being an actor and as I say being thrown onto your emotions all the time what are
01:27:58
you feeling what are you feeling you know feel more and and also just go on and on about themselves anyway and what
01:28:04
they're feeling I don't like that I don't I feel if we did it this way you
01:28:08
know shut up oh you're are you're dramatic by Nature I guess yeah I'm I
01:28:13
still struggle with that vulnerability piece with my friends but I'm trying I'm
01:28:16
trying trying to get better with it but it's like it's hard and also if if
01:28:19
you're out with your friends and you're having a good time it's like oh you
01:28:21
don't do it then never yeah you maybe that's my is it's the timing issue a bit
01:28:26
of that's a timing issue exactly a bit of deorum okay if everyone's having a
01:28:29
laugh okay what what is if anything what is the wh if that keeps you up at night oh there's none of those anymore
01:28:37
there's none of those anymore because I've I've answered them all I've gone
01:28:42
you know what if I was still married or what if you know I guess it would be that but I'm like I know why I'm not and
01:28:50
I I'm really at peace with that all those questions maybe there I'm just trying to think
01:28:56
what if oh I see I I guess I guess the fears that I have now are about uh my daughter and what if this yeah no those
01:29:04
are the things that keep me up what if this doesn't happen for her what if this
01:29:08
happened to her and you know the worst case scenarios now are kind of transplanted onto her and her life and
01:29:14
I'm thinking what if that happened oh God what if that happened you know where
01:29:18
of course you're worrying about the future yes absolute waste of time but but I do I do do that way less than I
01:29:25
used to but yeah yeah no those are my WS is is there a mistake that you wish you
01:29:30
could go back and correct there's probably about a thousand but you know you can't you can't correct them you
01:29:36
can't correct them yeah I don't I have no sympathy for people who's what are
01:29:41
the people oh no regrets no regrets I guess no regrets is different from saying I never made any mistakes you
01:29:47
made a lot of mistakes but you made them because that's who you were then you
01:29:52
know you only had that level of awareness yeah if you could be with anyone doing anything right now who
01:29:59
would it be and what would you be doing I'm enjoying this with you I really am come on I'm having a great
01:30:06
time this has been wonderful I've really enjoyed this okay I know what you're
01:30:11
okay I'm sorry I'm try I just I just I've just kind of I try not to think I try to enjoy
01:30:18
what I'm doing being in the moment I I know I guess I guess being at Disneyland with
01:30:23
my daughter yeah okay let's say that Tokyo Disneyland with my daughter we went uh this year it was so much fun so
01:30:30
okay yeah I'd rather be doing that fair enough that's um that's so so special
01:30:34
cuz she's at that age now where you don't know what's you know I'm sure if
01:30:38
there's a free trip to Disneyland up for grab should always take it but I I did
01:30:42
worry cuz I was like are you sure you're not too old and it's like well I'm like
01:30:46
59 asking her that it's like n it's fun it's great fun no matter what your age
01:30:51
yeah but yeah but she said that age now where it's like that I'm just going to
01:30:53
go to Rhythm and Vines I don't want to go oh yeah but you can do both you can
01:30:56
go to Rhythm and Vines and Disneyland and enjoy them both yeah uh what's your
01:30:59
biggest frustration about the society we live in so not being political let's just say people voting
01:31:08
against their own interests that the the fact that with all this craziness craziness on the internet that people
01:31:17
are drawn into these really toxic situations and then through that end up making real decisions which is what you
01:31:27
do when you vote against their own interests yeah I find that hugely frustrating and I don't know what me as
01:31:35
a person what I can do about it I'm still in the process of figuring out what I need to do about that but yeah
01:31:43
it's hard isn't it it's hard because it's there's some things that are just
01:31:45
too big or out of your control yeah so I fig all you can do is like get your own
01:31:49
house in order absolutely feel the same three words to describe you um happy um lazy no I'm not lazy there's there's
01:32:04
yeah yeah I'm glad you retracted that because there's there's no way you can
01:32:07
be lazy I suppose I've been watching I'm not lazy I'm not I've been watching um
01:32:11
like some of your work which you've done for like three DEC decades now with a
01:32:13
different sort of lens over the last couple of days and just like imagining how like I could learn that dialogue and
01:32:19
do that stuff like the the the stuff that goes off screen like um yeah it's not job for a lazy person no you're
01:32:25
right you're right certainly Charlotte Street isn't a job for a lazy person and
01:32:28
and also because the thing about Charlotte Street is that you're not you're not pigeon hold in any area
01:32:34
you're not kind of doing a light romantic comedy although sometimes you are you know you're not doing a heavy
01:32:38
drama although sometimes you are you know and you get massively huge storylines you know I had a suicide
01:32:44
storyline I had had a story story about my son dying you know these big things and you need to cancer you know having
01:32:51
my head shaved and that because and and you need to give them your absolute honesty so that the people who are
01:32:58
watching it get something from it and so that they feel validated and and and less alone that's the big thing we we go
01:33:05
through these we pretend to go through these problems so that people watch them feel less alone when they go through
01:33:12
them you know and I feel that's a great thing to that shaa street office and
01:33:16
have you noticed I'm really avoiding those questions because I can't think of
01:33:19
three words okay okay let's rephrase that then so um would say positive I say
01:33:24
I'm a positive person what about if so say your your mates were sitting in here
01:33:28
um like what what three words would they use to describe you I don't I don't know
01:33:32
I don't know um uh yeah yeah yeah I guess i''d say positive or umy I don't know um
01:33:42
overweight no I'm not accepting that I'm not acting that what what about generous
01:33:46
or kind yeah I hope so I hope so I hope so yeah I hope so but you it's you should it's good saying that about
01:33:54
yourself you know what I mean because if you think you are you're probably not
01:33:58
you know that's a good point I okay three words to describe Chris Warner Chris Warner um H okay
01:34:09
um sure of himself like decisive is what I should say you know it took me a long time to
01:34:17
say that word which shows you that I not decisive but he is decisive he's decisive um he is
01:34:24
he is Rich and by I don't just mean like in terms of he's very rich MoneyWise but
01:34:30
he grew up with that so he has us he's not aware of how wealthy he is and he's
01:34:35
not aware so privileged let's say privileged and he's not quite aware of
01:34:39
of that you know but he operates easily in that in that high futin world of the wealthy people where I would just flail
01:34:47
um and and uh um romantic like loving loving he loves he loves his family sh Street are his family and he loves them
01:34:58
and then his romantic love too he can't ever escape that he's a romantic he's
01:35:02
looking for that perfect relationship yeah always always are you proud of yourself am I
01:35:09
proud of myself that's a great I'm not ashamed of myself it wasn't the question that would
01:35:19
be weird when are you ashamed of yourself I wouldn't admit to it if I was I would say start asking people that I
01:35:27
Are you ashamed of you should be why aren't you ashamed you should say why aren't you ashamed of yourself that's a
01:35:34
Paul Henry question that one isn't it that's a Paul Henry question um are you
01:35:39
uh I I don't I to be honest I'm just I just try to not to look at myself from
01:35:44
the outside too much and kind of have those opinions about whether I'm I feel I feel I don't don't I feel
01:35:55
I'm at a place I feel I'm lucky let's put it that way I feel I'm lucky I don't
01:36:00
look at my life and think oh [ __ ] I wish it was this or [ __ ] I wish I had that I
01:36:03
think [ __ ] I've got this beautiful child and this great relationship with her and
01:36:08
this wonderful job that I love and am I proud yeah I don't really think in terms of I don't feel like I achieved
01:36:15
that you know I okay no no fair enough no yes I'm proud of I'm proud of the fact that I really
01:36:22
took being a dead serious I'm proud of that and put a lot of energy into that
01:36:26
and I'm proud of I the fact that I really took really take my job seriously and I put a lot of energy into that yes
01:36:33
so no yes I am I'm proud of those things yeah yes so something like this today we
01:36:38
we've been sitting down for God I don't know maybe an hour and a half like just
01:36:41
reflecting on your career and also parts of your life like um yeah you you should
01:36:46
feel proud of yourself I reckon thanks man thank you thank you do do you like doing this you enjoy this or I'm having
01:36:52
a great time I believe that it's an hour and a half I feel sorry for you because
01:36:56
I've just been like going on and on it's like you I think about doing one of
01:37:00
these things but then as soon as I get here and I go I'm an actor of of course
01:37:03
I want to talk about myself all the time does it have to win can we just keep talking about me all day no no no but
01:37:09
it's um oh [ __ ] we've been gone forever yeah but talking about talking about
01:37:13
yourself is one thing but um yeah like in a wide running ranging chat like this it's not just the greatest hits of
01:37:18
someone's life you know you you focus on some of the some of the the crunchy
01:37:22
stuff of life as well which is never that easy and yeah you've been really open today it's been so cool oh thanks
01:37:27
you make it easy make it easy oh thanks Michael hey um last one can you um Envision a day uh where you'll say
01:37:34
goodbye to Chris Warner and how would you want his story to end yeah okay so my answer to this question I mean it's
01:37:41
going to happen one day this is how I want my last scene to go it's like this I'm
01:37:47
in I'm in it can be any room I don't mind it can be like you know Chris's
01:37:51
office or somewhere and then and sudden goes he goes there there's no roof and then I go
01:37:59
that wall there there's not why are those people filming us is this and so um I'm kind of serious and I'm kind of
01:38:07
not and so I'm kind of I'm not serious at all but it's like so I totally blow
01:38:11
the whole thing of like so I ruin it for everyone basically I destroy the whole the whole existence of Short Street by
01:38:17
going oh it's just pretend oh my God this whole thing has just been pretend and then I go you know like the TR show
01:38:23
and I walk behind everyone I'm like what so we're just filming this and it's like
01:38:28
what is this and then we're like yeah so okay that's not a very serious answer
01:38:32
but would be it would be a perfect bow if like if you were there if you were in the last scene of the last episode if
01:38:39
the show was ever to end you know what I mean I would like that I would like that
01:38:42
yeah cuz I was there in the first one yeah no that's that's my answer because
01:38:46
it's like I don't want the show to go on if I'm not in it basically I'm I'm
01:38:49
pretty narcissistic in that way yeah yeah it's been a hell of a career and um
01:38:54
and you're a good person as well to back it up thank you Don Michael gelvin AKA
01:38:58
Dr Chris Warner thank you so much for being on the podcast thanks for having me