Cultural exchange:
Summer Bay’s newest family bring a Kiwi touch to Australian soap Home And Away. Kerry Harvey reports.
Home And Away lands its first M ori family.
Four Kiwis are making waves in Summer Bay as the long-running Australian drama’s first Kiwi family. But the Paratas aren’t just New Zealanders. They are M ori and all four actors who play the newcomers are determined to ensure their culture is accurately represented on Home And Away. “Nothing worth doing is ever easy,” says Bree Peters, who plays family matriarch Gemma. Peters – who was Shortland Street villain Dr Pania Stevens in 2015 – admits she keeps in close contact with the soap’s writers to ensure the M ori aspects of the Parata family’s storylines are as authentic as possible. “It’s been a process since day one and I think it’s been pretty good for me to step up into my own culture a lot and sort of take charge of that,” she says. “You’re not doing just the acting, you’re really trying to represent your culture in a very positive way as much as you can in a story that has drama, people angry at people, people arguing with cops, holing up, all that soapy kind of thing.” The actress, the daughter of Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, is also aware that while M ori culture will be new for Home And Away’s Aussie fans, there will be plenty of Kiwi viewers who will notice if the show gets it wrong. “It has been a bit of working on that communication to get things right, to make things authentic, to have it not just be a new family for the sake of it but a new family that has authenticity and that can be recognised by M ori, Pacific
Islanders, other minorities,” she says.
It is a sentiment echoed by her New Zealand co-stars – Rob KipaWilliams (800 Words), Kawakawa Fox-Reo (Wellington Paranormal) and newcomer Ethan Browne.
“It’s been such a huge weight on my mind during shooting,” says Fox-Reo, who plays Peters’ onscreen son Nikau. “I really hope that when people watch it back home that they’re proud, not ashamed; that they don’t see something that’s not done properly or doesn’t make sense to them. I’ve done my absolute best to be as authentic as possible, with
the cultural material that’s in the script. It’s a big deal to me.”
Kipa-Williams, known on both sides of the Tasman as 800 Words’ nice guy Zac, has nothing but praise for the drama’s “amazing” writing team that he says worked collaboratively with a cultural adviser and the actors themselves.
“It’s been really great that the production’s allowed us to do that,” he says.
“We’ve worked pretty hard to bring the family to life and reflect our culture the best that we can with the tools that we have.”