Irene Wood

In at the birth of Kiwi television drama, back when it was "a three camera set up and repertory cast concept", actor Irene Wood has been in the game long enough to have seen many big changes: from the switch from black and white to colour in the mid 1970s — which she says some thought a passing phase, "like decimal currency" — to the arrival of high definition television, "which frankly does no one over 35 any favours".

Wanganui-born and Lower Hutt-raised, Wood began acting at primary school. She has memories of singing "loudly and obliviously off-key" in a production of dance play Redcap in Fairyland. “I think it was the centre stage thing that got me,” she laughs. She went on to study English Literature and Latin at Victoria University.

Wood's versatility got her many gigs in the early days of Kiwi television. By the mid 60s she was presenting (and sometimes writing for) children’s shows Of Shoes and Ships and Button On Button Off, singing live on Music Hall, and competing on quiz show Note for Note (and later Personality Squares). She also starred as Katherine Mansfield in The White Gardenia. Directed by Douglas Drury and long predating Mansfield TV movie Bliss, the one-hour drama explored parental conflicts before Mansfield left New Zealand, including a romance with a young cellist (played by theatre director Colin McColl "in a knickerbocker suit").

By this point local TV producer Brian Bell had realised that if local drama output was going to grow, some training might be a good idea. Alongside Drury and Chris Thomson, Bell began running television workshops for actors and producers, and experimenting with a repertory style team of actors, Wood among them. She talks about doing live television in this interview.

In 1967 Bell executive produced five one-off tele-dramas, stories which marked New Zealand television's first sustained burst of local storytelling. Wood featured in the two that won the keenest reaction from critics and audiences alike. Slipknot, based on a script by Dame Ngaio Marsh, was a murder mystery set in the Auckland art scene. Wood’s performance was praised by NZ Herald critic Barry Shaw, who wrote that she "took the eye ... she made every word, every look count". Her second role was in the Warren-Dibble scripted Double Exposure, about two travellers who clash in a hotel.

Since then Wood has spent a year acting in Australia, and performed onstage at Mercury, Centrepoint and Downstage theatres. (It was at Downstage that she solved a lack of backstage space by hanging a box of props out the window, above a busy street.) Her stage impersonation (at Wellington's Circa Theatre) of then Green Party leader Jeanette Fitsimmons was reprised for a TV3 New Year’s Eve special.

She has also done time on the nursing staff of Shortland Street; her key film roles to date have included rest-home comedy Rest for the Wicked, and as mother and protector of a dodgy junkie (Brian Sargent) in movie The Shirt.

But Wood is most often recognised in supermarkets thanks to five seasons of Go Girls. Playing the straight-talking but slightly ditsy Nan McMann, great grandmother to barmaid Britta, she shared — and stole — many scenes alongside another Kiwi screen veteran, Annie Whittle.

In 2021, Wood co-starred in miniseries The Pact. Wood played Betty, a grandmother considering euthanasia after a diagnosis of early stage five Alzheimer's Disease. Her performance was celebrated with an NZ Television Award for Best Actress, and a positive response from critics.

Stuff reviewer James Croot described Wood's performance as "terrific", and praised her dynamic with co-star Timmie Cameron, who plays Betty's granddaughter. "Their particular relationship feels authentic and really helps sell the lighter moments" wrote Croot, "as well as giving the more serious conversations an extra degree of resonance and heft". 

Profile updated on 18 January 2023

Sources include
Irene Wood
'Irene Wood: The two rules of acting…' (Video Interview), NZ On Screen website. Director Ian Pryor. Loaded 20 April 2015. Accessed 21 December 2022
Robert Boyd-Bell, New Zealand Television - The First 25 Years (Auckland: Reed Methuen Publishers, 1985)
James Croot, 'The Pact: TVNZ's new Kiwi euthanasia drama both thought-provoking and charming' (Review) Stuff website. Loaded 19 October 2021. Accessed 21 December 2022
Trisha Dunleavy, Ourselves in Primetime - A History of New Zealand Television Drama (Auckland University Press, 2005)
John Smythe, Downstage Upfront (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2004)