Danny Mulheron: An acting and directing life...

Danny Mulheron has acted alongside drug-addicted frogs, haunted automobiles, and "force of nature" David Fane. After appearing in early Kiwi soap Close to Home, Mulheron went on to act on stage, film and TV — including in cult Peter Jackson puppet movie Meet the Feebles. In the late 1980s he began working on both sides of the camera on a run of sketch shows. Mulheron’s lengthy directing CV now includes drama, comedy, and documentary.

In this ScreenTalk, Mulheron talks about:

• Working with a stuntman for Gaylene Preston’s haunted car movie Mr Wrong
• Helping write the "outrageous script" for Peter Jackson puppet movie Meet the Feebles, then playing a homicidal hippo in a freezing railways shed
• Working as a writer and actor on a run of sketch comedy shows for producer Dave Gibson, and beginning his move into directing
• Directing “force of nature” David Fane on short-lived comedy show The Semisis, about a dysfunctional Samoan family
• Moving into drama directing with TV shows The Strip, and The Hothouse
• Co-creating un-PC TV series Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, and finding the right actor to play Mr Gormsby — a racist, sexist schoolteacher at a low decile school
• Showing films in a different way with personal documentary The Third Richard, made with his wife Sara Stretton

This video was first uploaded on 24 June 2009, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview by Ian Pryor, Camera and Editing by Leo Guerchmann