Danny Mulheron: An acting and directing life...

Actor/director 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 television, stage and film - including in the cult Peter Jackson puppet movie Meet the Feebles. In the late 80s he found himself working on both sides of the camera on a run of television sketch shows. Mulheron’s lengthy directorial CV now includes drama, comedy, and documentary.

In this ScreenTalk, Mulheron talks about:

• Working with a stuntman, while acting in Gaylene Preston’s haunted car movie Mr Wrong
• Helping write the “outrageous script” for Peter Jackson puppet movie Meet the Feebles, then filming it in a freezing railways shed (Mulheron plays a homicidal hippo)
• Working as a writer and actor on a run of sketch comedy shows for producer Dave Gibson, and beginning the move into directing
• Directing “force of nature” David Fane on shortlived comedy show The Semisis, about a dysfunctional Samoan family
• Moving into drama directing with The Strip, and The Hothouse
• Co-creating un-PC TV series Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, and finding an actor who could 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 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