Ginette McDonald has directed cop shows, produced kidult classics and won awards for her dramatic acting. Yet she has long been associated with a single role: Kiwi gal Lynn of Tawa. In this interview, she talks about Lynn and much more, including:
- Being thrown in the deep end as a comedy director, on TV comedy Rabbiters Rest (14 minutes)
- Playing a French maid at Wellington's Downstage Theatre at age 14 — and how helping out at the theatre was "the best apprenticeship you could have" (31 minutes)
- Lynn of Tawa's first appearance at Downstage Theatre in Knickers, in a monologue about sex (33 minutes)
- How comedy often teeters dangerously between poignancy and laughter (35 minutes)
- Her brother Michael befriending comedy legend John Clarke at university —and how Clarke and Paul Holmes joined her for late night show Knackers (57 minutes)
- Helping Clarke get his first movie role in London — and pinching champagne and smoked salmon from Clarke's job as a deliveryman (60 minutes)
- Living and working in London, including the hopeless agent who sent her off to audition as a sexy housewife, when the role was for a lesbian army sergeant (62 minutes)
- Her thoughts on why Lynn of Tawa was so popular, and how the character "punctured a bubble" (71 minutes)
- The irony of how Lynn "has paved the way for me to be a more authentic version of myself" (80 minutes)
- How Lynn of Tawa was at first deemed too common to perform at the Royal Variety Performance — and the feeling that she was "surfing the audience" (82 minutes)
- How the cramped sets at Wellington's Waring Taylor St studios compared to the purpose-built Avalon TV centre — and wild times at the Avalon bar (96 minutes)
- Moving into producing and directing (99 minutes)
- Discovering she was pregnant just as she got a big job producing show The Fire-Raiser — and having to come up with a new show (Peppermint Twist) in a "rumpty set, up in the valley" (103 minutes)
- Being told she had to lose roughly 15 kilograms if she was to star in comedy series All Things Being Equal (110 minutes)
- Trying to persuade actor Bruno Lawrence not to take LSD before the show went live (115 minutes)
- Looking back on her career, plus a memorable concentration camp story (117 minutes)
This interview was recorded for 2019 TV series
Funny As: The Story of New Zealand Comedy.
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Augusto, and may not be reproduced. Publication of
Funny As
extended interviews made possible with funding from the
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...I've evolved a way of being myself. And that's very ironic, that a character I invented with no thought at all, has paved the way for me to be a more authentic version of myself....
– Ginette McDonald on the upside of her most famous character, Lynn of Tawa