Bret McKenzie

Bret McKenzie is best known for being one half of musical comedy group Flight of the Conchords. In 2007 McKenzie and Jemaine Clement starred in a Flight of the Conchords show on HBO. In 2012 McKenzie scored an Academy Award for composing a song for movie The Muppets. The same year he was named a Member of the NZ Order of Merit. 

The Conchords parody many musical genres, and the idea of a "useless" duo failing to make it big. They mine comedy from their deliberately awkward banter between songs,  making a virtue of Kiwi naivety and self-deprecation. With Grammy Awards, HBO success and sell-out concerts, the duo are arguably Aotearoa's most successful comedy act to date.

McKenzie grew up in Wellington, the second of three sons. His mother, Deirdre Tarrant, commanded Footnote Dance Company for almost three decades. Her family sometimes joined her on dance trips overseas. Bret's father Peter worked as a lawyer, alongside performing (including a small role in King Kong).

Encouraged to try dance, music and debating, McKenzie learned to play roughly a dozen instruments, and performed in plays, operas, orchestras and a funk band. While studying music at Victoria University, he met Jemaine Clement via the university's drama club. The two briefly joined Taika Waititi as part of a comedy group So You're a Man. McKenzie's award-winning play Dirt (1998) has become legendary. It was performed in and around a "wickedly spooky" house in Mt Victoria, where McKenzie and Clement flatted. McKenzie played an undertaker's assistant. At one point Rhys Darby emerged from a grave on the lawn.

In the same period McKenzie and Clement formed a band. According to McKenzie, they were originally meant to be supplying music for a comedy night, but ended up becoming one of the acts instead. The new duo decided to write their own songs — if they got them wrong, people were less likely to notice. "We couldn't sing and play the guitar at the same time," says McKenzie in this extended Flight of the Conchords interview. "We still struggle with that". Among the duo's influences were Auckland comedy duo Sugar and Spice, and the unashamedly Kiwi songs of The Front Lawn. The Conchords made their television debut on this 1999 episode of Newtown Salad; they also performed a number of times on Pulp Comedy. 

In 2001 the Conchords took their first hour-long show to Canada's Calgary Fringe Festival. Their next show Folk the World won an award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (as seen here), and they started getting invitations to discuss projects with casting directors in Los Angeles. "It was really exciting," recalls McKenzie, "but you needed to have a clear idea of what you wanted to do. And we didn't really have any idea at all."

In 2003 High on Folk was nominated for England's prestigious Perrier Comedy Award. The Conchords also recorded an award-winning, semi-improvised series, based around the idea of the duo trying to make it in London; The Flight of the Conchords finally debuted on BBC radio in 2005.

McKenzie was winning recognition elsewhere, thanks to a blink and you'll miss it appearance as an elf in The Fellowship of the Ring. The role spawned him a 12 second return cameo in the third Rings film, and another in the first Hobbit. A documentary on the fan phenomenon, Frodo is Great...Who is That?, was named after one fan's reaction to first seeing McKenzie on-screen. And so the nickname Figwit was born.

Meanwhile attempts to get a Conchords show on Kiwi television were going nowhere. An unfinished one-off special in which the duo joined bands from various decades has entered legend (they talk about it in detail, 74 minutes into this Funny As interview). By roughly 2003, the Conchords were attracting overtures from Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, and writing scripts for a potential NBC sitcom. But on both sides of the Atlantic there was confusion over how the Conchords' act might work on television. "It was hard to translate," says McKenzie, "to capture the awkwardness, the slowness". In 2007 executives from cable network HBO invited the duo to perform in Los Angeles, for an episode of stand-up comedy show One Night Stand.

The programme's success encouraged HBO to sign the Conchords up to do a pilot for a potential series. It was one of only four made by the company that year. The duo played fictional versions of themselves. Mixing the duo's knowingly naive brand of Kiwi humour with a New York setting helped spawn cult success.

For four months, the duo alternated five days of filming, with weekends working on scripts and music. McKenzie, Clement, and British writer/director James Bobin (Da Ali G Show) were all fans of understated comedy: the Conchords series has few punchlines, and no laugh track. McKenzie found HBO "incredibly supportive"; the trio were allowed to have roughly "90 percent of what we want".

In August 2007 the Conchords released their album The Distant Future. It won a Grammy for Best Comedy Album, and became the first album by a Kiwi band to ascend pop charts in the United States since Crowded House. A second season of the TV show debuted on HBO in January 2009. Later HBO special Live in London (2018) was nominated for an Emmy Award, for song 'Father and Son'. 

Outside the Conchords flight path, McKenzie's acting CV is shorter than Clement's. McKenzie's first big-screen starring role was in black comedy Two Little Boys (aka Dean and Nige's Best Last Day Ever), made by Rob and Duncan Sarkies (Scarfies). Released in New Zealand in September 2012, the odd couple comedy saw McKenzie playing Nige, who is forced to seek help from a friend (Australian comedian Hamish Blake) who proves less than reliable. McKenzie was nominated for Best Actor at the 2012 NZ Film Awards. He told The Otago Daily Times it was the best script he had read in two years.

Romance Austenland (2013) marked the directorial debut of Napoleon Dynamite co-writer Jerusha Hess. Clement played romantic interest to a woman (Keri Russell from The Americans) who visits a theme park inspired by Jane Austen's novels. The film was nominated for the top prize at the Sundance film festival.

Elsewhere he had a small role in Kiwi comedy Futile Attraction (2004) alongside Clement, and cameoed as a doctor in Jason Stutter horror comedy Diagnosis: Death (2009). McKenzie and Clement were nominated for an Annie Award for music after they did a cameo on The Simpsons. They also guested on The Drinky Crow Show, which stars a suicidal crow and a sex-obsessed monkey.

The longtime Jim Henson fan wrote four songs for 2011's acclaimed big screen reboot of The Muppets. Conchords collaborator James Bobin directed. McKenzie's contributions include opening number 'Life's a Happy Song', and the Grammy-nominated 'Man or Muppet'. The night he won an Oscar for it, he did his dance teacher mother proud, after leaping into the air for photographers on the red carpet. In 2014 McKenzie was nominated for a Satellite Award for a song in 2014's Muppets Most Wanted. He is developing another Muppet related project, Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas.

McKenzie's musical CV predates any of his Conchords recordings. His solo album Prototype hit stores in April 2004. The eclectic release is often referred to as The Video Kid, the moniker McKenzie released it under. Aside from work as a producer and engineer, he has also toured as part of dub/funk band The Black Seeds, and played keyboards on their first three studio albums, Keep on Pushing (2001), On the Sun and chart-topper Into the Dojo. McKenzie has played guitar with band Congress of Animals, and drums with musical collective The Dub Foundation. He was a founding member of the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra.

Profile updated on 31 March 2020

Sources include
'Flight of the Conchords - Funny As Interview' (Video Interview) NZ On Screen website. Director Rupert Mackenzie. Loaded 19 August 2019. Accessed 15 January 2020
Ellie Constantine, 'Sarkies taking 'Two Little Boys' to the Catlins' - Otago Daily Times, 10 December 2010
Michelle Coursey, 'The Conchords' flight to fame' - Herald on Sunday, 26 July 2008
Amelie Gillette, 'Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords', (Interview). A.V. Club website. Loaded 27 July 2007. Accessed December 2009
Matt Goldberg, 'Bret McKenzie talks THE MUPPETS, THE HOBBIT, FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS, and More'  (Interview) Collider website. Loaded January 2012. Accessed 7 August 2013
Lydia Jenkin, 'Bret McKenzie is one lucky plucker' (Interview) (Broken link) - NZ Herald (Time Out liftout), 3 October 2013
M.E.R, 'Flight of the Conchords' - Current Biography, March 2008, page 29 (volume 69, issue 3)
Michelle Smith, 'House of horrors' (Interview) - Capital Times, February 1998
Adam Sternbergh, 'On Composing for Kermit the Frog' (Interview) - The New York Times, 17 November 2011
Unknown writer, 'Giant leap for Bret McKenzie' - The Dominion Post, 4 March 2012