Julie Christie

Julie Christie, the so-called Queen of reality TV, began as a newspaper journalist, before moving into television in the late 1980s. In 1991 she set up company Touchdown Productions, where she proudly "developed a sustainable business", and sold many shows overseas. After 15 years, Christie sold Touchdown to Dutch media group Eyeworks. She stayed on as Chief Executive of Eyeworks New Zealand until late 2012.

Growing up in Greymouth, Christie was the fifth of seven children. Her Irish Catholic mother — a woman with a tremendous work ethic" — was widowed when Julie was five, after her mechanic father died from a brain haemmorhage. Her love affair with television began early, and much of it was local content. "I only remember New Zealand television really as a child." She counts herself lucky that she "came to understand what most people like most of the time”.

Christie took a one year journalism course at Wellington Polytechnic: "it only involved one year of poverty". After nine years subediting newspapers in London, she returned to sub The Auckland Sun's sport section.

Television happened by accident. After the Sun folded, she got a two week gig at production company Communicado, as a production assistant on a corporate video — where she began learning about storytelling from Communicado boss Neil Roberts. Roberts soon offered her a job as a researcher. In this extended interview, Christie credits this as the moment she discovered her passion for television. “Literally the lights went on. I went 'Wow  — I can do this! This is me'." 

Christie quickly became one of the company's most prolific producers, putting her hand up to produce documentary TV series Mud and Glory: Great Rugby Stories. She followed it with one-off documentary, Rachel Hunter: Cover Girl, for which Christie managed to persuade Rod Stewart to do an interview.

After the doco won record ratings, Christie asked for a pay rise, but got turned down. So in 1991 she went and formed Touchdown Productions. Within a few years it had grown into one of New Zealand's biggest producers of unscripted television, with a thriving business in exporting programme formats. Christie became "a lot more staunch" about retaining intellectual property rights in 1996, when "three programmes I had created were taken from me to be produced in-house at TVNZ". The decision "nearly broke my company".

Christie discovered that you didn't necessarily need to own the IP outright. "You just have to control the royalties from it. That was how I created a different type of TV business . . .  that knowledge of IP and how to exploit it, set me up for everything I’ve done since, and helps with my board work."

She also believes that "perfecting the execution" is as important as the idea itself; she notes that after her shows were taken inhouse by a newly-arrived TVNZ programmer, "none of those programmes lasted a year". 

Christie also took on long-running documentary series This is Your Life, as a writer and producer, winning two NZ Television Awards in the process. She says that showcasing "remarkable New Zealanders" on the show proved to be “the most stressful but the most rewarding part of my career”. Christie worked on one instalment just days after giving birth.

By the time Dutch company Eyeworks bought Christie's company in 2006, Touchdown's content had been franchised to 29 countries. She continued as Chief Executive for another six years.

Many of Christie's programmes became staples of local television schedules — nine plus seasons of My House My Castle, DIY Rescue, Trading Places and successful export Treasure Island,. Touchdown also retooled overseas formats for local audiences, including the long-running Changing Rooms — "the first show that merged a game show with a lifestyle show"— living in the past chronicle Pioneer House, the Big Brother-style Captive and Dragons' Den, on which Christie was among the backers deciding which entrepreneurs to invest in. In 2012 she won an NZ TV Award for her work directing the first season of The Block NZ.

Christie feels there is a snobbery in the Kiwi screen industry about reality shows, and argues that "unscripted television tells you an enormous amount about ourselves culturally. Because it presents us, flaws and all."

Touchdown's programmes made stars out of some of their presenters, including April Ieremia and partners in crime Matthew Ridge and Marc Ellis (Fresh-up in the Deep End, Game of Two Halves, which ran 11 seasons). While some shows failed to find success (eg The Player, starring Nicky Watson); others dared to turn reality television on its head (Living the Dream, in which an unsuspecting contestant was surrounded by actors). TV3 hit Police Stop! was one of the country's earliest unscripted shows featuring cops and errant drivers.

In 2001 Touchdown began to exploit its formats overseas. As Christie says, "making it internationally mattered". "I realised that if I was licensing formats from other producers, then people would license formats from me. That’s how my international business started."

The company's first American pitch — and sale — was High Country Dance (which Christie directed, wrote and produced). It captured a single farmers’ event in Otago. The idea was reborn for the Fox Network as series Looking For Love: Bachelorettes in Alaska. "The US market is wonderfully open to ideas from outside. They have a voracious appetite and unscripted television is a vital part of everyday life to them."

Quiz show The Chair debuted on American screens in 2002, followed three months later by the Kiwi version. The show's gimmick was that contestants scored better if they were able to control their heart rate. Christie and her fellow producers launched legal action against Fox game show The Chamber; Fox had been pitched The Chair earlier, but turned it down. Although the American version lasted less than a season, the format sold to 29 countries, including the BBC, VOX in Germany and TF1 in France.

Further international success followed with productions of Treasure Island for RTE Ireland and Australia's Channel 7.  Christie found herself spending a lot of time on aeroplanes.

Later Robin Scholes arrived, to set up a fiction department at Touchdown as the company expanded cautiously into drama. "Robin Scholes had been a great mentor when I was at Communicado. We used to just watch Robin in awe: her energy, and the way she held that place together . . . she kind of talked me into it. She said 'You know you need to do this . . . you can take your success to drama' ". The result was four movies — Mr Pip, Love Birds, The Tattooist, and The Hopes and Dreams of Gazza Snell — and darkly comic TV series Burying Brian. 

Post Touchdown, Christie spent four years on the board of directors at MediaWorks, owners of TV3. She left in 2014 to concentrate on other ventures. Worried she'd retired too early, she stepped back into the screen game in 2021 by purchasing a majority stake in natural history documentary makers NHNZ. In early 2023 she purchased the remaining 40 percent of the company from Canada's Blue Ant Media. Christie has "always wanted to make television for the world in New Zealand, and that's what NHNZ have always done".

Christie has won two NZ Television Awards for Best Entertainment Programme, two Qantas Media Awards for Best Lifestyle series, and People's Choice Awards for Game of Two Halves and DIY Rescue. She took away WIFT's 2004 Award for International Television Achievement, and chaired the Government's Screen Production Industry Taskforce. She was the first Kiwi recipient of the Veuve Clicquot Award, celebrating female entrepreneurship.

In 2007 Christie was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to television. In 2017 she was named a Dame Companion, this time for television and governance. At the 2024 NZ Television Awards she was named 2024's TV Legend.

Christie has done time on the boards of the 2011 Rugby World Cup board, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, and the New Zealand Story Group, which oversees the Silver Fern trademark. She has also encouraged Kiwi trade opportunities via World Expo 2020. 

Christie's business interests have included pay TV channels Living and Food (she sold both to Discovery in 2014), two Auckland TV-themed restaurants and bars (The Foodstore and Sky Sport Grill), and a Fijian resort purchased for Australian reality series The Resort.

Profile updated on 14 November 2024

Sources include
'ScreenTalk Legends - Julie Christie' (Video Interview) NZ On Screen website. Director Kathryn Quirk. Loaded 15 August 2024. Accessed 15 August 2024
Eyeworks website (broken link). Accessed 16 March 2015
Emily Brookes, 'I Wish ... Julie Christie' (Interview) - Sunday, 28 January 2024, page 3
Daniel Dunkley, 'My Net Worth: Julie Christie, chief executive, NHNZ worldwide' (Interview) BusinessDesk website. Loaded 3 October 2021. Accessed 30 October 2024
Karen Tay, 'Small screen queen' (Interview) - The Sunday Star-Times, 29 November 2009
Matthew Theunisson, 'Queen's Birthday Honours: Reality TV queen Julie Christie is now a Dame' (Interview) - The NZ Herald, 5 June 2017
Diana Wichtel, 'Reality queen' (Interview) - The Listener, 10 June 2006 (issue 3448)
Unknown writer, 'Confessions of a Coaster' (Interview) NZBusiness website. Loaded 11 February 2018. Accessed 30 October 2024 
Unknown writer, 'Julie Christie: TV is a business not an art' (Interview) - The Australian Women's Weekly, 5 August 2016
Unknown writer, 'Julie Christie' (Interview). Her magazine website (broken link). Accessed 16 March 2015
'Minister congratulates honours' recipients' (press release) Beehive website. Loaded 5 June 2017. Accessed 7 February 2024