Sia Trokenheim

Though you'd never know it from her Kiwi accent, Sia Trokenheim began acting in her native Sweden while she was still a child. In 2001 she relocated to New Zealand. Four years later she got her Kiwi screen break, playing the title role in low-budget thriller Luella Miller. In 2014 she won a Moa award for fractured family drama Everything We Loved; she also began starring in the first of two seasons of Step Dave, as a 30-something mother who dates a 24-year-old barman, despite the disapproval of her daughters. In 2017 she co-starred in Indian-NZ missing person drama Beyond the Known World, and family movie Kiwi Christmas.

I loved how organically the characters of Dave and Cara came together: their chance meeting behind the bar didn't feel forced in any way, and stars Kenyon and Trokenheim sold it with really understated and subtle performances in those early scenes. Chris Philpott in an NZ Herald review of Step Dave, 11 February 2014