Online Exclusive
Caterina De Nave
by Fiona Rae
As head of drama and comedy at TV3, Caterina De Nave commissioned the hits Outrageous Fortune and bro’Town. But in 1992, she was the first producer of Shortland Street and oversaw a birth in the first episode and the birth of a TV institution. Her baby is now all grown up and heading for its 4000th episode on June 6.
Do you remember what people were saying when you started putting Shortland Street together? People were on the whole pretty negative. The media was skeptical, the drama community was skeptical, the public was skeptical. It was an uphill battle, but at the same time, we also felt that we were creating history and that sustained us through our darkest hours, and there were many of those.
How did you got the job? [TV2’s programme manager] Bettina Hollings had said to TVNZ, “we need a five-day-a-week soap” and whoever was in charge said, “that’s impossible”. However, she did not let it lie and talked at length with Ruth Harley at NZ On Air and then one day NZ On Air said they would fund it, so both TV3 and South Pacific Pictures (SPP), which was then owned by TVNZ, put in a prop and we won the bid. I got involved because John Reynolds, who ran South Pacific, asked me to do it.
Did they think it was impossible because we had very little experience of doing a five-night-a-week show? We had no experience of doing a five-night show, though we had done a two-nighter in Close to Home, which I produced earlier on. But SPP did a brilliant thing by hooking up with [Australian TV producers] Grundy, who were highly experienced and I brought two writers over, Jason Daniel, who currently produces Shortland Street, and Gavin Strawhan, who’s a New Zealander now really, and their support was invaluable. I have to say we were pretty efficient, production-wise, right from the start. We used to have to send the scripts over to the Grundy production manager to check that they were viable and he would ring up and say, “you can’t do this” and I’d say, “oh, we shot that last week, no trouble”. We were very Kiwi gung-ho.
Did you have to make any changes to the first scripts? Yes, there was a huge fight over the word “placenta”, which was deemed to be – I dunno, actually, it’s clearly not a sexual word, but we were ordered to take it out. We had to change the line from Dr Hone Ropata saying, “I’ll just take away the placenta” to “I’ll just tidy up here”.
Do you remember reading the famous “You’re not in Guatemala now, Dr Ropata” line? I confess not, but there’s a great story to it, which was that Gavin had written the line and Jason said, “what a stupid line” and edited it out – and then later put it back in.
Do you watch now and think, “that’s my baby, all grown up”? [Laughs] Yeah I do a little bit. I probably watch an episode a week to keep my eye on storylines and to see what the new actors are doing. It’s slicker than in my day. It has great inner confidence to it now.
What sort of state would the New Zealand TV industry be in without Shortland Street? It is a great place for performers and crew to get experience. You can always tell a Shortland Street actor, they’re technically very good. They can find their mark, they can cope with any changes that have to happen quickly on location or in the studio. Some of the directors on Outrageous Fortune are Shortland Street-trained. Rachel Lang, James Griffin – that’s where they got blooded. Every decent writer’s worked there.
Would there be an Outrageous Fortune if there hadn’t been a Shortland Street? Yes, there would, but I think part of the reason that it’s good is the fact that Rachel and James, Gavin’s written some episodes, Kate McDermott’s written some episodes, they’ve all been blooded on Shortland Street. People like Robyn Malcolm, you know, her great television experience was on Shortland Street. We’d still have it, whether it would be as good, I don’t know, I’d like to think it would be.
SHORTLAND STREET, TV2, Friday, 7.00pm.
