News of New Zealanders via Global Media

Writer Maria Lewis Outdoes Tarantino

Writer Maria Lewis Outdoes Tarantino

New Zealand-born journalist and author Maria Lewis has morphed from a crime reporter on the Gold Coast to pop-culture extraordinaire, has nabbed an international publishing deal and caught Quentin Tarantino’s attention, all by the…

1080p Founder Richard MacFarlane Taped

1080p Founder Richard MacFarlane Taped

Founder of Vancouver-based cassette label 1080p, New Zealander Richard MacFarlane is making a name for himself for a brand, which “uniquely inspires producers while consuming the attention spans of aesthete trend-seekers in electronic music,”…

Blair Reeve’s New Children’s Book a Classic

Blair Reeve’s New Children’s Book a Classic

Hong Kong-based New Zealander Blair Reeve, who mentors students at Chinese University in creative writing, has just published children’s book Hogart the Hedgehog Turns Nink, “an enormously fun book, and a gratifying one to…

Jemaine Clement Plays Joseph Banks in New Podcast

Jemaine Clement Plays Joseph Banks in New Podcast

Jemaine Clement returns to radio playing Captain Cook’s botanist Lord Joseph Banks in the podcast The Mysterious Secrets of Uncle Bertie’s Botanarium, which is currently airing on the Howl app. Written by fellow New Zealander…

Peter Bruntnell an Alt-Country Genius

Peter Bruntnell an Alt-Country Genius

Album after album, the Kingston upon Thames solo artist, Wellington-born Peter Bruntnell produces rich and refined song-craft, yet hardly anyone has heard of him. Could this be his time? The Guardian’s Angus Batey considers…

Game of Thrones Star Joins Top of the Lake

Game of Thrones Star Joins Top of the Lake

Gwendoline Christie, who plays popular Game of Thrones character Brienne of Tarth, will join Mad Men star Elisabeth Moss in a new season of the much-praised Jane Campion TV show Top of the Lake,…

Simon Denny a Millennial Subversive

Simon Denny a Millennial Subversive

Look beyond the traditional spaces and what emerges are a group of Generation Y artists who are arguably more avant garde than ever, like New Zealander Simon Denny, 33. The Guardian enters a world…

David Bowie Saw Lorde As ‘the Future of Music’

David Bowie Saw Lorde As ‘the Future of Music’

David Bowie believed the young New Zealand singer Lorde was “the future of music”. “David really liked Lorde. They had a few wonderful moments together,” said Mike Garson, Bowie’s longtime pianist. Lorde was chosen to perform…

Martin Henderson Not Taking Fame Too Seriously

Martin Henderson Not Taking Fame Too Seriously

Just how did the star of Grey’s Anatomy New Zealander Martin Henderson, 41, get so comfortable with the slings and arrows of a business which can literally plaster you sky high on billboards one…

Lucy Lawless Separating Real Life from Xena

Lucy Lawless Separating Real Life from Xena

In an interview with Australia’s Sunrise breakfast television programme, New Zealand actor Lucy Lawless, who shot to fame with her role as Xena over 20 years ago, said she was more than happy to…

Sarah Bentley Curates Trans-Tasman Dialogue

Sarah Bentley Curates Trans-Tasman Dialogue

Curator and art writer New Zealander Serena Bentley creates a dialogue between two Melbourne painters – Kate Smith and Meagan Wyke – and three Aucklanders – Schaeffer Lemalu, Patrick Lundberg, Campbell Patterson – in…

Introducing Bollywood-Potential Shirley Setia

Introducing Bollywood-Potential Shirley Setia

Shirley Setia, a 22-year old Aucklander whose family hails from India, has attracted a large Indian and international following singing cover versions of Bollywood hits, Forbes contributor Rob Cain reports. The diminutive mezzo-soprano, who calls…

Dame Kiri Preparing for Australian Performances

Dame Kiri Preparing for Australian Performances

New Zealand-born performer Dame Kiri Te Kanawa will perform a series of concerts in Australia later this year. Te Kanawa’s performances in Bendigo and Ballarat could be one of the last chances for people…

Director Taika Waititi’s New Film “A Love Letter to 1970s New Zealand Cinema”

Director Taika Waititi’s New Film “A Love Letter to 1970s New Zealand Cinema”

Taika Waititi spoke with Vice about his new film Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which stars Julian Dennison, Sam Neill, Rachel House, Oscar Kightley and Rhys Darby and is based on Wild Pork and Watercress…

Sam Neill to Play Texan Patriarch in TV’s The Son

Sam Neill to Play Texan Patriarch in TV’s The Son

New Zealand actor Sam Neill will star in the AMC television network drama The Son, playing the patriarch of a Texas family in a multigenerational story of the clan’s rise and fall. Production on the…

Ladyhawke Is Back with Wild New Album

Ladyhawke Is Back with Wild New Album

Pip Brown, better known as Ladyhawke, ARIA-winning maker of synth-pop hits such as Paris is Burning and My Delirium, is back with a new album. Wild Things was created in Los Angeles and is…

A Gemma New Deal Might Be Hard to Pass Up

A Gemma New Deal Might Be Hard to Pass Up

“The orchestra scene in Southern California is keen for refreshment,” according to classical music critic Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times, who reviews the 29-year-old New Zealand conductor Gemma News’ recent “speed date”…

Jono Kenyon To Star in Shonda Rhimes ‘Toast’

Jono Kenyon To Star in Shonda Rhimes ‘Toast’

Kiwi actor Jono Kenyon has landed the male lead in Toast – ABC’s hybrid comedy pilot from Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers’ Shondaland – alongside Grey’s Anatomy alumna Tessa Ferrer. “So excited to announce my next project! Lead role in an…

Mark Vette Teaching UK Dogs How to Fly Planes

Mark Vette Teaching UK Dogs How to Fly Planes

New Zealander Mark Vette, a professional animal psychologist and zoologist, is currently working on new British television show, Dogs Might Fly. Vette, who taught Monty, the giant schnauzer, to drive a car,…

Lesley Vanderwalt’s Post-Apocalyptic Beauty Tips

Lesley Vanderwalt’s Post-Apocalyptic Beauty Tips

New Zealand-born Lesley Vanderwalt, who won both an Oscar for hairstyling and make-up at this year’s Academy Awards and the equivalent at the 2016 BAFTAs, talks to Vogue about bringing Mad Max: Fury Road’s…

White Lies Unfolds with Inexorable Weight

White Lies Unfolds with Inexorable Weight

The 2013 feature film by Mexican director Dana Rotberg, White Lies, is “quiet, graceful, stately and infused with slow tension,” according to New York Times reviewer Paul Wester. “Set in rural New Zealand, the movie…

Zoë Bell Stands in for Herself in Camino

Zoë Bell Stands in for Herself in Camino

Quentin Tarantino’s “favourite stunt double,” New Zealander Zoë Bell, 37, “sturdily stands in for herself” in Camino, a survival-thriller set in the jungles of Colombia circa 1985. The Los Angeles Times reviews the film: “Bell plays…

Flight of the Conchords Announce US Tour

Flight of the Conchords Announce US Tour

The Flight of the Conchords return to stages in the United States playing at nearly 30 locations across the country in June and July, the first time the duo has toured since co-headlining 2013’s…

Where Teddy Tahu Rhodes Goes to Hide Out

Where Teddy Tahu Rhodes Goes to Hide Out

The “pin-up boy of Australian opera”, New Zealand grand baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes, famous for his portrayal of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, talks with the Advertiser about how he unwinds and where he loves to…

Francis Upritchard’s Forlorn Figures Test Empathy

Francis Upritchard’s Forlorn Figures Test Empathy

New Zealand born Francis Upritchard’s exhibition Jealous Saboteurs is on at Monash University’s Museum of Art (MUMA) in Melbourne. Robert Nelson reviews the show for the Sydney Morning Herald. “Upritchard has modified a group of…

Ulster Orchestra Welcomes New MD Richard Wigley

Ulster Orchestra Welcomes New MD Richard Wigley

Former artistic manager at the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra and BBC Philharmonic boss, New Zealander Richard Wigley, 55, is the new managing director of the Ulster Orchestra. Wigley talks about “channelling the energy” of the orchestra…

KJ Apa Lands Archie Andrews Role in US

KJ Apa Lands Archie Andrews Role in US

Eighteen-year-old New Zealand-born KJ Apa, best known for his Shortland Street role as Kane Jenkins, has been cast as Archie Andrews in US television network series Riverdale. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Riverdale had difficulty…

Translator Max Bickerton’s Haiku Legacy Discussed

Translator Max Bickerton’s Haiku Legacy Discussed

“In the 1930s, a translator of Japanese literature from New Zealand was jailed and tortured by the Japanese police. His name was Max Bickerton or, more fully, William Maxwell Bickerton,” Japanese poet and translator…

Lorde Delivers Powerful Tribute to David Bowie

Lorde Delivers Powerful Tribute to David Bowie

Lorde’s tribute to her hero David Bowie at this year’s BRIT Awards has been called “dignified”, “powerful” and “heartbreaking”. Singing Life on Mars with Bowie’s own backing band, Lorde’s was an “acid, disaffected take…

Chris Kraus’ I Love Dick Coming Soon to TV

Chris Kraus’ I Love Dick Coming Soon to TV

Emmy Award-winning auteur Jill Soloway, creator of the gender- and genre-bending TV series Transparent, recently announced her next project: an adaptation of I Love Dick, Chris Kraus’s psycho-sexual epistolary novel about a married, failed…

Re-Examining The Piano’s Kinky Music Lessons

Re-Examining The Piano’s Kinky Music Lessons

“Films about mute piano players embroiled in erotic love triangles never did become a burgeoning genre. Perhaps that’s because it’s virtually impossible to imagine another equalling writer/director Jane Campion’s 1993 magnum opus: an extraordinarily…

How Tragedy Turned Napier into Art Deco Wonder

How Tragedy Turned Napier into Art Deco Wonder

“For Murray Houston, 3 February 1931 started out like any ordinary day. The now 91-year-old New Zealander was sitting inside the small wooden schoolhouse he attended in the coastal town of Napier, when the…

Melanie Lynskey Acts the Only Way She Can: Honestly

Melanie Lynskey Acts the Only Way She Can: Honestly

Actor Melanie Lynskey, the “genial” New Zealand-born star of HBO’s comedy-drama series Togetherness, is profiled in the Los Angeles Times. Lynskey’s expressions are somehow familiar, a visage seen in her countless television and film roles…

Tammy Davis’ Hit a Berlinale Favourite

Tammy Davis’ Hit a Berlinale Favourite

Tammy Davis’ hip-hop drama Born to Dance, a “hidden gem” at this year’s Berlinale, has become the most unlikely of box-office hits Down Under. Born to Dance brought in more than $1 million in theatres…

Jemaine Clement Recalls David Bowie Snub

Jemaine Clement Recalls David Bowie Snub

“Dave Grohl is only the latest to have revealed his rejection by David Bowie.” The Guardian also includes New Zealand’s very own Flight of the Conchords in its list of “10 of Bowie’s very…

Heavenly line for NYNZ artist Max Gimblett

Heavenly line for NYNZ artist Max Gimblett

“In fact, it was heavenly,” said Grafton, Auckland-born New York artist Max Gimblett, 80, on being invested as Officer of the Order of Merit Award by Governor General Sir Jerry Matapere. “I thought it would…

New Zealand Sky-High Trapeze Act in World Record Bid

New Zealand Sky-High Trapeze Act in World Record Bid

Anna Cochrane, a New Zealand paramedic, has performed a static trapeze act while suspended on a hot air balloon at an altitude of more than 3,000m, in a bid to break the world record,…

Meeting Marlon Williams

Meeting Marlon Williams

“It seems as though Marlon Williams is a storyteller, first and foremost. There’s a character who lives within the fluidity of each song he sings, driven by every cord he strums,” writes Daniel Harris…

Standing Ovation for Gemma New in Ontario

Standing Ovation for Gemma New in Ontario

Conductor Gemma New made her long-awaited mainstage debut in Ontario as the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra’s new music director, receiving a standing ovation from a huge crowd. Classical music writer for the Hamilton Spectator Leonard Turnevicius…

Owls Do Cry Continues to Astonish 60 Years On

Owls Do Cry Continues to Astonish 60 Years On

The “modern masterpiece” Owls Do Cry, written by New Zealand author Janet Frame in 1957, “about siblings struggling with money, health and grief still has the power to unnerve and astonish,” writes Claire Hazelton…

Gin Wigmore Making Music at Home in California

Gin Wigmore Making Music at Home in California

“There are singers, and there’s Gin Wigmore,” according to Billboard. “The New Zealand-born, Los Angeles-based artist’s raw, bluesy voice is so distinctive, some pundits are convinced it’s only a matter of time before the…

iZombie Star Rose McIver a Role Model for Fans

iZombie Star Rose McIver a Role Model for Fans

Rose McIver, the New Zealand actress who plays crime-solving zombie, Liv Moore, says the character has become an unlikely role model for many fans, which may explain why iZombie has been ratings gold for…

Finola Dwyer Wins Bafta

Finola Dwyer Wins Bafta

Irish emigrant saga Brooklyn, which was produced by New Zealander Finola Dwyer, was named best British picture on Sunday at the British Academy Film Awards. “The British awards, known as BAFTAs, are considered a portent…

Guardian Rates Uplifting Marlon Williams Debut

Guardian Rates Uplifting Marlon Williams Debut

Marlon Williams’ self-titled debut album is described as “delicious, oddly uplifting misery”, in a review written by Michael Hann for the Guardian. “It’s hard to work out quite how the album from the young New…

Francis Upritchard Opens Her East London Home

Francis Upritchard Opens Her East London Home

In the commune-esque home of New Zealand-born artist Francis Upritchard and her husband, Italian designer Martino Gamper, the colourful trappings of life and work are uniquely integrated. The New York Times is invited into…

A Conversation with Simon Denny

A Conversation with Simon Denny

Simon Denny has had a stellar year. The Berlin-based artist had his first significant United States museum solo show with MoMA PS1 presenting The Innovator’s Dilemma, he represented New Zealand at the 56th Venice Biennale…

New Zealand Movie at 2016 Berlin Film Festival

New Zealand Movie at 2016 Berlin Film Festival

The New Zealand movie Mahana/The Patriarch is one of the ten movies at the 66th Berlin Film Festival The Guardian is most looking forward to. The Patriarch, set in the 1960s, was shot…

A Love Of All New Zealand Movies

A Love Of All New Zealand Movies

“To the unaware, movie titles like Whale Rider and Once Were Warriors are well-made, entertaining yarns about Maoris. But to Charles Eggen, 78, they rank among his favorites — not just because they’re good…

Finola Dwyer Building on Success of Brooklyn

Finola Dwyer Building on Success of Brooklyn

Celebrating six BAFTA nominations and three Oscar nominations, Wildgaze Films duo Wellington-born Finola Dwyer and Briton Amanda Posey look back at Brooklyn’s journey and ahead to their future slate and ambitions. Brooklyn was launched at…

Michael Anderson Takes a Fresh Look at Buffalo

Michael Anderson Takes a Fresh Look at Buffalo

New Zealand-born architect Michael Anderson never thought he would call Buffalo, in New York State home, but after four years at university there in the late 90s, something started to grow on him. At 6’8,…

Marlon Williams Brings Honey Back to the Bees

Marlon Williams Brings Honey Back to the Bees

“If there’s anyone who proves that singer-songwriters don’t need a Nashville or Memphis address to make authentic, arresting country music, it’s 25-year-old crooner Marlon Williams,” Village Voice music editor Lindsey Rhoades says. “Growing…

David Farrier’s Doco Tickled a Hit with Critics

David Farrier’s Doco Tickled a Hit with Critics

New investigative documentary, the “engrossing” Tickled, co-directed by New Zealanders David Farrier and Dylan Reeve, has received rave reviews from critics and punters after its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Farrier and Dylan Reeve’s…

Ukulele Orchestra Strums up Fans in US

Ukulele Orchestra Strums up Fans in US

Andy Morley-Hall is a member of the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra, an eight-piece band that combines high-energy ukulele covers of classic pop and rock songs by the likes of Blondie, Cyndi Lauper and Salt-N-Pepa…

Thor director Taika Waititi an Indie Powerhouse

Thor director Taika Waititi an Indie Powerhouse

“As a director, got an impeccable ability to balance painful earnestness with biting humour,” Angela Watercutter writes for WIRED. “And as a comedy writer and actor, he produces jokes that land…

Photographer Robin Hammond Speaks on Conflict

Photographer Robin Hammond Speaks on Conflict

New Zealand-born Robin Hammond is one of six photographers featured in a series called Conflict, which explores the testimonies of professional conflict photographers and looks at how they engage with and seek to understand…

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is Perfectly Balanced

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is Perfectly Balanced

Taika Waititi’s film adaptation of Barry Crump’s Wild Pork and Watercress, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, which made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, is a “deliciously good time at the movies,” according to…