Latest news with #RobynMalcolm
NZ Herald
27-06-2025
- Business
- NZ Herald
Tauranga businesswomen inspired to own their story
Robyn Malcolm, centre, Cassie Roma, left, Toni Street, right and Kiri Nathan spoke at the Business Women's Speaker Series in Tauranga. Inspiring, collaborative and energising. This is how broadcaster Toni Street describes this year's Business Women's Network Speaker Series event, hosted on Wednesday at Baycourt by the Tauranga Business Chamber. This year's theme was about exploring the power of owning your narrative. Keynote speakers - fashion
RNZ News
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Pike River movie to premiere at Sydney Film Festival
Twenty-nine men were killed in one of New Zealand's worst mining disasters. Photo: The feature film Pike River will premiere at the Sydney Film Festival on Saturday, before its release in New Zealand later this year. The movie follows the families of the 29 men killed in one of the worst mining disasters in the country and their search for justice. Director Rob Sarkies said the crew worked closely with the families of the men who died in making the film, which was shot on location in Māwhera, Greymouth, Wellington and Auckland. Pike River features New Zealand actors Melanie Lynskey as Anna Osborne and Robyn Malcolm as Sonya Rockhouse. Osborne's husband, Milton, and Rockhouse's son, Ben, were among those killed in the mine explosion 15 years ago. Rockhouse has said the film had, in some way, helped with their healing. "Anna and I have found it to be an incredibly humbling experience to be involved in the film, with a crew of people who felt strongly about the injustices we suffered and wanted to tell our story." They are attending the film's premiere in Sydney together. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Sydney Morning Herald
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘We're roadkill': How this Kiwi actor turned middle-age rage into her best work yet
Robyn Malcolm is a hoot. The Kiwi actor is leaning on one arm, recounting her recent evening at the BAFTAs in London, where her critically acclaimed series After the Party had been nominated for Best International Series. 'Honestly, they go on and on and on and on,' she says. 'Of course, our award was right at the end. By the time it got to the end, I was like, 'I hope we don't win', because my feet are so sore in these massive shoes I bought, and I was desperate to go to the loo. And I thought if we did win, I'd either fall down the stairs because my feet were numb or I'd piss myself on the stage. So when it went to Shogun, I was like, 'Oh, thank god for that.'' Surely it was a bit glamorous? 'Oh, it's a nightmare!' she says. 'There's the going to the ball aspect of it, which is fun … but then you stand in the heat and there's all this jostling and pushing and photographs and chaos, and it was really hot. And then you get inside and you sit and watch these damn awards for 3½ hours. And honestly, it's not entertainment.' Malcolm, who turned 60 in March, is in Glasgow, where it's early evening, but the temperature is a balmy 25 degrees. 'All the Glaswegians are, like, freaking out that they're so unprepared for it,' she says, laughing, over Zoom. She is exactly as I had hoped – funny and forthright, stripped of any artifice – and instantly familiar. She's been on New Zealand and Australian screens for years, starring in everything from the big stuff (Jane Campion's TV series Top of the Lake) to the cult local stuff (Outrageous Fortune) and the delightfully funny stuff (Upper Middle Bogan). It was on Top of the Lake where she met her partner Peter Mullan, the Scottish actor who specialises in being both terrifying and charming on screen, who pops in mid-chat, so Robyn can pop out to farewell his grandson. 'He's just a really f--k-off actor,' says Malcolm. 'He's an enormously fun actor to work with. I've worked with actors before who are arseholes, and people make excuses for that because they're playing a dark character. And I'm like, 'I know a fellow who's played some of the meanest motherf---ers on the planet, and he'll get the third AD [assistant director] a cup of tea because he's such a sweetheart.'' Loading She has been in the UK for the last three months or so, after being summoned by an agent when After the Party aired last year. 'They just said, 'Could you not talk to any other agents, and can you come with me?' – which was great.' The series, which was co-created by Malcolm and screenwriter Dianne Taylor, was about a high school teacher (Malcolm) who accuses her ex-husband, Phil (played by Mullan) of sexually abusing a drunk friend of their teenage daughter. Malcolm was hailed for giving the best performance of her career and five-star reviews followed. 'I feel like I'm at the beginning of something, not the end of it,' says Malcolm. 'Because I've never lacked ambition, so this has just got my pilot light going faster again, which is fantastic. Weirdly, it's sort of new-lease-of-life stuff. 'I'm more confident than I used to be. I know a lot more. I know what I don't know. I know where I need to get better. I feel like I'm in an excellent place right now for the age I am, you know. I'm not about to buy a La-Z-Boy [reclining chair] any time soon.' My mother-in-law has one of those. 'No, no, no. Although they are f---ing great chairs, I have to say.' Back to the serious stuff – Malcolm is part of a growing group of older female actors using their power on screen and refusing to be invisible. Women can now – shock! – play their age instead of being quietly shuffled out of shot, having reached their screen use-by date of 40 (or, really, a 40-year-old who can pass for 30). It's their stories that Malcolm is most interested in telling. 'One of the things that I love about women in midlife is that it's the three-act structure,' she says. 'You set everything up with the first act, and then everything has to go to shit in the second act so that third act can happen. 'And I feel a lot of us are at the end of our second act. So women of our age straddle so much stuff … we're the generation where a lot of people were divorced. Mistakes have been made, new lives are being started. Careers have been dropped. Careers have been picked up. There's been tragedy. We're in the middle of a big story and that, in itself, I find a really fascinating place to start from. In drama, she says, women's conversation often sits around romance. 'I always remember being so furious – I mean, I was never a major fan – but being so furious that Sex and the City ended with them all shacking up with blokes. I was like, 'This is not what this show was meant to be about. How dare you.' 'You don't see women living independently of the romance story, women being – I hate this word – but having an agency that is completely separate from that. Women having powerful lives in other areas. 'One of my most favourite things is the word 'crone'. The etymology of the word crone comes from either Greek or Latin, and it basically was a word that meant roadkill. So the middle-aged or older woman, the crone word essentially means that we're roadkill. I love that because it's like we've just been chucked out the window, knocked over by a car, and we're splat on the road, and who gives a f--k about us. There's something incredibly powerful in that.' Her latest role is in Netflix's Tasmanian murder mystery The Survivors, adapted from Jane Harper's bestselling 2020 novel. Malcolm plays Verity, the mother of Kieran, who has returned home 15 years after two young men were killed in an accident. The relationship between Verity and her son is strained, and it's another cracker of a performance from Malcolm, who is brittle and forthright on screen. 'To use all the cliches in the book, she's multi-layered,' says Malcolm of Verity. 'What she says she doesn't mean, and what she doesn't mean, she says. There's always something else driving her. She's bottled up so much grief and so much pain. She's blaming the wrong people. She's angry at the wrong people. She's just all over, all over the place. And I really love that.' Malcolm has been onscreen so much in Australia that we would have a fair chance of claiming her as one of our own. Loading 'I just think we should build a bridge [between Australia and New Zealand] and just be done with it,' she says, laughing. 'I don't think I would ever call myself an Australian. I've been in Aotearoa for too long. But I love Australia and I love working there. 'I love the directness of Aussies; Kiwis can be very apologetic, very self-deprecating. A friend of mine said once that to determine the difference in personality between an Australian and New Zealander, you just have to listen to the bird calls,' she says. 'So in New Zealand, in the mornings, the bird calls are sort of like [Malcolm does a lovely sweet bird call] and in the morning in Australia, it [sounds] like this mass vomit.'
The Age
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
‘We're roadkill': How this Kiwi actor turned middle-age rage into her best work yet
Robyn Malcolm is a hoot. The Kiwi actor is leaning on one arm, recounting her recent evening at the BAFTAs in London, where her critically acclaimed series After the Party had been nominated for Best International Series. 'Honestly, they go on and on and on and on,' she says. 'Of course, our award was right at the end. By the time it got to the end, I was like, 'I hope we don't win', because my feet are so sore in these massive shoes I bought, and I was desperate to go to the loo. And I thought if we did win, I'd either fall down the stairs because my feet were numb or I'd piss myself on the stage. So when it went to Shogun, I was like, 'Oh, thank god for that.'' Surely it was a bit glamorous? 'Oh, it's a nightmare!' she says. 'There's the going to the ball aspect of it, which is fun … but then you stand in the heat and there's all this jostling and pushing and photographs and chaos, and it was really hot. And then you get inside and you sit and watch these damn awards for 3½ hours. And honestly, it's not entertainment.' Malcolm, who turned 60 in March, is in Glasgow, where it's early evening, but the temperature is a balmy 25 degrees. 'All the Glaswegians are, like, freaking out that they're so unprepared for it,' she says, laughing, over Zoom. She is exactly as I had hoped – funny and forthright, stripped of any artifice – and instantly familiar. She's been on New Zealand and Australian screens for years, starring in everything from the big stuff (Jane Campion's TV series Top of the Lake) to the cult local stuff (Outrageous Fortune) and the delightfully funny stuff (Upper Middle Bogan). It was on Top of the Lake where she met her partner Peter Mullan, the Scottish actor who specialises in being both terrifying and charming on screen, who pops in mid-chat, so Robyn can pop out to farewell his grandson. 'He's just a really f--k-off actor,' says Malcolm. 'He's an enormously fun actor to work with. I've worked with actors before who are arseholes, and people make excuses for that because they're playing a dark character. And I'm like, 'I know a fellow who's played some of the meanest motherf---ers on the planet, and he'll get the third AD [assistant director] a cup of tea because he's such a sweetheart.'' Loading She has been in the UK for the last three months or so, after being summoned by an agent when After the Party aired last year. 'They just said, 'Could you not talk to any other agents, and can you come with me?' – which was great.' The series, which was co-created by Malcolm and screenwriter Dianne Taylor, was about a high school teacher (Malcolm) who accuses her ex-husband, Phil (played by Mullan) of sexually abusing a drunk friend of their teenage daughter. Malcolm was hailed for giving the best performance of her career and five-star reviews followed. 'I feel like I'm at the beginning of something, not the end of it,' says Malcolm. 'Because I've never lacked ambition, so this has just got my pilot light going faster again, which is fantastic. Weirdly, it's sort of new-lease-of-life stuff. 'I'm more confident than I used to be. I know a lot more. I know what I don't know. I know where I need to get better. I feel like I'm in an excellent place right now for the age I am, you know. I'm not about to buy a La-Z-Boy [reclining chair] any time soon.' My mother-in-law has one of those. 'No, no, no. Although they are f---ing great chairs, I have to say.' Back to the serious stuff – Malcolm is part of a growing group of older female actors using their power on screen and refusing to be invisible. Women can now – shock! – play their age instead of being quietly shuffled out of shot, having reached their screen use-by date of 40 (or, really, a 40-year-old who can pass for 30). It's their stories that Malcolm is most interested in telling. 'One of the things that I love about women in midlife is that it's the three-act structure,' she says. 'You set everything up with the first act, and then everything has to go to shit in the second act so that third act can happen. 'And I feel a lot of us are at the end of our second act. So women of our age straddle so much stuff … we're the generation where a lot of people were divorced. Mistakes have been made, new lives are being started. Careers have been dropped. Careers have been picked up. There's been tragedy. We're in the middle of a big story and that, in itself, I find a really fascinating place to start from. In drama, she says, women's conversation often sits around romance. 'I always remember being so furious – I mean, I was never a major fan – but being so furious that Sex and the City ended with them all shacking up with blokes. I was like, 'This is not what this show was meant to be about. How dare you.' 'You don't see women living independently of the romance story, women being – I hate this word – but having an agency that is completely separate from that. Women having powerful lives in other areas. 'One of my most favourite things is the word 'crone'. The etymology of the word crone comes from either Greek or Latin, and it basically was a word that meant roadkill. So the middle-aged or older woman, the crone word essentially means that we're roadkill. I love that because it's like we've just been chucked out the window, knocked over by a car, and we're splat on the road, and who gives a f--k about us. There's something incredibly powerful in that.' Her latest role is in Netflix's Tasmanian murder mystery The Survivors, adapted from Jane Harper's bestselling 2020 novel. Malcolm plays Verity, the mother of Kieran, who has returned home 15 years after two young men were killed in an accident. The relationship between Verity and her son is strained, and it's another cracker of a performance from Malcolm, who is brittle and forthright on screen. 'To use all the cliches in the book, she's multi-layered,' says Malcolm of Verity. 'What she says she doesn't mean, and what she doesn't mean, she says. There's always something else driving her. She's bottled up so much grief and so much pain. She's blaming the wrong people. She's angry at the wrong people. She's just all over, all over the place. And I really love that.' Malcolm has been onscreen so much in Australia that we would have a fair chance of claiming her as one of our own. Loading 'I just think we should build a bridge [between Australia and New Zealand] and just be done with it,' she says, laughing. 'I don't think I would ever call myself an Australian. I've been in Aotearoa for too long. But I love Australia and I love working there. 'I love the directness of Aussies; Kiwis can be very apologetic, very self-deprecating. A friend of mine said once that to determine the difference in personality between an Australian and New Zealander, you just have to listen to the bird calls,' she says. 'So in New Zealand, in the mornings, the bird calls are sort of like [Malcolm does a lovely sweet bird call] and in the morning in Australia, it [sounds] like this mass vomit.'
The Guardian
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Survivors review – a murder mystery so intense you'll watch through your fingers
I hope you have had enough time to recover from Robyn Malcolm's barnstorming performance as a harrowed wife and mother labouring under burdens no one should have to endure in the acclaimed After the Party, because here comes another one. The Survivors is a six-part adaptation of Jane Harper's bestselling Australian crime novel of the same name, by Tony Ayres – who did the same for Christos Tsiolkas's The Slap 10 years ago, which followed families fracturing under the weight of a moment's lost control, and who wrote Stateless in 2020 about lives intertwining at an Australian immigration detention centre. This is a writer who doesn't shy away from the pain human beings can inflict on one other. The Survivors is technically a murder mystery but its real subject is grief and terrible, terrible guilt. Ayres noted in a publicity interview that he wouldn't dare start The Slap now as gently as he did then (it began with one of the characters easing into a seemingly ordinary day, by the end of which nothing would be easy again); the pressure to grab the audience immediately and hard is simply too great. Accordingly, we begin here at night with a teenage boy on the verge of drowning in the storm-lashed caves of his local bay. A boat crewed by his older brother and his friend comes riding out of the darkness, only to overturn at the last second. We cut to a funeral – the boy, Kieran (Ned Morgan) has survived but his brother Finn (Remy Kidd) and Finn's friend and crewman Toby (Talon Hooper) were killed. We then cut to the present day, 15 years on from the tragedy, as Kieran (played as an adult by Charlie Vickers) returns to Evelyn Bay after years of – only technically self-imposed – exile with his wife Mia (Yerin Ha) and their new baby, his parents' first grandchild. His father Brian (Damien Garvey) is now in the early stages of dementia and mistakes him for Finn. The air is thicker than ever with ghosts. His mother Verity (Robyn Malcolm) is seen in flashback berating young Kieran in his hospital bed for the death of his brother but here in the present busies herself with caring for Brian and making pass-agg remarks about Kieran and Mia's parenting skills. The atmosphere alone makes you want to watch from behind your fingers. In a small town there is no escape. Everyone knows who he is, everyone has an opinion about the degree of his culpability, none more so than the owner of the local pub, which is owned by Toby's father Julian (Martin Sacks) whose rage and sorrow has festered and been passed on to the son, Liam (Julian Weeks), Toby left behind. It is almost a relief when a corpse turns up on the beach to distract us all. But it is the body of Bronte (Shannon Berry), a young woman from out of town who had been researching the possible death of a third person that night 15 years ago. The drownings overshadowed the disappearance of teenager Gabby Birch (Eloise Rothfield) and Bronte was working with her mother Trish (Catherine McClements), giving as heartbreaking a performance as Malcolm to reignite interest in her case. Bronte was murdered and likely sexually assaulted. Her murder and the possible death/killing of Gabby pull the community into a fresh hell at the same time as resurrecting memories of the past. Clues are gathered, suspects are considered, tracked down, dismissed or arrested, and hopes, disappointments, red herrings and new possibilities abound as detectives try to reconstruct Bronte's time in Evelyn Bay and discover who she might have upset and how. Meanwhile, the labyrinthine connections among the townsfolk are gradually revealed, offering up new motives and ruling out others. But we also see how the competing interests among people and the vulnerabilities left by the storm leave them open to blackmail from and by one other – how do you refuse anything to someone you bereaved? – and witness statements are retracted or massaged, evidence is concealed and the situation becomes increasingly dark for Kieran and his family especially. The Survivors is a study in how raw grief and festering resentment warp everything – and how surviving a tragedy rarely means getting away unscathed. At its centre is the particular pain of the three mothers – Finn's, Bronte's and Gabby's – deprived of their children and for ever changed by it. Their suffering is almost palpable and marks The Survivors indelibly out from the murder mystery herd. The Survivors is on Netflix now.
