Anahera and Emmett on Shortland Street
“I’ve always been stereotyped as the staunch Māori woman,” veteran actor Vanessa Rare tells me over the phone. “It’s really nice to play a feminine role.”
The 61-year-old chats between laughter and jokes, occasionally stopping to respond to the background noise of the happy whānau and animals she’s spending her afternoon with. When the conversation returns to her current storyline on the Kiwi hospital drama, she’s genuine with her praise of how the writers put together the “wonderful human story”.
Her character Anahera Kawihi, the ex-wife of emergency doctor Emmett Whitman (a “grumpy old fart”, who’s also probably a “bigot”, laughs Rare), recently arrived at the hospital’s emergency department with the pair’s granddaughter Karamea.
Her arrival forced Emmett to confront his shortcomings as a parent and husband − and his feelings for Anahera.
“[He’s] sort of a control freak,” starts Rare, “but, at the end of the day, he is married to this Māori woman and has this Māori mokopuna … the audience is brought into another side to him, where they see him in love and they see that he has a human side,” she says.
“There is this condition, the human condition, that you know, nobody could escape, which is love, I guess.”
And it was great to be able to interpret the role into what Rare saw her character to be and “what I wanted the love affair to be”.
It is, after all, a story about two grandparents, their sick mokopuna and love. It’s a human story, says Rare.
And those stories, she says, “always win”.
“It doesn’t have to be all guns and violence. People are going to watch those [human stories] because that’s what’s real.”
“The audience is very intelligent these days. If you tell a human story about love or interrelationships, or jealousy or betrayal or abandonment – all of these things – what we relate to, is what we can identify with.”
It’s been wonderful for Rare to “be involved with something that has such good writing.”
And while she’s new to the character, longtime fans of the show may recognise Rare – who held a role on Shortland Street for close to a decade. From 2000 until 2007, she was nurse Te Hana Hudson and she laughs now when admitting when first taking the role of Anahera, she thought, “How are they going to do it?”
But it’s television, it’s something they’ve done before with previous actors and Rare figured, “I’ll just trust and see what happens.
“You know what,” she says after a short pause, “I like walking down the plank”.
And being a creative soul, “It’s great to just sort of free fall into things like this and not worry about where you land … Hold your breath, close your eyes and jump.”
Holding your breath, closing your eyes and jumping seems a fairly fitting description for how Rare describes landing her first acting gig – playing the role of Rata in the 1990 film Ruby and Rata.
“I wasn’t aiming at being an actor at all. I was aiming to be a musician,” she says, adding that even as a seven-year-old, her Mum and Dad would have her out performing at parties, where she’d sing, “bloody Delilah”, she laughs, following up with a brief rendition of the Tom Jones classic.
“I played live for five years in bands,” she says, but was encouraged by a friend’s mother, who knew director Gaylene Preston, to audition for the movie − and her acting career began.
“Then, it’s 33 years later, and I’ve gone through dips and dives,” she says.
Rare returned to acting in 2021 — following an extended break taken for a number of reasons, including a focus on whānau, and grief over the loss of her sister and – later – her mother.
Since returning, she’s featured in local productions such as The Sounds, The Brokenwood Mysteries and the 2023 drama The Gone.
Looking ahead, she’s involved in a local series, Wehi, where she’ll be writing and directing at least one upcoming story.
Ultimately, she says, her interest lies in telling stories and touching people’s lives. “Even in my own life, making people laugh, having good timing in terms of jokes … people enjoy a good time.”
Shortland Street, TVNZ 2, weeknights
