I have just finished watching Auckland and to say I inhaled every moment of it with wild glee and abandon would be an understatement! I feel a complete spiritual kinship with these mad Oceanic mavens... everyone apart from the hideous racist is sublime, in an entirely different yet complimentary way. You've already said so much on Gilda, Angela and Michelle. And I do love crazy champagne lady Anne and her poetic totems for her dead pussies... (
my beautiful black boy Nudger!!).
But I'd love to shout out, spotlight, and wax rhapsodic about LOUISE WALLACE. The most perfect blend of vulnerability and razor sharp no-fucks given I've encountered.
The fact that she started her own theatre company to get acting roles, and that she then gets rejected by the one NZ filming drama that year so publicly on-screen. "I think the roles for women in their 50s, they want a more
weathered looking face...". Why did her moronic agent call her in to the office late in the day, on camera, to tell her they went with someone else?! Poor Lou. I looked her up on insta and her bio says 'actress' and @s her agency. The agency seems to rep everyone in NZ by their insta feed, yet not a single shout out for poor Louise amongst their daily posts... (i went back 3 years). The indignity.
Also the segment of her getting her hideous head shots as well. She was styled like the CEO of Findus Crispy Pancakes about to go on the Secret Millionaire.
I also loved her weeping for Angela's absentee brother, and then trashing her boring book launch. "After an hour and a half we were ushered into another room, that looked absolutely the same to the previous room, and that's when I knew the night was definitively a dud".
And her competitive streak at the race course. It meant SO much to her to win that race.
She was also the best talking head throughout... "For Julia it will be one of the big learning moments in her life..." SAGE QUEEN. I also liked her arched eyebrows at Julia on the boat in the instant aftermath of racist-gate. And forgetting to get Michelle a present at her bday party only to say "I'll take you for lunch at a restaurant of your choice in Auckland..." - which truly, would be the best present one could receive from New Zealand's Anne Robinson?!
I live for her. I've been stalking them on insta and apparently they all reunited for a Bravo NZ special THIS MONTH, sans Julia! So the possibility of a S2, four years on, isn't completely off the cards? I'd die.