Ilona Rodgers could be relied on to bring high-energy sass to any scene she plays. Photo / Neil Mackenzie
The TV legend marks a special occasion with a time travel through her famous roles.
Ilona Rodgers has always been a serial scene-stealer. Whether it was swooping into rooms to deliver a take-down on hit ‘80s TV show Gloss (with shoulder pads so wide, she could have been a gridiron player) or appearing on long-running Kiwi soaps Close to Home and Shortland Street, she could be relied on to bring high-energy sass.
Today is no different. The seasoned actor emerges by the blue Tardis in Wellington’s Tākina Convention Centre – which is hosting an exclusive Doctor Who exhibition – and animatedly pays homage to her 1964 role as space explorer Carol Richmond in the cult BBC series.
“Everybody here looks like Doctor Who wearing their dark coats!” she quips, before sidling up to a Dalek to swing its arms and noting they’re not dissimilar to a pair of toilet plungers.
On a chilly Wellington day, Ilona is a ray of sunshine. Warm, witty and upbeat, the 82-year-old has that special knack of being genuinely interested in other people.
She engages with a passer-by, who tells her, “What I miss the most about the programme is that we don’t sit down and watch it as a family any more.”
When Ilona started on the sci-fi show, it was the beginning of black-and-white television. There were no commercial breaks and the actors went live-to-air.
“For me, it was a great job on television – a skill that drama schools did not teach at that time because we were trained to be theatre actors,” she explains.
“You rehearsed for a week with your Gestetnered scripts [the Gestetner was a type of duplicating machine]. Then we’d go into the Lime Grove Studios in Shepherds Bush, and do camera run-throughs and a dress rehearsal, before filming the episode live-to-air to an audience of about nine million.
“The first show that screened in 1963 was the same day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, so nobody watched it. We went outside into Leicester Square and everyone was crying. The BBC had to put the episode on again a week later.”
Despite her brevity on Doctor Who, Ilona clearly remembers frequent mishaps during recording, which didn’t allow for second takes.
“The late William Hartnell played the Doctor and was this cranky old man who constantly forgot his lines,” she says.
Born in North Yorkshire, Ilona trained at Bristol’s Old Vic Drama School. She hadn’t intended on forging a life, or career, in New Zealand. But while working in the BBC film library, her mother and stepfather had moved to New Caledonia.
Her mother was diagnosed with cancer and, several years later, was told that the health system couldn’t help her any more and she’d have to go to New Zealand for treatment.
“I remember saying to a friend, ‘I’ll just go for a few years,’” says Ilona. “I got work at the Mercury Theatre. Mum began treatments at Auckland Hospital and some friends of hers dropped in to visit. Their son had just returned from being a skiing instructor in Austria. The rest is history!”
Ilona married David Warren, eight years younger than herself, a mere nine weeks later.
While her husband was studying horticulture at Christchurch’s then Lincoln College, she scored a job on one of the country’s first soap operas, Close to Home, filmed in Wellington.
Ilona would fly home for weekends and when David graduated, they bought a farm in Waikato’s Tūākau.
“It was hard going – we were poor farmers,” she shares. “Then Crawford Productions in Melbourne offered me a job on The Sullivans. I said to them, ‘My mother is dying and I am five months pregnant.’ They said they would come back to me in five months.
“We desperately needed a tractor, so I had to go! I got a nanny and we went to Australia, while David ran the farm. After two years, he sold it and moved over to Melbourne.
“When my father-in-law got ill, we returned to New Zealand, living in the packing shed on their farm in Onewhero.”
One day, a friend of hers, John Barningham – who had been a producer on The Sullivans – rang Ilona to tell her about a new show coming up called Gloss. He thought she should audition for it.
“And that’s when my doggy day began!” she winks.
Ilona became a household name with her role as wealthy, scheming editor Maxine Redfern in prime-time soap Gloss. It combined a wealthy family, the Redferns, with a lucrative high-fashion magazine.
Yuppies, shoulder pads, mullets and Méthode Champenoise abounded in the glamorous local series. Ilona also won two consecutive Best Actor awards over the show’s three seasons.
“Every morning, I’d walk across our farm, wipe the sheep s*** off my jeans and get in the car,” remembers Ilona. “I’d drive to work, put on my designer clothes, get my hair and make-up done, be bitchy all day and get paid for it. It was a farmer’s wife’s paradise. I loved it!
“Each one of us was dressed by a different New Zealand designer. The late Kerry Smith was dressed by Jane Daniels. I was dressed by Trelise Cooper, who was just starting out.
“People had Gloss viewing nights every Friday, where they dressed up as the characters. It became bigger than us.”
She describes the ultimate scene of the first series – the wedding of Alistair, played by Simon Prast and Gemma (Dame Miranda Harcourt).
“On the day, we’re filming in a church near Remuera,” recalls Ilona. “My secretary had pulled out a gun and shot somebody – there’s blood on the church wall.
“Gemma rushes down the drive with blood on her wedding dress and somebody on the street – in real life – comes up to us and says, ‘The stock market’s just crashed!’”
Ilona has kept the first three scripts, which were mostly all written by women. The cast found out that season three would be their last during actor Lisa Chappell’s 21st birthday celebrations in the Browns Bay studios where the series was filmed.
“It was awful!” admits Ilona. “We were going into series three and the director general from Australia said to me, ‘Bloody sheilas are always winning. We have to get rid of it.’”
A three-year role in homegrown drama Marlin Bay followed, before Ilona went on the South Pacific Directors course started by John McCrea.
After 63 years in the acting business, she’s never retired, “Just slowed down!” Earlier this year, she appeared on crime series My Life is Murder starring Lucy Lawless.
“During the filming, I said to Lucy, ‘I’ve only got six scenes and I’m having to work hard to remember the lines.’ She very sweetly reminded me that on Marlin Bay, she had about six and I had about 10 per day, and was rattling them off!
“Memory is a muscle – you just have to keep using it,” she says.
Ilona’s move to the South Island four years ago brought fresh changes when she and husband David, 74, decided to buy nearly 10ha on the slopes of Mt Oxford and became regenerative bush planters.
“We’re up to 6000 trees and it’s bloody hard work,” she says, explaining it came from an “epiphany” they had while cycling the Otago Rail Trail in 2019.
“It was pouring with rain, so we dived into a coffee shop to dry off,” she recalls. “We started talking to an Aussie guy who, it turned out, was a volunteer fireman in New South Wales.
“His cellphone was constantly ringing with emergency calls. He was mortified to be complaining about the rain here while Australia was experiencing one of its worst bushfires.
“That night, the sky went red from those fires. We both realised that we had to do something, however small. David had just sold his company and we have two grandchildren in Australia living near those fires. What were we going to do with the rest of our lives? We decided to plant trees.
“We put in a bid on the 24 acres, never thinking it would be accepted, but it was and the other shock was our house in Warkworth sold before we had put it up for auction.
“I never thought I’d be part of history in this way. But then I never did with Doctor Who either!”
Doctor Who Worlds of Wonder runs at the Tākina Convention and Exhibition Centre until the end of October. For more info and tickets, visit takina.co.nz
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