Fern Sutherland went to school in New Plymouth. Photo / Supplied
Fern Sutherland plays Detective Sims in the television series The Brokenwood Mysteries, with series eight set to premiere on TVNZ1 Sunday August 7 at 8.30pm.
My parents were shearing contractors and I spent my first three years in Mangakino. Mum cooked for the shearing gangs and dad shore the sheep and they worked all around the King Country. It was a very rural life with lots of adventures and my earliest memories are of jumping up and down on the wool presses at various farms.
When it was time for me to start school, we moved to New Plymouth. Dad became a landscape labourer and mum was a waitress at a buffet restaurant called Marbles, which was a bit like Valentines and it's still there. Back then though, every time the song The Time Warp came on, the wait staff had to stop what they were doing, drop their plates, and go to the front of the restaurant and do The Time Warp dance. I thought mum was so cool because of this, and I'd be so excited when it came on, but I realise now that waitressing is super hard work, and on top of it all, expecting wait staff to dance, that was asking a lot.
Money was always really tight when I was young, and my parents stressed about it a lot, so I really look up to my mum and dad for doing whatever was necessary to put food on the table. It's really only dawned on me lately how my parents worked their guts out to make sure my sister and I had everything we needed.
When I was young, every household had a copy of The Australian Woman's Weekly birthday cake book. Because mum was a real earth mother, and always trying to give us the best childhood, she threw herself into themed birthday parties, which included making amazing cakes, including a smiling shark. I loved sharks so I requested the shark most years, and it was made of all these carved sponges put together in the shape of a shark. It had hundreds and thousands on the dorsal fins, little TicTacs for smiling teeth and happy liquorice eyelashes. It was the most benevolent apex predator ever. Mum also went all out to decorate our rooms, whether she was making cushions or curtains. Once she painted a massive bear holding a bunch of balloons on my bedroom wall. It had these huge bulbous eyes, and it stared at me while I slept. Mum thought she'd done the most beautiful thing, but I found it utterly terrifying.
As a kid, I felt embarrassed to be called Fern, and I just wanted a normal name like Sarah, but dad chose it because he's a real outdoors man. He's always loved the bush and he instilled his appreciation for our native flora and fauna in us. He's passionate about bushwalking and wildlife and he'd always take my sister and me out on adventures, and teach us how to identify native plants and birds. I can tell you the scientific name for all sorts of things, like the fantail, which is Rhipidura fuliginosa. So it was dad who chose the name Fern for me, and because mum loves horses, my middle name is Morgan, after the Morgan horse. It took me a while to come to terms with my name but I love it now.
I was a very anxious child. Mum said I was like a human sponge for adult emotions. I mightn't understand what was going on but I'd pick up on vibes and sometimes I'd get so anxious I'd go completely pale on account of things I felt were happening. Mum tells me they had to be really careful about what they said or how they behaved around me because I took everything on board. Maybe that's why I got into acting.
In many ways acting is the absolute worst career choice for me, because I'm not an extrovert. I also used to get terrible stage fright and I'd break out in [a] red rash before I had to do anything in front of people but for the longest time I knew it was what I wanted to do. Mum was always supportive but dad didn't understand why I would choose acting, and for the longest time I didn't understand either. My dad would ask me why I wanted to do this thing I ostensibly hated doing, and that I wasn't even convinced I was very good at it. In the beginning, I didn't even get that much pleasure from being on stage, as I was so shy and nervous and introverted but at the same time I just knew I had to do it.
I had an amazing drama teacher at Sacred Heart Girls College in New Plymouth. When I asked her where she trained, she said she went to Unitec in Auckland, so I wanted to go there too. She helped with my audition and I got in when I was just 18. When I first arrived in Auckland, it felt like a big scary cosmopolitan city, but drama school was also a massive period of expansion for me. I was constantly examining myself every day from nine to five over three years which meant I was able to unpack some of my past traumas which felt like an immense privilege. I also made lifelong friends.
I'm lucky to have no dependents which means I can live a life that's quite selfish. I also have zero interest in a corporate job and little need for security. I also really like the variety of acting. One month I might be completely unemployed and another month I'll be completely busy with work, but I find those ups and downs quite balanced.
This might sound a bit corny but being an actor and being creative is more of a calling than a choice. I have an incredibly strong compulsion to help bring stories to life, and to examine the human experience. Acting helps me explore what it is to be human, and to consider the meaning of life, and to be paid to do that is an absolute dream. I've definitely made sacrifices for my career, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Even when it's miserable it still rules.
Initially my parents thought I'd chosen a hard path and they worried about me, but they're so proud now, it's a little bit cringe. If mum is at the supermarket and I'm on the cover of TV Guide she'll buy a whole bunch of them, or she'll tell the lady at the checkout that I'm her daughter. I find that mortifying, but I also see how it genuinely lights mum up, so I can deal with it, because I know how proud my parents are.
I've just spent a couple of months in Thailand and it was incredible. I went there partly because I love kickboxing, Muy Thai, and I wanted to learn from the source. I'd also just broken up with my partner of 13 years which was very sad and on top of that I'd lost two friends in the same week, one to suicide and another to cancer. As a result, when I got to Phuket, I was all over the place, an absolute husk of a person. But I've always been one of those people who process things physically. As a teenager if ever I was having to work through difficult things, I'd need to move my body. Even if it was just to go outside and dig a hole so, when I got in Thailand, I had an amazingly expansive time.
When I was there I lived right next to the boxing gym and I trained with a bunch of Thai guys who were all delightful. When you train for three hours every day in 38 degree heat, you inevitably become a bit of a weapon and I went through a major physical transformation which was massively empowering.
The first time I was hit, I was definitely taken aback. My first instinct was to cry, but after you've been hit a few more times, like anything else, you get used to it. But returning here to New Zealand, to the depths of winter, and to be eating chips and drinking wine, after we finish filming the ninth series of Brokenwood, I'll go back to Thailand, and return to being that super-healthy sanctimonious human being I discovered over there.
The world has had an absolute shambles across the board the last few years, so I'm really grateful that the last few months have been an intense period of growth and development for me. Not just physically either, but mentally and spiritually too. I've opened a can of worms and maybe I will need a bit of help processing it all and putting those worms back in the can, but beyond that I don't know what my future holds.
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