The break that changed the life of Mercy Peak's star

Sara Wiseman, star of TV drama Mercy Peak, talks to TIM WATKIN about dreams, her career and the lucky break that changed her life.

The Warkworth schoolgirl bellowed across the road. "Sara Wiseman!"

This was only a couple of weeks ago, and for the 29-year-old star of Mercy Peak, it was a first.

"It gave me a hell of a fright. I've never had that before. She came running up to me trying to find something for me to sign. So, yeah, that was bizarre."

Public recognition is something Wiseman will have to get used to, having taken the lead role on TV One's first new local drama series in more than two years. The actor, who says she has always been able to "chameleon" herself into the public, now admits to "getting a couple of odd looks here and there".

It's all part of moving from smaller parts in Street Legal and Jacksons Wharf to centre stage as Dr Nicky Somerville in Mercy Peak. Somerville, an up-and-coming trauma doctor in an Auckland hospital, is having a relationship with a senior consultant. When she finds he's been cheating on her, she escapes to Bassett (pop 5058) to start a new life among a pick'n'mix of small-town characters.

Several years in planning, the series is being talked up by everyone involved - from cast to network - as a New Zealand drama of rare maturity and international potential.

With $4 million of New Zealand on Air funding invested, alongside substantial private funding, bold claims are being made for the series and overseas sales will be expected. A deal with British distribution company Target is already in place, waiting for all 20 episodes to be completed.

"It's nice to be in something that everyone on set cares about and have that reflected in the network as well," Wiseman says.

It's a hospital-sized amount of responsibility on the shoulders of an actor less than three years out of drama school. However, colleague and seasoned professional Jeffrey Thomas (Dr William Kingsley) is admiring.

"She's got a huge amount of work," he says. "She carries the series and she's doing it well. She knows what she's doing."

Curled up reading in a chair in a Ponsonby cafe on a grey, half-hearted Auckland day, Wiseman looks young. With her hair in pigtails under a red beanie, she's a picture of Ponsonby. Her face is attractive and her brown eyes striking.

Yet there's a down-to-earth look about her. She talks about the importance of staying grounded and, thus far at least, she is. There's something familiar about her that suggests, perhaps, the next Danielle Cormack. Her eyes widen at the suggestion. She answers cautiously and thoughtfully, as she does every question.

"What does that mean? Um, I've always admired Danielle Cormack, but the only thing that I can hold on to is my individuality, so I wouldn't say that."

She leans forward, hands between her knees and shoulders drawn together, engaging but nervous. Journalists asking for her life story are probably as bizarre as a Warkworth schoolgirl bounding up to her. Still, she's clearly a fast learner and determined to handle the new pressures. This is how that always-delicate conversation about her lovelife went:

Do you have a boyfriend?

"Yes."

Is that all good?

"Yes."

Can you tell me about him?

"No."

Ah. Is he in the business?

"He is. So he's sympathetic."

Okay, I won't hassle you, but is he behind or in front of the camera?

"In front. But he's not working on the show, obviously. I think I'll leave it at that."

She might prefer to keep mum, but the women's magazines chattered some months ago about a relationship with actor Mark Hadlow.

What Wiseman will say is that she's a born-and-bred Eastie from Howick, via Pakuranga College.

Her father is a sales rep and her mother a nurse - a source of insight she tapped into preparing to play Nicky Somerville.

She insists she could never be a doctor, but jokes that as a child her family - which includes a sister and brother, both much older - "had the best first-aid kit ever".

When she laughs, her jaw drops and her mouth widens like an A&P show clown. The laughter comes from deep inside. It could just be an actor's breathing exercises, but cast and crew say she's a genuinely warm, caring person.

Her childhood, in the same house with a big backyard, was stable and full of dance, from ballet to contemporary.

"I don't think there's any such thing as a perfect childhood. Everyone's got their issues and I had mine. But no dramas."

And no drama. Acting wasn't part of her life until a St Kentigern production of Grease. For female roles, she laughs again, "they pull girls from Dio, St Cuths and Pakuranga College. We basically went so we could check out the boys. As you do."

That first audition did not augur well.

"I thought, I'm not very good at this because I auditioned for the Sandy [role] and the Rizzo and I got Blanche the secretary. Still, that was such a buzz just performing.

"It was just such a fun experience. I didn't even consider it could be a real job. I was one of those people who didn't get my act together till way later."

She left high school and began drifting.

"I was never satisfied. I tried a lot of different ideas, like going to varsity for a year with the intention of becoming an architect. But that left really quickly. Had a year doing a recreation management degree, then I just knew I had to go overseas, so I travelled and did the Kiwi OE thing."

Her face suddenly lights up.

"How bizarre. I just thought of something. My character, in episode one, goes to a clairvoyant. And I went to a clairvoyant. This was when I got back. I had no direction. What do I do? Do I head back overseas or do I do something else? By that stage the passion for film had started to come in, and I ended up at the New Zealand Film and Television School in Christchurch for about three months. And while I was there I got the chance to work on Heavenly Creatures, doing voluntary work."

She spent a month moving from unit to unit learning the trade.

"Then at one point there was a scene with Kate Winslet. Peter [Jackson] was lining up the shot and I was just standing there and he said, 'Can you just step in for me for the shot'. And that was it. I got it in the back of the head and stabbed in the stomach by this overwhelming sense of, 'Oh my God' ... I realised I didn't want to be behind the camera, I wanted to be in front. So I left the course."

So that's another thing we have to thank Jackson for. Yet it was another unfinished course. Is this a character trait coming through here?

"That's what my mum said. Are you going to give up this, too? I started doing night classes, then did some stunt work with Peter Bell, which got me some wonderful experience. Then I finally auditioned for the Performing Arts School up here [at Unitec]."

The impression is one of Wiseman the wanderer, never sticking at anything. She says that as a Gemini she's versatile and that acting requires a gypsy soul. But by the time she entered Unitec, full of all that experience, she was still only 23.

"I'd been around a lot, just not satisfied, and finally found something that settled with me, as scary as that was. It was frightening because it was such a huge vision and I had no idea of how to get to it."

Last Monday morning, as the sun shone gleefully outside, Wiseman looked anything but frightened as she plied her trade in the Henderson warehouse that is home to South Pacific Pictures. Studio One is full of other places, containing the corners and interiors of Porkies Bar, Nicky's house, Mercy Peak vineyard and Bassett's bookshop. But that's quiet today. Everyone's in Studio Two, otherwise known as the Mercy Peak clinic, where Wiseman and Thomas are performing.

What was 23-year-old vision is now 29-year-old reality.

The plan is to film seven minutes of storyline today - several minutes each from two episodes - but already they're behind schedule. The set is an anthill of crew, measuring camera focal points with tape measures, moving lights, taping the floor where the actors must stand. Ian Mune, still with an air of the Muldoon about him after all these years, is directing these episodes.

The intensity is morning-subdued, but mounting. There's talk of the handbag being needed before the day is out. The handbag's an on-set ritual. If someone's temper flares, they're given the handbag to throw on the floor and kick about. They then have to carry it for 10 minutes as penance and warning to others.

The set is hot and airless, the crew red-cheeked. It's not hard to imagine someone losing it.

In the midst of this Wiseman waits. She's dressed in a polo-neck the writers expect a Canterbury-born doctor would wear, yet she looks poised, relaxed and quite different from the city-girl of the interview a few days before. This is professional actor time, far from both drama school and the interaction of the live performances she's done in Amy's View, Death of a Salesman, Cabaret and Collected Stories for the Auckland Theatre Company.

This is television drama. Acting by inches. Wait while the camera, lights and sound is set. Rehearse. Wait. Rehearse again. Wait. Film a portion of the scene - in this case 20-30 seconds. Wait. Then take two. And so on until Mune calls "check the gate" and the scene is in the can.

As Thomas explains, "there's a lot of waiting around. A lot of inertia. Then boof. It doesn't matter what kind of scene you're doing, you have to be ready to do it at a few seconds' notice. That's the craft."

Thomas says that by the time you get to the studio the real work is already done, in learning the lines and doing read-throughs with other actors. Wiseman, he says, is always well prepared.

Miriama Smith, who plays nurse Dana McNichol, says Sas - as they call Wiseman on set - is thorough and committed.

"She listens to the other actors. She doesn't just have lines in her head that she spiels off. If I said the wrong line she would respond to that line rather than to the line in the script."

Between scenes Wiseman chats with Thomas, does vocal exercises, jiggles up and down on the spot or receives instructions from Mune. After a scene she's clearly unhappy with - she critiques her own performance by making vomiting noises - there's some pacing in the clinic's reception.

At times she just stares into space, focused. It's like watching a boxer waiting for the bell.

"It is tiring," she says, "but it all comes from a good place, you know? It's a joy to be there. It sounds really naff I know, but it is. It's a buzz to get up at 6 am to go to work. How many people can say that?"

Truth is, how many of the actors pouring out of drama schools these days get any work at all? Wiseman says there's "some extraordinary talent out there not getting seen", and that New Zealand should do more to support its young creative talent.

It's all quiet on the movie front, so a "big block of work" like Mercy Peak is, to use a favourite word of hers, a blessing.

In fact, Wiseman's career has been full of blessings. At the end of 1998 she went straight from student to sidekick, as Jay Laga'aia's other woman in Street Legal. "In my last week of drama school I was having my first week on Street Legal," she says.

That broke the ice, and she went on to do Jacksons Wharf, the ATC productions and a short film called Letters about the Weather. That won her the best actress in a short film award for 2000 and announced her as a coming star. "It's been so blessedly busy," she says.

Then along came Mercy Peak creators Rachel Lang and Gavin Strawhan with a character called Nicky Somerville. "They let me have a squiz at a couple of the scripts at the end of last year. So it was a chance to see her on paper."

What did Wiseman think of Nicky?

"Loved her. Knew straight away the kind of person she was. It should all be there in the script, and I felt that. I read it and felt, I know who you are. That's a lovely thing to feel."

Filming began at the end of April and is still only halfway through the 20-episode schedule. But TVNZ was so enamoured by the result that they pushed it on to screen early. The programme has responded with good, if slightly sliding, ratings: a 34 per cent audience share in its first week, followed by 31 per cent, then 30. Importantly, it has beaten off the opposition each week. It's 30 per cent audience share on August 8 was against 24 per cent for TV3's Inside New Zealand and 19 per cent for TV2's Ally McBeal.

Wiseman is leaving the door open on her future. She loves New Zealand, loves escaping to Auckland's west coast beaches when she's not putting in the 13-hour days on set, but the gypsy spirit may lead her overseas. She adores film, but that's not to say she doesn't enjoy theatre and television.

"I love to work, simple as that ... acting's my bliss. I would go anywhere to act. If there was a role presented that I believed in with my heart - and that's important - then I would go anywhere."

Is Hollywood the dream? "I wouldn't turn down Hollywood," she laughs. "But you've got to keep it real. I think that's something we New Zealanders have got over a lot of people. We're so tough on ourselves we have to [keep it real]."

Back on set, Thomas is repeating a line as he walks out the door for yet another camera angle. "I can't change the world, Nicky."

The door closes behind him, the scene complete and Wiseman turns, all smiles, and raises her fist. "But you can."

She sparkles for a moment and you sense her determination. You get the sense that Warkworth schoolgirl will just be the start of things.