Fern Sutherland has added Muay-Thai fighter in training to her resume. Photo / Dean Purcell.
The Brokenwood Mysteries star Fern Sutherland tells Penny Lewis why she’s ready to do battle after a life-changing year.
When Fern Sutherland speaks to Reset two days after returning from a six-week stint in Thailand, one thing is obvious straight away – there’s a ring of yellow and purple bruising around her right eye.
The actor is a keen Muay Thai fighter-in-training – and it shows.
“I absolutely love it. I was sparring with a 17-year-old Thai fighter. And he just got me straight in the face. It happened last week and to be fair it was a lot worse. It was bad.”
Sutherland’s learned Muay Thai for four years and travels regularly to Phuket to immerse herself in the combat sport. Also known as Thai boxing, competitors use fists, elbows, knees, and shins against each other. Sutherland’s still in training, so is yet to have an official fight, but she’s witnessed how they play out.
“They fight for honour. Muay Thai is really grounded in respect – respect for your gym, respect for your opponent and respect for your opponent’s teacher. At the end, you hug your opponent, then go over to your opponent’s corner and they give you a glass of water.
“One of the things I want to do before I die is get in the ring and fight someone. I think it’s something that everyone should do. There’s something really poetic about the fight situation – you versus another person.”
Sutherland has also relished a more physical approach playing Detective Kristin Sims in The Brokenwood Mysteries. The show’s ninth season debuts on TVNZ 1 and TVNZ+ tonight.
“You see her be a bit more hands-on and that’s something I like. She’s always been quite ready to tackle someone, but you see her being a lot more physical. I’ve really enjoyed the stunt work.”
Set in a fictional, small New Zealand town called Brokenwood, The Brokenwood Mysteries sees Sutherland’s character Detective Sims and colleagues Detective Inspector Mike Shepherd (Neill Rea), and Detective Constable Daniel Chalmers (Jarod Rawiri), solve murder mysteries that seem to happen with alarming frequency in such a small population.
Each standalone episode also includes a guest-star line-up of New Zealand acting talent. Rebecca Gibney and Michelle Langstone appear in season nine and past guests include Lisa Harrow, Sara Wiseman, Craig Hall, Robyn Malcolm, and Miranda Harcourt.
Sutherland often finds it difficult to describe the show succinctly. “A guest actor once described Brokenwood to me as ‘Scooby-Doo for adults’ and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything more accurate in my life.”
She says filming each 90-minute episode is almost like filming a feature film every three weeks. “It’s quite an ambitious task. Then you add into the mix the fact we do a lot of our filming on location outside, right in the middle of winter.
“There is a lot of special-effects makeup and dead bodies. And often the guest cast is quite big. It’s very satisfying and quite galvanising to belong to a group of people working their guts out in quite adverse conditions to make the show what it is.
“You can say what you like about it – it might not be the sexiest, most sophisticated, award-winning Scandi-noir sort of drama, but it is successful and watched all over the world,” says Sutherland, who adds the show seems to fly under the radar when it comes to TV awards recognition.
“I do feel the people involved in making the show – especially the cinematography team, plus the editing, and the incredible makeup, they all miss out. But what I will say is that I love being the underdog because people underestimate the underdog. It’s actually quite a powerful thing to be.”
Next year marks the 10th anniversary of The Brokenwood Mysteries, and filming for series 10 is underway.
Sutherland says she feels grateful to be involved in a show that’s screened since 2014. “There aren’t many actors in New Zealand who can say they’ve had that sort of regular employment, apart from those on Shortland Street, obviously. But to say that acting has been my chief bread and butter for almost the last 10 years is something that I think is quite rare for an actor to be able to say in this country.”
Despite being on New Zealand television screens for nearly a decade, initially on Prime and since last year on TVNZ 1, Sutherland doesn’t get recognised frequently in her home country, although it does happen overseas. The show has screened internationally in 27 countries.
“Weirdly, [I get recognised] in French-speaking territories. [The Brokenwood Mysteries] sold really well to one of the mainstream broadcasters in France, [and it’s been] dubbed into French. Maybe there’s a sensibility, a sort of provincial French sensibility, that’s similar to provincial New Zealand.
“It’s a bit quirky, a bit wine-country, a small town with quirky characters you might encounter just about anywhere in small towns around the world, especially in Europe. The French have really grabbed hold of it and so subsequently it’s been sold to lots of French-speaking territories, including parts of Canada. I lived in Vancouver and Toronto for a time and got much more recognised over there than I do here.
“Recently, someone was talking to me about being on holiday in Morocco, where they speak French. They said they were from New Zealand, and they expected the person talking to them to mention the All Blacks, but they said, “Oh, New Zealand. I love New Zealand and The Brokenwood Mysteries.”
Now based in central Auckland, Sutherland is originally from a small town called Lepperton in Taranaki. She has a sister, Hannah, who’s two years younger and works on the Hibiscus Coast as a physiotherapist and hand therapist. Parents Sam and Kerry Sutherland are shearing contractors, and this work took the family from Taranaki to Waikato and the King Country during Sutherland’s childhood.
“I was an anxious kid, and I wasn’t the class clown or extroverted at all at school. I was really nervous. I loved writing stories. We were always on farms, so there was always a lot of imagination, and running around and creating my own stories and fun. I never had a lot of toys or anything like that. There was a lot of time with just my sister and animals, which was great.”
Sutherland wrote and performed childhood plays at home and says, “I sort of forced Mum and Dad to watch them, but I never wanted to be in the school play,” until she met an inspirational drama teacher, Sarah Ashworth, in sixth form (year 12) at high school.
“I just thought she was absolutely amazing. She had trained at Unitec in Auckland, doing the Bachelor of Performing and Screen Arts, majoring in acting, and I was like, ‘I want to do whatever she did to be that person’. She took me under her wing and helped me audition to get into drama school.”
Sutherland went to Unitec and while waitressing in a restaurant, met her long-term partner Jarrod, who worked on the bar and who is now a landscape designer. That relationship ended last year.
“I came out of a 14-year relationship. He was the love of my life and my best friend. So [the breakup] was probably one of the most painful things I have ever been through. It’s been an interesting thing to have quietly raging away. It happened just before we started filming this new season.
“We got together when I was 21. I’m now 35, so that was quite a seminal developmental time in anyone’s life. And to go from everyday contact to just no contact at all was a grief that I’d never experienced.
“I’m lucky to have most of my close friends and family living, so the grief really surprised me with how intense it was. I was lucky I had a job to throw myself into to distract myself from it. It didn’t really hit me properly until after filming ended.”
Going to Thailand and seeking physical challenge through Muay Thai has helped with her emotional pain. “I’m just greedy for life. I want to live five lives.”
So, what do Sutherland and her character, Kristin Sims, have in common? “We both love our jobs and we both like to be sarcastic and enjoy dry humour. Making fun of our colleagues is a must to get us through the day.”
“We are quite different, though. She is more methodical and uptight and into order. Kristin is black and white. I’m much more interested in living in the grey areas of life and seeing what can happen if I just ride that fine line between chaos and order. I find things way more interesting when I inhabit the grey areas of life. It’s a more dangerous place to hang out, but with high risk comes high reward.”
Season nine of The Brokenwood Mysteries begins tonight at 8.30pm on TVNZ 1 and TVNZ+.
Photography: Dean Purcell. Hair and makeup: Elise Anderson. Styling: Annabel Dickson.
Dress from Juliette Hogan. Meadowlark earrings; Twenty-Seven Names jacket and trousers. Silk & Steel earrings, necklaces and bracelet.