The Tandi Wright way

By LOUISA CLEAVE

Remember sweet Caroline Buxton? If you do, then you're watching too many Shortland Street re-runs. If not, then the time is right for Tandi Wright to return to our screens in not one, but two completely different roles.

Wright has been busy filming for local television productions Being Eve and Willy Nilly. The 31-year-old has also been involved in an Australian drama series made for cable television, which debuts in Britain next month.

The busy actress is rightly taking some time out to relax and travel, visiting her father in Zambia and now kicking back in London with her sister.

Wright was born in Zambia and loves returning to her roots.

"We headed out into the bush and went camping. Once you get into the bush there's nothing like it on Earth.

"Sitting there and listening to the lions roaring at night. You go to bed shaking in your boots, it's fantastic."

On the phone from London, Wright is reflecting on her latest roles which took her from a struggling stepmother to an undertaker's assistant.

Caroline Buxton was Wright's first role out of drama school in 1995, and she became a popular member of the Shortland Street cast during the next four years.

Since leaving the show, Wright appeared in Xena and the NZ Actors Company production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Basically, she dropped out of mainstream television for a while.

"In some ways it is the best thing to do after Shortland Street. It can be hard for the public to accept you as anything else for a while after that. And as an actor you need to rediscover and become adventurous again, expand again."

Wright has certainly done that with the role of Alannah Lush in the children's drama series, Being Eve.

The show is aimed at 9- to 14-year-olds, although it is designed to appeal to parents as much as their children.

Wright plays the outrageous stepmother of central character Eve (Fleur Saville), who is having enough trouble getting through her teenage years without the fashion and makeup tips offered by her father's younger second wife.

Wright says Alannah was fun to play because she bears no resemblance to herself. "She's very grooming conscious. For Alannah, that's a big part of her life. She will try so hard in these stakes, but often too hard and gets it a bit wrong.

"Her dress sense is appalling, as far I'm concerned, but I loved doing it because it's so far away from myself ."

With her bleached-blond hair, overly made-up face and tight clothes, Wright is hardly recognisable from her old Caroline character.

Wright says stepping into Alannah's leopard-skin high heels transformed her into character. "You behave differently when you're wearing 10cm-heels," she laughs.

Alannah may try too hard at times, says Wright, but she defends her character and says she is not completely superficial.

"A lot of the time Eve is raising her eyebrows at her but there comes a point when she realises that Alannah has quite a vulnerable side and she feels a bit sorry for her."

Wright plays opposite Stephen Lovatt as Eve's father Tim, a plumber who likes to give his daughter advice in plumbing analogies.

Wright says there was a lot of larking around by the adult actors in Being Eve because most of the action centres around the teenage characters.

"We had a lovely time. Because we're not the main characters we could nip in and do our crazy bit and nip out."

Wright will turn up again on TV One the following Sunday in the new comedy Willy Nilly.

Wright joins Mark Hadlow and Sean Duffy as the central characters in the series about two brothers in their 40s, living alone after their controlling mother dies.

Wright plays an undertaker's assistant, Joy, who enters their chaotic lives and stays on.

"She's very different from Alannah. She's filled with the joys of life. She's quite a strange character in that she doesn't fit into normal society, which is why she ends up living with these two guys.

"They're all slightly social outcasts. She's a real individualist and what I like about Joy is you can never tell how she'll react to a situation.

"Most of the time she will be really positive but sometimes she will be incredibly snappy and moody. She's quite daft, but lovely."

Wright is due back in New Zealand later next month and has no immediate work plans, although it's highly likely she will film a second series of both Being Eve and Willy Nilly.

Does she feel as if her career has fallen into place?

"I don't think it will ever feel like that. I always feel like, 'That was my last job and I'll never work again'. I just think I've had a very lovely and lucky couple of years, and I feel really grateful for that. •