Danny Mulheron
Danny Mulheron is a hard man to tie down. Although his career as an actor, writer and director is laced with every kind of comedy from drug-addicted puppets and questionable teachers to Roger Hall adaptations, he has also been known to keep a straight face. Mulheron has directed documentaries, consumer watchdog shows and a run of dramas, and acted in everything from Mr Wrong to comedy series Kid Sister.
As a student at Wellington High School, Mulheron began creating comedy with his friend Dave Armstrong. Some of their work required explanatory visits to the school principal. Armstrong was "a writing machine. I never wrote until I met Dave." In a future life, the pair would work together on hit play The Motor Camp and a run of TV shows — including their gleefully un-PC teaching satire Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, inspired by an old teacher who wore an opera cape and a military beret.
At just 14, Mulheron won a role on long-running soap opera Close to Home. He remembers being thrown in the deep end. "I'd never really had any other job apart from being a postie . . . Pat Evison was really nice to me, and took me aside and taught me a few things, because I really had no idea."
After finding himself at drama school in Wellington, Mulheron joined the cast of working class trucking drama Roche (1985), playing the younger conscience to screen brothers John Bach and Andy Anderson.
By the last half of the decade, Mulheron had begun to mix more screen work into a busy theatre career. He had small roles in madcap comedy Send a Gorilla and short film O'Reilly's Luck. He played a scarecrow in three episodes of Worzel Gummidge Down Under, and was suitor to the heroine in Gaylene Preston-directed ghost movie Mr Wrong.
In 1989 Mulheron was drafted by director Peter Jackson to join his writing team. Jackson, Fran Walsh and Stephen Sinclair had three fevered weeks to expand Meet the Feebles, a short film about dysfunctional puppets, into a feature-length script. As Mulheron put it, their mission was "to be as grotesque and stupid and offensive as we could". On set — a rat-infested railways shed — he sweated buckets inside a foam suit, playing prima donna hippo Heidi. In the process Mulheron shared an acting award with Mark Hadlow (who supplied Heidi's voice) at an Italian fantasy festival, and a nomination for Best Female Performance at the 1990 NZ Film and Television Awards.
Mulheron and Stephen Sinclair were especially keen to push the boundaries of taste; they felt hemmed in by what they saw as ‘liberal' censorship in the local theatre scene. The pair would collaborate again on hit The Sex Fiend, a farce about political correctness which won return seasons in New Zealand's main centres. Mulheron revelled in stirring up controversy with the play, "It did really well. All the cool people hated it and I loved every second . . . I wanted to be booed."
It was a busy time. Mulheron was collaborating with Peter Jackson on two scripts that never made it to the screen: Monty Python-style fantasy Blubberhead, and a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel for New Line Pictures. He also spent time in Hollywood, working on Only Puppets Bleed, a proposed puppet show for Fox Television. Back at Avalon studios, he played one of the soldiers in Gallipoli movie Chunuk Bair.
Between his adventures in Jacksonville and Hollywood, Mulheron worked on the first of many sketch shows for Wellington company Gibson Group. Initially Mulheron was a writter on 1989 puppet series Public Eye, and wrote and acted in Away Laughing. The later show saw the screen debut of a character Mulheron had performed onstage: condescending priest Phineas O'Diddle, who makes life hell for Hori Ahipene's working class Māori male. In 1993 Mulheron began writing, acting and directing for long-running sketch show Skitz.
He would rejoin many of the talents from Skitz — including Robbie Magasiva, Hori Ahipene, Jackie Clarke, and David Fane — while directing two further comedy shows, Telly Laughs and short-lived Skitz spin-off The Semisis. This tale of a dysfunctional Samoan family quickly became a "sensation". As Mulheron says in this extended video interview, "we were mobbed in Ōtāhuhu in KFCs, but avoided in Ponsonby". Mulheron says the series was pioneering for Pasifika TV comedy, but adds "hopefully now brown people are making it themselves — not two old white dudes writing it."
Mulheron has also collaborated extensively with Skitz actor Brian Sergent, including on one of Mulheron's earliest ventures into screen directing — 1993 comedy short I'm in Here, the tale of a man and his toilet, and drug drama The Shirt. On Skitz, the pair appeared as nightclub owners the Flagrante Brothers.
Mulheron followed Skitz with a varied range of directing assignments — including Shortland Street, McPhail and Gadsby and consumer rights show Target. He also directed two seasons of Market Forces, the sequel to Roger Hall hit Glide Time.
Since 2000, his directing work has swung increasingly towards drama (with one noteworthy exception). He helmed 12 episodes of The Strip —the tale of a woman, her relationships and her newly-purchased strip club — and episodes of kidult success The Tribe, and the short-lived Atlantis High.
The exception was Gormsby. Working with his old schoolmate Dave Armstrong and Tom Scott, Mulheron set about creating a tale of a racist, sexist teacher from another era, who challenges the norms at a low decile school. Based on a monologue Mulheron had performed onstage, Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby was reborn in a moment of desperation, while pitching ideas to TVNZ. With Mulheron concentrating on directing, the role of Gormsby went to comedy veteran David McPhail.
Dominion Post writer Jane Bowron compared Gormsby to legendary Kiwi comedy characters Fred Dagg and Lyn of Tawa, and the show was nominated for Best Comedy and Script at the 2006 NZ Screen Awards. The Sydney Morning Herald's Lenny Ann Low called it "darkly funny", a "quick-witted poke at modern education and society". Adds Mulheron: "I don't know if you’d get away with it now".
After Gormsby, the ex-Mark 1 Cortina owner presented car series AA Torque Show, and directed TV movie Eruption mdash; which includes a volcano erupting in Auckland harbour — plus episodes of edgy, award-nominated drama The Hothouse. In 2008 he flew to Raratonga for the first of two seasons of BBC show Paradise Café, a kidult tale of ghosts and banana smoothies, and back in Wellington, helmed a season of BBC show Emu.
In the 2010s, Mulheron began directing a run of TV movies and miniseries which chronicled Kiwi icons and historical moments. Telemovie Rage (2011) is set during the them-and-us days of the 1981 Springbok tour. It revolves around the relationship between a student protestor, and a Māori policewoman working undercover. The script is by Mulheron's Gormsby partner Tom Scott, and policeman Grant O'Fee. Rage cinematographer David Paul praised Mulheron’s approach. "He’s an actor himself, so he has a great understanding and a remarkable vocabulary. It’s incredible what Danny can explain and how he can just get a message across — whether it’s the message of the scene, the shot, or the emotion."
Mulheron and Scott regrouped in 2014 for another tele-movie involving rugby. Moa Award nominee The Kick was inspired by All Black Stephen Donald's live or die kick during the final of the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Since then, Mulheron has chronicled a series of legendary New Zealanders: mountaineer Edmund Hillary (in miniseries Hillary, whose locations included India and Nepal), All Black Jonah Lomu (miniseries Jonah) and band The Dance Exponents (TV movie Dance Exponents - Why Does Love?).
In 2008 Mulheron and his partner Sara Stretton co-directed a feature-length documentary. The Third Richard chronicles the life of Mulheron's late grandfather Richard Fuchs, a Jewish composer whose music was banned by the Nazis. Soon after Mulheron made his movie directing debut with Fresh Meat, a tale of a gang of criminals who take a Māori family hostage, only to discover that cannibalism runs in the family. The cast included Temuera Morrison and Kate Elliott.
Mulheron embraced a "cartoonish style" for the comedy horror, adding that "the joy of what I make is that it’s not just full of dread — there are scares, but when they’re combined with comedy, it creates an even better effect." A personal highlight was doing a question and answer session for Fresh Meat at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival in New York. Mulheron has photos to prove he apologised to Tribeca co-founder Robert De Niro, promising him that he'd bring a better film next time.
Returning to television, Mulheron directed awardwinning tele-feature Runaway Millionaires (2019), about a Kiwi couple who leave town after $10 million is mistakenly deposited in their account. He also helmed episodes of another award-winner, moody crime drama One Lane Bridge, and the first three episodes of Rebecca Gibney series Under the Vines.
Mulheron says one of the reasons he began directing was that he was "growing "sick of the way I was being directed as an actor". He has continued to act throughout his career, and often takes small roles on his own projects. In 2023 he played a musical rabbi in comedy/drama series Kid Sister, about a young Jewish woman in Auckland. Mulheron says his approach to performance, whether it’s acting or stand-up, has always been simple: "Pretend that you are with people you love, and when you can pretend, the acting's easy". As a director, he adds, "the lucky thing is I love what actors do".
Profile updated on 3 September 2025
Sources include
Danny Mulheron
Danny Mulheron website. Accessed 30 April 2025
'Danny Mulheron - Funny As Interview' (Video Interview) NZ On Screen website. Director Rupert Mackenzie. Loaded 20 September 2019. Accessed 24 April 2025
'Danny Mulheron - An Acting and Directing Life' (Video Interview) NZ On Screen website. Director Ian Pryor. Loaded 24 June 2009. Accessed 24 April 2025
Jane Bowron, 'Orthodoxy and the cult of Gormsby' (Review) - The Dominion Post, 2005
Ian Pryor, Peter Jackson: from prince of splatter to lord of the rings (Auckland: Random House, 2003)
Vaughan Slinn, 'An Interview with Danny Mulheron' YouTube website. Loaded 26 June 2013. Accessed 30 April 2025
Unknown writer, 'Mr. Gormsby' wows Australian critics!' (Press release) Scoop website. Loaded 12 December 2005. Accessed 24 April 2025