Kate McDermott: from learning the ropes on Shortland Street, to creating Step Dave...

Interview – 2015

The words of scriptwriter Kate McDermott have been heard in a long list of popular TV comedies and dramas. She began on Shortland Street, and later joined the storylining team. Since then McDermott has written for Being Eve, Go Girls, Outrageous Fortune and My Life is Murder. In 2014 her own creation Step Dave got the first of two seasons on TVNZ.

In this ScreenTalk, McDermott talks about:

Making a mess of her first Shortland Street script
Eventually becoming a storyliner on the show
Bringing a little Shakespeare to hit kids show Being Eve
Binge-watching Mercy Peak in order to write for the show
Loving the freedom of adding swear words to Outrageous Fortune scripts
Becoming the showrunner on Go Girls
Enjoying working on the comedy drama Nothing Trivial
Initially thinking she wasn't the right fit for thriller The Blue Rose
Dealing with insane deadlines on the first season of her show Step Dave

This video was first uploaded on 16 February 2015, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview, Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside

[When] Rachel asked me to join the team at first I said no, because I didn't think I would be useful, to be honest. But she kept on gently bullying me until I said okay. And I'm really glad I did . . . it wasn't my genre, it was something I'd never done before, it made my brain hurt. But after we'd done it, I was so glad to have done it.
– Kate McDermot on finally giving in to Rachel Lang's offer to write for crime drama The Blue Rose

Kate's Full Profile