Judy Callingham: writing our classics...

Interview – 2011

Judy Callingham has had a long and varied television career as a reporter, presenter, and writer. She first appeared on-screen as a continuity announcer, then moved on to reporting on 1960s regional programme Town and Around. Callingham then developed her skills as a television drama writer on shows such as Close to Home, Gloss, Shark in the Park and Shortland Street.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Callingham talks about:

How a friendly rivalry with a co-reporter on Town and Around forced her to confront a fear of heights
Loving being a show-runner on Close to Home
How the show led to complaints that it didn’t represent real New Zealanders
Why writing for Gloss made her a better person to live with
The cast of the show making the scripts better
Basing the lead character of her TV play Casualties of Peace on her father
The "organic" process of writing the scripts for sitcom The Billy T James Show
Doing a writing experiment while creating scene breakdowns for Shortland Street
Admitting she became a writer because she was appalling at being an actress

This video was first uploaded on 16 August 2011, 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

You have to remember New Zealanders had never seen themselves like this on-screen before. So the most common complaint that we got in those days was ‘these are not typical New Zealanders. These aren't people like you and me'. We’d never heard our own accent on a regular basis before.

– Judy Callingham recalls criticism of New Zealand’s first soap opera, Close to Home

Judy's Full Profile