Shane Cortese: on being a Shortland Street baddie...

Interview – 2013

Shane Cortese made a name for himself on London’s West End before coming home to New Zealand to begin a career in television. Since his return, Cortese has played TV roles across the spectrum of characters, including the evil Dominic Thompson in Shortland Street, and Hayden Peters in Outrageous Fortune.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Cortese talks about:

Tumultuous contract wrangles when trying to leave a UK stage show, and return home to act in Shortland Street
What it is like playing the bad guy
His initial feelings about the prospect of being on Dancing with the Stars
How he developed his craft hosting So You Think You Can Dance
The amusing story of learning about his starring role in Burying Brian
How it felt to be part of the West family in Outrageous Fortune
Details of his work in Brown Bruthas and The Almighty Johnsons

This video was first uploaded on 23 December 2013, 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 – James Coleman

The best characters in my opinion are those ones with a degree of character about them, and they have that dark side to them, and I certainly had the darkest side they'd ever had at that point on the show. He went from a reasonably sort of sane guy to psychotic in a very spread out period of time. They didn't rush it, they really developed that character.
– Shane Cortese on why he loved playing Dominic Thompson on Shortland Street

Shane's Full Profile