Talking with Tandi
Actor Tandi Wright plays New Zealand's own desperate housewife
in TV ONE's new local drama This Is Not My Life, a woman who
craves her husband's love and family stability and instead finds
herself living with a man who doesn't recognises her or their
children.
Callie Ross thinks husband Alec (Charles Mesure) has had an
accident, fallen from a stepladder in their garage, hit his head
and has amnesia. She's troubled he can't remember her or the kids,
but she's sure that their local Wellness centre will sort him
out.
"For Callie, Alec is the centre of her world," says Tandi. "She
wants to be loved, he is everything to her and she would do
anything to please him and to protect her family. She's quite
a tiger in that respect. She's concerned that he can't
remember her. That's not good for anyone's self esteem - how
could you really completely forget the love of your life?"
"Callie's not just desperate, she's not just a housewife, she is
both of those things. But she's so much more. And as an
actor, you can't play a cliché, you have to play a real
person and hopefully as long as what you're playing is truthful to
you, that's when you can explore things."
This Is Not My Life is one of Tandi's first television roles after
her Qantas TV & Film Awards Supporting Actress nomination for
her performance in the feature film Out Of The Blue and after the
birth of her daughter. In the fast-paced drama, she plays opposite
Charles Mesure, an actor she has worked with before, on productions
such as Street Legal.
"Charles, I have to say, has been fantastic in this. His work
load is unbelievable, extraordinary. He's in every
scene. He is so prepared, generous and incisive. I
think we were really lucky because we've worked together in the
past and so it was really nice to come to this with that shared
history. You don't have to get to know each other, you just
start in, boom, and he's been amazing. He has this very
strong charismatic, strongly male presence - macho presence - and
it's just so lovely to play off. There's a real solidity
there but it's not overwhelming, it's very inclusive and we play
together very easily."
In a story set in New Zealand the day after tomorrow, Tandi is
impressed by the world series creators Gavin Strawhan and Rachel
Lang have created.
"The clever thing about This Is Not My Life is that the world is
not ours but it's so recognisable. It's just got that slight
remove - it mirrors parts of society now in quite clever little
ways. I like the idea about memory and how important memory
is to the individual. If your memories were replaced entirely with
someone else's memories would you be a different person? Is
it possible to change like that? At the same time, it's about
identity and who you are. The two things are so closely linked -
does your memory make you 'you', and what if someone were to play
with that? Are you someone else?"
And Callie doesn't want to ask the questions or know the answers -
for her, with her dreams of married bliss and family security, it's
far better to be happy than to uncover an unsettling truth.
Can Callie get Alec back to normal and get their lives back on track? Can she ignore the way Alec is behaving and the questions he is asking about Waimoana?
