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Antonia Prebble’s saucy secrets

Flirting and sex scenes aside, she's taken!
Antonia Prebble's saucy secrets

On her most recent trip to Los Angeles, Antonia Prebble kept getting propositioned. First it was the owner of the shop where she printed out scripts for her auditions. He told her it looked like she’d been crying (she hadn’t), gave her a hug anyway and asked her out for lunch.

Next there was the guy in her yoga class who told her, “You know what? I think you’ve got a bit of a crush on me. You’re cute, you think I’m cute and of course you’re gonna have a crush on me.”

And then there was the aspiring filmmaker who told her she was “the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen”, then sent her a script that was so full of gratuitous nudity and sex, it made Fifty Shades of Grey seem tame.

“It’s so typical LA,” the 31-year-old Westside actress laughs, quickly adding that she rejected all three offers. “I don’t know if badly written soft porn is the introduction I want into Hollywood. Oh, and I’ve got a boyfriend, so I turned down the dates too.”

“Nice save!” jokes her partner of six years, Gareth Williams. The actor/filmmaker, 28, was back in New Zealand the whole time, but despite the attention Antonia attracted, he never felt jealous. “These guys were, like, 50 to 60 years old and, anyway, she ended up getting free printing out of the creepy printing man. That stuff is expensive, so I tell her, ‘Go for gold, babe!’”

With Antonia recently filming in Australia, auditioning in the States and taking acting classes in Canada while partner Gareth concentrates on his new comedy website HaveASquiz.com back in Auckland, the couple spend so much time apart that even their friends joke that it’s a sham relationship, asking Gareth, “How’s your friend Antonia?”

“It’s become quite normal for us,” he laughs. “When we’re both working, we can easily not see each other for months. We know we’re not separated for the sake of it – this is going to be rewarding in the long-term – so we make it work.”

It’s how we role!

Antonia adds, “From the moment we first got together, we’ve both encouraged each other to always look for opportunities to grow and follow our hearts. It’s the only way that we can operate. We can spend all this time apart because our relationship is all about encouraging each other to be the very best we can be.

“How we operate as a couple is very different from how most other people operate. They wonder how it works because they can’t imagine being in a relationship where you spend so much time apart. A lot of people are surprised we’re still together, but we don’t see any alternative. Even when I am home, we still have our own lives and our own commitments.”

On Antonia’s most recent return to New Zealand, however, as well as promoting her TV3 series Westside, she and Gareth packed in a lot of couple time, going camping, attending a friend’s wedding and visiting her family’s bach in Abel Tasman National Park.

“I’ve been going there with the family for 25 years and it’s my special place,” says Antonia.

“So to be able to take Gareth there and have a few days of just us was awesome. You get in there by boat. There’s no power, no interference, no distractions, so we could just reconnect with each other.

“The house is right on the beach and Gareth collected bucketloads of mussels to make this amazing coconut curry, and we did some swims and beautiful bush walks. It was bliss.”

Back in Auckland, the couple also watched the first episode of Westside with her co-star David de Lautour and his actress girlfriend Hannah Marshall, with Gareth jokingly putting a hand on Hannah’s knee as they watched Antonia and David’s raunchy sex scenes.

Antonia sighs, “We laughed, but the rest of my extended family were all watching it together and I did cringe thinking how awkward it’d be for them.”

Career hopes

Jokes aside, it’s clear Antonia and Gareth’s bond is a tight one, but she insists that getting engaged “isn’t really a priority at the moment” and she hasn’t had the “hormonal rush” to start a family. “I’ve always imagined life with kids, so it’ll happen at some point,” she admits, “but I’m not ready to focus on another human life just yet.”

Next up is a trip to Vancouver for an acting workshop and then, hopefully, a second season of Westside back in Auckland.

“I love working in New Zealand, especially on such a fantastic show,” says Antonia, “but I’m still committed to establishing a career overseas, so I do have to say no to some jobs here – and Gareth is really encouraging of that. He’s actually more ruthless than me, which is very generous of him. He reminds me to keep my eye on the prize.”

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