Robert Trathen
After a busy day designing pages for Kia Ora and Your Home And Garden, magazine art director Nicola Feeney was ready to sit on the couch and unwind. But when she stepped through the door of her Auckland home, she was met with a chaotic scene of disarranged furniture, blacked-out windows and 40 people taking over her beloved house – her husband, Kiwi actor Peter, was filming his self-made TV series Blind Bitter Happiness.
“Honestly, my wife Nic was dragged into it all extremely reluctantly and she only said yes to filming at our house because she had no clue what she was getting herself into,” laughs Peter, 58, of that day back in 2021.
“She freaked out. I’m from film land, so I just thought everyone would know what it’s like, but Nic’s a bit of an introvert. I bring some unpredictability into our lives, which can exasperate her, but hopefully she also finds it interesting and fun!”
Nicola had no clue what she was getting into when Peter turned the house into a film set.
But turning their home into a buzzing film set wasn’t the only way the director and former Shortland Street star roped his family into dark comedy Blind Bitter Happiness, which is now streaming on RNZ. Their son Arlo, 16, and daughters Frankie, 14, and Matilda, 11, also acted in the self-funded series, which investigates the messy awkwardness of childhood.
“The kids were available, free and couldn’t really say no,” quips the actor, who has also starred in The Brokenwood Mysteries and the film Black Sheep. “They’re actually awfully good. You’ll probably just think I’m a proud dad, but when Tilly turned up and did her first scene, it was like she’d been acting all her life!”
Indeed, she even won an award for Best Supporting Actor at one of the film festivals Peter entered the series in – despite the fact he hadn’t nominated her in that category!
Playing senior constable Paul Symonds in Siege.
While spotlight-shy Nicola, 51, first got their “confident and loud” kids in front of a camera after talent for a magazine shoot fell through, it was Peter who introduced the extroverted trio to film work.
“I was acting in the TV series Ash Vs Evil Dead and one day the childcare fell apart, so I had to take Frankie, who was seven. I smuggled her on to the set and when the producer walked past, I thought, ‘I hope he doesn’t see Frankie!’ But he stopped, stared at her, asked who she was, nodded and walked off.”
It turned out they were looking for “demon children” for the next episode and the producer got Frankie back for a photoshoot, although ultimately, it was Arlo who got the gig. He was nine then and, shortly afterwards, he went on to play his idol Richie McCaw in Chasing Great, a documentary about the former All Blacks captain.
More recently, Peter took Arlo to the set of Shortland Street, where he played Dr Nathan Exley in 2000, and they ran into his old colleague Michael Galvin, aka Dr Chris Warner. “Michael really hasn’t aged – it’s scary, actually!” grins Peter. “It was great to see him. You don’t get to be on a job for that long if you’re not a great actor and a jolly nice person.”
It was five years after joining Shorty that Peter first met Nicola, when he was filming the show Secret Agent Men and went into her magazine office for a meeting. “She was quite aloof and never looked me in the eye,” he recalls.
Afterwards, his 12-year-old co-star asked if he “liked the design lady” and suggested he ask her on a date.
As Angus Oldfield in Black Sheep.
Peter tells, “Nic hesitated, perhaps because she thought I was a flaky actor, but luckily for me, two weeks later, she changed her mind and rang me. Before I knew it, we were living on the North Shore with three kids and a dog.”
Peter wrote the pilot for Blind Bitter Happiness, based on a book he’d written about his childhood, during Aotearoa’s first COVID lockdown, then started crowdfunding to get it made.
On the set of Blind Bitter Happiness.
“To make something good for nothing is really hard, but this show ended up costing only $500 a minute to make,” explains Peter, who was hugely grateful for the acting support of famous Kiwi faces such as Claire Chitham, Jodie Dorday and Lisa Harrow. “It sounds like a lot, but you can easily make 30 minutes of TV for $1 million.”
Describing the four-episode series as “full of drama”, Peter adds, “I wanted to create something that told the truth about how bonkers, funny and heart-rending childhood and parenting are. In what appears to be a very ordinary childhood from the outside, there’s so much going on!”
Blind Bitter Happiness is now streaming on rnz.co.nz/bbh.
