“How many times did I slap you?” would usually bring a Weekly photoshoot to a screeching halt. But when it’s Robyn Malcolm asking her former TV daughters while lovingly grasping their hands, there’s a collective sigh of relief.
After a pause, Robyn, Antonia Prebble, and Siobhan Marshall laugh about all the different ways they hit, spit, or even bottled each other. In doing so, we glimpse what a day on set of the iconic series was really like.
Runiting after 15 years
Gathering the busy West women together has been a near-impossible mission. Indeed, it’s the first time in 15 years the trio has all been together in the same room for longer than a passing chat. While Antonia and Siobhan have worked together, and they both still go to Robyn for a friendly ear, busy filming schedules and family life mean it’s rare their calendars align.
But over glasses of rosé and Asian-fusion delights at a bustling Auckland eatery a few days after our shoot, they open up about their memories of the show that changed their lives.
“The best days were when we were all together in the West house, driving everyone insane because we were messing around,” says Robyn.
“Every day at work, you felt like you were going into your family.”
A show that changed everything
When Outrageous Fortune premiered on July 12, 2005, few could have predicted the legacy it would leave behind. Loud, lewd and hilariously unfiltered, the Wests were unlike any other family that had been shown on our screens. But the initial response from viewers and critics was lukewarm.
Robyn herself doubted the series about matriarch Cheryl’s often-failed attempts to keep her children on the right side of the law after her criminal husband was sent to prison. She wasn’t sure it would last beyond one season.
When she was offered to audition for the formidable leader of the Wests, she was in Ireland filming a documentary with her sister and then-10-month-old son Charlie. It was the thought of the show only being a few months of work that convinced Robyn to go for it.
Robyn’s reluctant beginning
“I had decided that all I wanted was to be a mother,” explains Robyn, who is also mum to Pete.
“I was thinking, ‘Do I really want to do this?’ But then I thought, ‘It’ll be one season and then it will be done. So I might as well.’”
She landed the role after several auditions, but she was still unconvinced the show had legs.
“I was sent episodes three and four, and I rang [producer] Mike Smith and I sobbed for an hour,” Robyn laughs.
“I said, ‘This is the worst thing that’s ever been made. I hate it.’ The irony is that now they are two of my favourite episodes.”
Winning over New Zealand
No one can pinpoint when public opinion turned, but Antonia believes it was the Wests’ authenticity – for better or worse – that eventually won the hearts and minds of Kiwis.
“New Zealanders like to root for the underdog,” reflects Antonia. “We cut down tall poppies and anyone who looks like they might be getting too big for their boots. The Wests never tried to claim any kind of social status. They are who they are, take it or leave it. I think that really resonated with the Kiwi mentality.”
Adds BAFTA nominee Robyn, “I really believe Outrageous Fortune taught New Zealanders to fall in love with themselves. They saw the best part of themselves in the working-class westies.”
Siobhan’s turn in the spotlight
Back in 2005, when Outrageous Fortune came knocking, Siobhan, who shares daughters Remy, seven, and Roux, four, with husband Millen Baird, 52, had just a handful of screen credits to her name.
When she walked into her audition for Pascalle, a hopeless romantic with a dream to be the next Rachel Hunter, a sign from the universe left her with a strange sense of certainty.
A sign from the universe
“As I was leaving my audition, a girl walked past me wearing a leather jacket and on the back in diamantés it said ‘Siobhan’, and I just knew,” she recalls.
“I got in the car with my friend and said, ‘I got that!’”
Though she loved her character, the now 42-year-old admits Pascalle’s outfit choices pushed her out of her comfort zone.
“I called the skirts belts,” she tells.
“It was hard for me because I never wore a bikini – I always wore a lot of clothes. But then I got used to it and I wore next to nothing all the time.”
Antonia’s road to Loretta
Meanwhile, Antonia’s path to the West family wasn’t as smooth. She first auditioned for Pascalle – a memory that still makes her wince.
“I did a really bad audition – very broad with none of the nuance and depth that Siobhan brought to the role,” she admits.
Then she was invited to read for Loretta. The sharp-tongued teen may have been Antonia’s opposite, but she felt an instant connection.
“With Loretta, I read the scenes and I felt an immediate synergy with her. I knew exactly who she was.”
Finding the West family spark
When the trio – along with other members of the West family, including Grant Bowler, Antony Starr and Frank Whitten – came together for the first time, they immediately gelled and their on-screen chemistry sparkled. With two weeks of rehearsal before shooting began, the cast spent their days developing their characters, and their evenings bonding over boozy dinners and big conversations about life, love and everything in between.
At the time, Antonia and Siobhan were in their early twenties. To them, Robyn – then 39 – seemed like an actual adult and a woman with all of the answers. But now that they’ve reached a similar stage in their own lives, they have a new perspective.
Looking up to Robyn
“She seemed like such a grown-up,” Siobhan says with a grin.
Antonia, who shares sons Freddie, six, and Gus, four, with husband Dan Musgrove, 43, adds, “I was in awe of Robyn from the get-go. She was so strong and confident. But she was only 39, which blows my mind because she was younger than I am now.”
Passion, pride and on-set clashes
The onscreen bond of the West family spilled over into real life – but so did the tension. With a cast of passionate performers fiercely protective of their characters, emotions often flared on set.
“It would get tense, furious and naughty, but it was because it mattered to everybody,” Robyn explains.
“We would get stroppy at production and tell them, ‘No, my character wouldn’t do this.’ Part of the genius of the show was that they got the right people to play these beautifully written characters. But it also meant they cast quite a lot of trouble.”
Saying goodbye to the Wests
By the time Outrageous Fortune wrapped in 2010, everyone agreed it was the right time to end the show.
As Antonia, 41, puts it, “We wanted to leave while the party was still pumping.”
But that didn’t make letting go any easier. Siobhan admits she has never watched the final season. Both she and Robyn also apologise for not having seen Westside – the prequel series where Antonia played the fearsome Rita West. But even today, the smallest thing can bring back memories.
Memories that never fade
Laughs Antonia, “At the moment, there’s a big fridge-freezer that’s been dumped outside my son’s school. Whenever I see it, I think, ‘Van got into the freezer and closed the lid, and he was never the same after that.’”
Robyn adds, “Every time I go up the Te Atatū motorway, there’s a bit where all the boats are and I always think, ‘That’s where Cheryl and Wolf broke up.’ And there’s another spot which is where Cheryl and Judd got together.”
Blurring the lines between life and character
Siobhan reflects, “It’s weird because they aren’t your memories, but they are at the same time. You spent more time as your character than as yourself.”
As they pour the last of the rosé, someone checks their watch and signals it’s time to return to their busy lives. Antonia needs to rush off for school pick-up, and Siobhan has a sick child to check on. Robyn has just arrived in the country, but she leaves again by the end of the week to return to work.
Lessons, losses and lasting pride
Before they depart, the women take one last moment to reflect on their Outrageous lives. They exchange promises to catch up again soon. For Robyn, the show defined a transformative period in her life.
“It taught me more about life,” she muses.
“I was going through the biggest upheavals at that time. I was a solo mother, I had a marriage break-up and I was doing a show that was demanding every ounce of me. “I came out the other end exhausted. But also, it’s a wonderful thing to be able to look back on a body of work and feel it’s unmatched. I feel deep pride in what this group of people achieved.”
Life after the Wests
Meanwhile, Siobhan says that while she is proud to have been a member of the West family, she has found it hard to shake the shadow of Pascalle.
“I’m only just now getting auditions for anything other than Pascalle-like characters and that’s been hard,” she tells candidly.
“Twenty years later, I still get that.”
The show that changed everything
Antonia says the show altered the course of her entire life. Between Outrageous Fortune and Westside, she has spent most of her adulthood in the world of the Wests.
“It changed my life profoundly,” she says.
“I’d only done kids’ TV before and it enabled me to get over that difficult hump of going from a child actor to an adult actor. “And personally, it changed everything. I went on to do Westside, which is where my husband Dan and I got together, and now we have two children. I would not have the life I have now – on any level – without Outrageous Fortune.”
