Photography: Babiche Martens.
Yvette Parsons, 64, has earned a reputation for playing quirky characters on stage and screen. From receptionist Sheree in The Educators to a high priestess in Wellington Paranormal and estranged hippie mother Minerva in Shortland Street. Yvette is also a musician, a writer and a cat lover who has played memorable roles in Nude Tuesday, The Brokenwood Mysteries and Outrageous Fortune.
Stories were a big part of my childhood, and I loved hearing Mum’s tales from when she was little and knowing about Dad’s life before children.
Dad went to sea at 15 and became a captain. He couldn’t swim and his ship was in some treacherous storms. He had a tattoo of a ship in full sail on his arm, but he had it removed when I was 18 because tattoos were stigmatised. My father died last year and I now have the same tattoo on my shoulder, but with one tiny difference – there’s a heart on the flag.
I was born with a mass of thick black hair, thanks to my mother’s Fijian heritage, and as the baby of the family, I was very spoiled.
My mother wouldn’t let me do anything remotely dangerous, even walking down stairs. When we went to the little jetty off Sarsfield Street in Herne Bay, my mother would sit under a big umbrella with her arms wrapped tightly around my waist. Even though safety measures around children were very lax in the ’60s, my mother never let me go.
Before I was born my parents bought an old villa in Herne Bay and turned it into a rest home.
We all worked there in the school holidays and sung carols at Christmas. When they sold the place at auction, it was bought by the Sultan of Brunei.
My mother often kept me home from school.
I’d get up in the morning and she’d say I’d been coughing all night, but I hadn’t. My older sisters would go to school and I’d be sent back to bed with a hottie and breakfast on a tray. Mum would wheel a miniature television into my room, or run me a bubble bath then make my bed with fresh linen and hospital corners, my pillows plumped. It ruined me for life, but I loved being mollycoddled.
The very first time I saw a ballerina, I wanted my life to be about ballet.
I had a little lilac tutu and I’d put a ballet record on when I was about nine and dance and dance. Then my parents got divorced and my ballet lessons stopped.
I played a frog in Peter Pan at His Majesty’s Theatre in 1969 when I was eight.
There was a beautiful mermaid scene with all these ballet girls wearing blonde wigs and tails seen through a gauze curtain. I befriended a girl who played a fairy and last year while filming Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant with Hannah [Lynch] who played my daughter, we realised both our mothers were part Fijian and born in Fiji. When she told me her mother’s surname, I realised her mum was the little fairy I’d met all those years ago.
I went to St Cuthbert’s College.
I didn’t really fit in as it was very science, maths and sports-focused back then. They put on a musical each year, but even though I was desperate to be on stage, I didn’t get many parts.
I left school halfway through sixth form.
My mother flung the NZ Herald down on the dining room table and told me to get a job, which is how I found a position at Le Quesne’s Chemist in Ponsonby. People from all walks of life came in – from artists to heroin addicts. I bought lots of make-up and put it against my pay, so I made very little, which is possibly why the owner Mrs Smith kept me on. I still remember the condoms being kept in a place Mrs Smith referred to as the “sports drawer”!
I become a punk rocker around that time.
We wore amazing vintage clothes and went to all the clubs. I chopped up a gold lamé ball gown of my mother’s to go to a gig. I put slits up the sides and took the train off – and I completely ruined it. But I was more of an art punk, not the sort that went round pogo-ing.
In the early ’80s, I went to Sydney for three months.
I thought, “If Sydney is this wild, imagine what London is like,” so I saved up and found my people there among all these Bohemian Goths. We dressed in antique clothes, like gold embroidered Victorian cloaks, and we’d waft around parks holding parasols, our arms full of flowers. Or we’d lie under trees reading poetry and sipping crème de cassis. We were living a fantasy, although I also had a terrible telemarketing job in Covent Garden. They gave us scripts and we’d sell any old stuff.
I gravitated towards arty musical people.
Because I could play piano, I became the keyboardist for Dead Can Dance. We toured Europe in 1986 and I played the synthesiser. Our biggest audience was 5000 people in London and these soaring strings would blast into the auditorium. But I wasn’t a natural performer – I preferred to read music – and I was a nervous wreck on stage. I pulled it off by working very hard. After the tour, they asked me to stay on, but I couldn’t do it, which really shocked some people.
My son Frank was conceived on that tour in Berlin.
He’ll be 40 next year. Once we realised I was pregnant, we got married in a big church in Vauxhall. My parents came over and they bought my bouquet from Princess Diana’s florist. It arrived in a bespoke green and gold vehicle, the delivery person virtually in livery. It was a long 1920s-style bouquet that trailed down to my shoes with beautiful lilies and dark green ivy. I wore a 1920s pale grey crepe beaded dress. We lived so close to the church, I didn’t book a car as it seemed silly to drive such a short distance. Dad, who gave me away, was astonished.
I came home for a family wedding when Frank was about six months old and I didn’t go back.
I didn’t want Frank going to school in Brixton, which was very rough back then. Being a solo mum was tough, but Frank has turned out lovely and we’re incredibly close. He is very kind, hilariously funny and a decent person. For a while, it was like the two of us against the world, so we became a refuge for each other and learned to enjoy simple things. But I did feel like the black sheep of our family.
When Frank was in high school, I didn’t feel I was being the best mother.
I was working full-time at my father’s new rest home. But I wanted to be more available to Frank and to better myself, so I went to university.
I met [Kiwi comedian] Tom Sainsbury at uni and we became the best of friends.
This odd couple that made some shows together and never stopped laughing. We’d even be silly during exams by pretending to copy people. Or we’d mime being stuck on a question, then coming up with the most fantastic answer and make a show of realising we had lots to write. We were acting up even in the constraints of an exam, but we both graduated and I have a BA in Film and Television Studies, and Sociology.
My mother came to New Zealand from Fiji in the early 1930s when she was four.
Her childhood wasn’t easy and she put herself through nursing school. When she got dementia in her eighties, she spent some time in care, but it felt so wrong, so I brought her home to my place.
For some reason, she came alive about midnight, so we’d walk around Westmere looking at the stars and the moon.
Or go to the little beach at the bottom of Garnet Road that we called the Mermaid Steps. I was always so scared she’d die in the night and even though she had dementia, when I went in each morning, she’d pretend to be dead with a silly dead face. We’d both scream with laughter. That’s what she was like. Sweet and funny, and always playing tricks.
I went to the Sundance Film Festival in February because Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant was chosen from thousands of other films.
It was such a pinch-me experience, and the best thing was seeing it with live audiences. I went to every single screening, about 12 of them, and I never got sick of hearing people laugh. I love everything about that film. Hopefully, I’ll get another job from it too.
Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant is in cinemas on September 10.
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