The funnyman takes us through his life in television, including Jono and Ben mayhem, live Telethon flubs, and funnelling all those experiences into his new comedy Vince.
There’s an inciting incident in Three’s new comedy Vince where morning television presenter Vince Walters (Jono Pryor) is visiting sick kids in hospital and suffers a down-trou moment that threatens to end his career. It may seem too outrageous to ever be true, but for Pryor, who is also the writer and showrunner of Vince, it is art imitating life. “I had my arms around two kids at Christmas in the Park for a photo, and some scallywag came up behind me and whoosh – clean – undies and trousers down,” he laughs. “If that ever emerges, that is the true backstory to it.”
Having appeared on our screens since he first arrived on C4 in the mid-2000s, Pryor says this is one of the many flourishes inspired by his own television career that appear in Vince, the pilot of which he first penned during lockdown in 2020. “Television is fucking weird industry and it’s full of very weird characters – not just on camera but heaps of people behind the scenes – quirky management meetings, unusual characters in the studio,” he says. “Having been lucky enough to experience it over a number of years, you tend to pick up a lot of funny little anecdotes and stories.”
With the series set around a washed up presenter trying to claw his way back onto television, there are naturally plenty of jokes in Vince about the state of the industry in 2025. “Its TV,” says his agent, played by an outstanding Natalie Medlock. “The only people still watching it are my cousins in jail and my grandma who is too weak to change the channel.” Even if that is the case, Pryor hopes that people will tune in to Vince. “I really was just very humbled by this whole project to be honest,” he says. “And hopefully linear television is still going on February 13, when this is meant to be going to air.”
While we await the premiere, Proyr took us us through his life in television – including Jono and Ben mayhem, live Telethon flubs, and his obsession with true crime.
My earliest TV memory is… The Mickey Mouse Club after school. It was the generation before Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and all that, and there was this girl Tiffany on there. I remember watching her and thinking “what are these weird emotions I’m having towards this girl”. It was a very formative period of my life.
The show I used to rush home from school to watch was… There was a show called Steel Riders, and it was a gang of kids on BMXs who would fight this villain who rode a big black motorcycle. I always remember going out afterwards on my BMX and trying to do all the tricks and jumps down the driveway.
My favourite NZ TV ad of all time is… I don’t know if it’s playing anymore, but about 10 years ago there was this ad for Neat 3B chafing cream. It had these animated limbs, animated breasts and buttocks, and they were all crying because they were in so much chafing pain.
My TV guilty pleasure is… I do watch an extraordinary amount of the Crime and Investigation channel. I watch a lot of The New Detectives, and Homicide Hunter. I really enjoy true crime investigation stuff, no idea why. Forensic Files is another beauty. I’ve probably learned enough now over decades of watching Crime and Investigation channel that I reckon I could probably get away with the perfect crime.
A TV moment that haunts me is… A lot of stuff from Jono and Ben haunts me. I don’t even think this one made it to TV, which is probably worse, but we were in Hamilton one day, and we had to go up and peg something onto someone’s back as part of the game. There was a World Wildlife Fund collector with a clipboard, and he was in the middle of trying to sign someone up to the World Wildlife Fund. I came up behind him and pegged something to him, and that was it. But not long after, the charity collector came over and was like “great one. You’ve just lost me a client.” And I felt terrible and was like, “Oh, I’m so sorry mate”. And he just looked me dead in the eye and said “no you’re not. If you were truly sorry, you wouldn’t have done it.” That still haunts me to this day – how many other poor people’s days did we ruin?
A C4 moment I’ll never forget is… So many. It was a time we were all very young, and you would meet these rock stars, and you would be terrified of them. I remember poor old Clarke Gayford interviewed the Beastie Boys at Big Day Out and they were cold as ice. That whole C4 period ran on the smell of an oily rag. Ben and I always say that we are so lucky we got our TV careers from C4, because they basically only put us on the fill airtime. It launched so many careers.
My favourite TV moment is… I used to love when the old telethons would air. It was obviously such a monumental moment, and people would phone through and say crazy things like, “I’ll give $12 if Richard Long and Lana Coc-Kroft kiss for 10 minutes” or something. All these poor broadcasters and celebrities at the time would have to do all these terrible things just to raise money for charity.
Ironically, in a full circle moment, TV3 did a telethon and they got the C4 people to sort of cover the overnight shift. I was doing the 2am to 4am shift or something, and they were bringing on the very famous New Zealand actor Alan Dale as a guest. Now, I wasn’t aware of Alan Dale at the time. It was about 3.30 in the morning, and someone came over to me during the air break and said ‘OK, here’s the next person you are going to interview, it’s Alan Dale.” Unfortunately I didn’t hear Alan, so then I said “G’day Dale mate, how are you?” He just said “I don’t need this” and walked off the set.
My favourite TV project I’ve even been involved in is… When we were making Jono and Ben, we weren’t appreciating it all because it was such a whirlwind week to week. But when you see where all the people are now – Rose Matafeo, Chris Parker, Joseph Moore and Laura Daniel and everyone else – they’ve all gone on to do such amazing things. To know that Jono and Ben was not only used as a platform for entertainment, but also to help build those careers and give jobs to all those young comedians, is something I’m pretty proud of.
My most controversial TV opinion is… I think there’s just too much of it at the moment. There’s too many shows, too much content, too many platforms. There’s just so much to digest. There was a simple time where we would just turn on the TV would tell you what to watch. There was no tough decision-making.
A show I will never watch, no matter how many people say I should is… It’s probably been and gone and passed, but it was Game of Thrones. Everyone raved about it every week but I never caught up and then one day I had the realisation: I can’t start at the beginning now, that ship has sailed.
The last show I watched on TV was… Homicide Hunter, yesterday. I didn’t get to the end of the episode unfortunately, so I don’t know how he went actually hunting the homicides.
Vince begins on Three February 13.