The actor and comedian takes us through her life in television, from early Shortland Street rejection to the enduring power of the Gilmore Girls.
Browse local telly offerings and you’ll likely encounter Kura Forrester soon enough. Whether you know her best as loveable Lily in Double Parked or Puku the animated kiwi who sells footwear in Jandal Burn, the actor and comedian’s latest role is a brief appearance as “weird mushroom lady” Lillyloo in Mukpuddy’s new animated series Badjelly, streaming now on TVNZ+. “I love it,” she says of voice acting. “I have no problem going into a booth and acting my heart out to no one.”
While Badjelly is deeply beloved by New Zealanders, it’s playing Desi on Shortland Street which Forrester says has been her defining role so far. “I think once you’re on Shortland Street, it’s sort of like you belong to the people,” she laughs. “They feel a real ownership over you and the story that you’re in, and they are very happy to comment on it.” Despite leaving the show in 2022, she still gets questions on the street to this day.
“Shortland Street fans still come up and are like ‘Desi! Where’s Damo?’ and I’m like ‘I don’t know… Christchurch?’,” she says.
Forrester indulges in a bit of telly watching herself – but admits she hasn’t seen a lot of the big prestige shows of the moment. “I still haven’t told some of my closest friends that I’ve never watched Succession and I feel guilty about that,” she says. “I’m sitting in lots of writers rooms at the moment working on other people’s projects, and the references to Succession are so frequent that I just have to go, ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s absolutely like that character arc’.”
Luckily we aren’t snobs here at The Spinoff, and Forrester had more than enough to say about her fascinating life in television, from her teenage Ferndale trauma to the enduring power of the Gilmore Girls and much more.
My earliest television memory is… I think my first TV memory is in Dunedin, maybe around five or six, back when TV would just stop broadcasting at some point in the night. That was always our bedtime, so I remember one night my mum and dad had some people over, and the TV was about to click over into that time that it was off, so we tried to make it out that we were still watching it, even though it was just those colourful lines. We thought it was so naughty that we were still up like they hadn’t noticed the time.
The show I would rush home from school to watch is… I loved Blossom and Sister Sister, shows about families like The Cosby Show, Full House, Step by Step, all that kind of stuff. I wasn’t much into fantasy or much of a cartoony girly.
The TV moment that haunts me is… When I was in sixth form, one of my best friends won a competition on the radio for writing and singing new lyrics to the Shortland Street song. Her prize was to fly to Auckland and visit the Shortland Street building and be an extra. And she got to take one friend, and that friend was me. So we flew to Auckland, stayed with her aunt and uncle. We’d never been to Auckland before so we went to the Sky Tower and we were like “wow”. And then we got to go out to SPP and I remember seeing all the actors everywhere and just buzzing out at those hallways and everything.
Then finally we got to go on to one of the hospital sets and walk past the camera. We probably spent an hour there and got the full tour – got the tote bag, got the pen – went back to Wellington. When it was time for our episode to be on, my mum hosted a night with all my little girlfriends and we had pizzas and everything, but then when we watched it our scene had been cut. We were never on. That was my first rejection, and the first time I learned to never tell anyone that you are in anything.
My earliest television crush was… Obviously it was, JTT from Home Improvement, which I think is pretty common, but it was a pretty solid crush. I just thought he was such a cutie and also kind of weirdly wholesome. I had one of those big pullout TV Hits posters of him up in my room among others. Pacey from Dawson’s Creek is coming up for me as well.
My favourite NZ TV ad of all-time is… I still cry at most New Zealand Post ads. I cry about anyone coming home for Christmas, or the kid going off to uni. It doesn’t really matter what brand it’s for – if there’s somebody leaving or somebody coming home, I get got. But then I also think “come on mate, do it yourself” has to be up there.
My television guilty pleasure is… I reckon I’ve watched Gilmore Girls in its entirety maybe five times. It’s a lot. I know the journey of Rory and Lorelei inside out, back to front, but I find myself coming to it for a guilty easy watch. You can’t just dip into it because you need to see the build-up. I love the town, I love all of Rory’s boyfriends, I love her going from innocent virgin to total slut.
My favourite TV character of all time is… Carrie Bradshaw would probably be up there for me. That’s an embarrassing to say, but I fucking love Sex and the City. I don’t think I’d like to hang out with her, but it was just all about the timing of that show when it arrived in my life. I was in awe of her independent, New York, cool writer smoking Malboro Lights. All of it was to die for.
The most stylish person on television is… Jane Fonda is still nailing it, still looking hot in whatever she’s in. Always with the popped collar, the very well-placed jersey. I would never dress like that, but I remember watching Grace and Frankie and being like, “god, she’s had a lot to do with her wardrobe”. You can always tell when an actor has been very heavy, heavily involved in the costume process.
My favourite TV project I’ve ever been involved in is… Double Parked, because I have an investment in it in so many different ways. I wrote on the first season and then auditioned for Madeleine [Sami]’s character. I got Lily instead, and was like, “ah, yeah, of course I can play Lily”. I just never had her in my head when I was writing it. Getting to work with Madeleine and Antonia and Dom so closely was a dream job. From the runner to the producer, I loved everybody in every part of that project. I got to do drama, I got to do comedy, got to really sink my teeth into it and make creative decisions on set. It was very fulfilling.
My dream TV project to be involved in is… My instinct is something like Game of Thrones for the scale of it – I would love to see those sets and cameras and the costumes and stuff. But then I always talk about what I would do on a film set if I wasn’t an actor, and I often pick unit (craft services in America) because I just think the people making the coffee are always the coolest people.
The funniest TV show of all time is… Educators actually up there for me, I fucking lose it laughing at that show. New Girl I also love, and Brooklyn 99.
My most controversial TV opinion is… I just think things like Love Island and The Kardashians and stuff are absolute dog shit. I can’t stand the sound of any reality TV show unless it’s Masterchef. I think I like Masterchef because it’s about food, and it’s about people’s relationship to food as opposed to each other. They all support each other, there’s no nastiness, no forced drama or anything.
A show I’ll never watch no matter how many people tell me I should is… Game of Thrones. I don’t think I’ve got the capacity for it. I don’t have the space in my heart, mind and soul, to take something like that on. It’s too long, it’s too epic, and I don’t care.
The last thing I watched on TV is… A TV show on Apple about a shrink who is a bad dad [Shrinking]. It’s not very good, and it’s got that really famous guy from Forgetting Sarah Marshall in it [Jason Segel]. It has good bits but then mostly I’m like “god this is stupid” and then Apple is like “would you like to watch another episode” and I’m like “yes I would”.