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You know what we love? Tina from Turners (Image: Archi Banal)
You know what we love? Tina from Turners (Image: Archi Banal)

Pop CultureJune 5, 2023

No, Tina from Turners didn’t die

You know what we love? Tina from Turners (Image: Archi Banal)
You know what we love? Tina from Turners (Image: Archi Banal)

Last month a large portion of New Zealanders thought she’d departed for the great car yard in the sky. Thankfully, Tina from Turners is stronger than ever, writes Tara Ward. 

When Tina Turner died in Switzerland last month, her passing sent ripples across an unexpected pond. Far away in New Zealand, many people – tragically too young to remember this sweaty, saucy 1989 NRL ad – misheard the sad news. Instead of grieving the death of an American rock star, they mistakenly mourned the shocking loss of an equally beloved but fictional character who sells used cars on our television screens, one Tina from Turners. 

“I cried when they said it on the radio,” an upset Tina from Turners TikTok fan commented. “Lol me too our whole class was sad bc we thought it was Tina from tuners,” another responded. “I GOT SO SCARED I HAD TO SEARCH UP TINA TURNER,” one ardent admirer screamed, seemingly overcome with the emotion of it all. 

Turns out, they weren’t the only ones:

NZ Google search data after Tina Turner’s death, via Google Trends

It’s no wonder we were so worried. Over the past year, Tina from Turners has successfully cemented her place on our TV ad Mount Rushmore, alongside The Briscoes Lady, Big Save Lily and Goldstein from ASB. It’s the law that New Zealanders must shout “CARS!” every time they see a Tina from Turners ad. We whip up inspiring tributes in her honour, and recently an Irish tourist claimed he felt “personally harrassed” by the abundance of Tina from Turners ads after he arrived in the country. 

Tina from Turners is everywhere, but who is this mysterious vision in a blue polo t-shirt? We turn again to Google, the used car yard of knowledge, to find out the truth. 

Imposter alert (Screengrab: Google)

Beep beep! This answer is a lemon. Steel yourselves: Tina from Turners is a fictional character played by comedian Sieni Leo’o Olo (aka Bubbah), who’ll star in the upcoming season of Taskmaster NZ and who also appeared on Sis, First, and Alice Snedden’s Bad News. The “Tina from Turners” ad campaign won three awards at the 2022 New Zealand Marketing Awards, with the judges ruling that the creative strategy delivered a “significant transformation” for the Turners business. 

New Zealanders trying to find out who Tina from Turners really is (Image: YouTube)

Finding out that Tina isn’t a real person working at your local Turners is as upsetting as bumping into Tammy Wells in public without her Briscoes wig on. It is another unwanted shock from life’s cracked casing, but don’t let it diminish your affection for this TV legend. How do we love Tina from Turners? Let me count the ways. 

In an overcomplicated world, Tina is a wonder of simplicity. She simply loves cars: big ones, tiny ones, uncomfortable ones. When Tina shouts about her love of cars, her arms raised in an embrace of the world around her, I feel like she’s talking directly to me. I am also big and tiny and uncomfortable, Tina, thank you for noticing. “I love them all,” Tina says of her beloved vehicles. Those cars are a metaphor for the human race, and Tina from Turners is the mother of the nation.

The only thing Tina doesn’t love (Image: YouTube)

When your wheels get stolen by two feral octogenarians, Tina from Turners will treat you like she treats a wing mirror: gently, lovingly, but with the same intensity Big Save Lily had when she drove a golf cart through a tower of boxes. She will also stare at you into the long, dark night like a weird car-selling creep, but you won’t mind. I don’t even like cars, but after watching every Tina from Turners ad on repeat, I started eyeing up a 2002 Toyota Corolla with 217,000kms on the clock like it would change my life forever.

Her enthusiasm is inspiring, her optimism refreshing. “You might even find something you like,” Tina tells us, her beaming smile surrounded by rows of lonely motors. We might even find something we like is a truth far deeper than “live, laugh, love”. When the time comes for us to take our final hoon to the great scrapheap in the sky, looking back on a life where we might have found something we liked is all one can ask for. 

We found something we liked (Photo: YouTube)

In a world of chaos and darkness, Tina from Turners is a beacon of hope. It doesn’t matter that Tina from Turners isn’t real. I don’t care that we’ve been sucked into a capitalist campaign that helped Turners pull a record profit. Boom! Money in the bank. I hope Tina from Turners gets all that cash, and I hope we get more of Tina from Turners holding an ornamental frog and laughing like she’s never laughed before.  

What’s love got to do with it? Tina from Turners dances like nobody’s watching. She is the soft chamois in a streaky world. She might be selling cars, but Tina reaches far beyond the Turners car yard. Tina is an attitude, a way of life. She is an icon. She is a hero. She is Tina from fucking Turners, and long may she reign. 

Keep going!
It wasn’t just the contestants pushed to their limits on Tracked (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)
It wasn’t just the contestants pushed to their limits on Tracked (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)

Pop CultureJune 5, 2023

The only thing gnarlier than competing on Tracked? Filming it

It wasn’t just the contestants pushed to their limits on Tracked (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)
It wasn’t just the contestants pushed to their limits on Tracked (Photo: Supplied / Design: Tina Tiller)

Alex Casey talks to Tracked producers Jon Wild and Cass Donaldson about shooting one of the most rugged reality shows of all time. 

The SAS trackers were a mere 50 metres away from Team Yellow when their hunt was called off for the evening. Unable to go any further, the military-trained duo didn’t want to pitch a rustling tent for fear of startling their prey. So, they did what any high level operative on a sensitive mission would do: they zipped up their jackets and lay silently on the forest floor for the entire night, even as the heavens opened above Glenorchy and soaked them to the bone. 

It is a wild scenario that becomes even wilder when you consider that the pair, like everyone on screen in Tracked, was being accompanied by their own camera operator. “They said that Malcolm [Clement, camera operator] could put up his tent 500 metres away, but he was like ‘Well, I can’t do that now’,” laughs Tracked producer Jon Wild. “So he basically just did the same thing – zipped up his jacket and lay back in the grass with them for the night.” 

The Trackers take their job very seriously. (Photo: Supplied)

In the throes of the Tracked action, where trackers hunt down teams traversing some of New Zealand’s gnarliest terrain in the hopes of winning $100,000, there’s so much happening that it’s easy to forget there’s a camera crew there at all. That is, of course, until one of them has to hold up a contestant while filming to stop her falling down a deadly rocky ravine. “We didn’t even know that had happened because we didn’t see the footage for weeks,” Wild explains. 

“It was only back in the edit suite, about two months later, that I watched it back and I thought ‘Yeah… I’m glad he stepped in there’.” 

The treacherous concept for the series was born out of a Discovery callout for new original adventure reality pitches. Wild immersed himself in the genre for a week, and quickly realised that two things united all the best shows in the canon – jeopardy and fear. “From there I realised there was a problem,” he says. “New Zealand is the nicest place in the world and there are no wild animals that are going to try and kill anyone, so how do you create that sense of fear?” 

The solution was to throw in an elite pair of trackers, who would make it their mission to hunt down the teams in the New Zealand wilderness. With a broad concept for the show, Wild needed to know if the idea would actually work on screen. “I decided I had to go out there first. I’ve done a few trails and tracks, but I’ve never gone through the bush, so I did the Earnslaw Burn route with the full 20 kilo rucksack on, just like the contestants.” 

Attempting the track nearly ‘killed’ producer Jon Wild. (Photo: Supplied)

Heading into the bush with a camera operator and a safety guide, Wild was “completely broken” after just one day. “That footage exists somewhere, but it will never see the light of day. It killed me. I was a mess, an absolute mess. It was so tough.” Returning to civilisation, he knew the stakes were high enough to make a compelling show. “We also realised that New Zealand is actually one of the most dangerous places in the world, just because of the weather alone.”

The next problem was a big one. “So… how do we actually do this without killing anyone?” laughs Donaldson, who was the line producer for the series and oversaw the extensive safety protocols. They wanted the chase to feel authentic and immersive to contestants, which means they needed to eliminate any stopping, starting, resetting and reshooting. “That need for authenticity then led us down this really crazy path of basically doing this thing for real.”

While sourcing an excess of camera batteries and extra cards was one thing, finding a crew who were up for the challenge was another. “We needed people who could physically do what was required, which was bloody difficult,” says Donaldson. “But they also needed to be able to shoot beautiful pictures and because they’re essentially directing out there, they’re in charge of capturing the story.” They didn’t need to find just one camera unicorn either, but nine. 

Surprisingly, the crew came together quickly. “There were enough people that were gung-ho from the start and crazy enough not to think twice about it.” Some had worked with Great Southern before on shows like The Apprentice while others, like Jase Hancox, were known for filming in dangerous places. “He shoots with Red Bull and North Face and all those things,” says Wild. “He’s the guy who climbs mountains to film other people climbing mountains.” 

Some of the Tracked camera crew in the wilderness. (Photo: Supplied)

To make sure the crew would be able to keep up with the international cast, some of whom were athletes, production made sure they had as little as possible to carry. “The camera operators had smaller backpacks, and the contestants were actually carrying a bit of the camera crew gear as well,” says Wild. “That was hard for the contestants, but it freed up the cameras so that they could run ahead and move around easily.”

In keeping with their pledge to keep things authentic, Wild says they never did any pick-up shots or made people do things again. “That’s why so much of the show is backsides and backpacks, because the cameras are genuinely trailing behind them,” he laughs. “Everything was just as it happened out there, which was a very scary way of filming, because we didn’t know what we had until we were back home.” 

Working from a temporary production office next to the “base camp” where psychologist Dr Alia Bojilova and management consultant Dave Kassapian monitor the trackers, Wild and Donaldson had GPS trackers on everyone and could contact the camera crew over the radio, but were otherwise in the dark. “We had genuinely very little idea of what was happening out there until everyone came in after the second day,” says Wild. 

“And then the crew would just come in buzzing and telling these incredible stories and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh’. Everyone was buzzing after that first episode, it was quite remarkable.” 

The contestants in one of the many stunning Tracked locations. (Photo: Supplied)

While he won’t be drawn on specifics, Wild promises a few “hazardous moments” to come. “I remember the camera operators coming back to base one day and saying ‘We couldn’t actually film one part, we actually had to put our cameras down and hold on to a rock face to get ourselves across’… so, there’s that,” says Wild. Donaldson hastily adds that medics and safety zones were stationed throughout each course, able to quickly reach any contestant if need be.

“There was some radio contact with the safety team and the doctors and medics, but thankfully nothing bigger,” he explains. “The very last thing we wanted was having to call a rescue helicopter.” Still, a chopper remained on standby for the entire shoot. 

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Despite all the stress of making Tracked, both Donaldson and Wild say they would do it all again. “Hell yeah – it was the hardest one I’ve ever made, but easily the most fun,” says Donaldson. “It very nearly broke us, but I’ve got to agree,” adds Wild. “Our camera operator Jase [Hancox] called it ‘Type B’ fun. At the time, you hate it. But then when you come back, you have a shower and you’ve got a beer in your hand, and it’s the best type of fun possible.” 

He recalls a day where Hancock returned to base after a particularly cold night shooting, borderline hypothermic and unable to even hold a flask to drink coffee. “I had to pour it straight into his mouth, and I said ‘Is this still Type B fun’? And he just shivered and looked at me,” laughs Wild. “But then, a couple of hours later at the bar, he was happy again. What that crew went through? We just couldn’t have done it without them.” 

Tracked screens on Three on Mondays at 7.30pm and streams on ThreeNow.

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