US cop drama The Rookie is one of the most-streamed shows on TVNZ+. On a recent visit to Aotearoa, star Melissa O’Neil told Tara Ward why she thinks we love it so much.

New Zealand television viewers can’t get enough of The Rookie. Over the past three years, episodes of the American police drama have been streamed a whopping 38.5 million times on TVNZ+, despite the show being available on multiple platforms. But wait, there’s more – last year, The Rookie was the number one streamed show on TVNZ+, beating other TV juggernauts shows like 1News, Love Island UK, and even the world’s most beloved cartoon dog, Bluey. 

This nation’s quiet love for The Rookie comes as a shock for actor Melissa O’Neil, who plays Lucy Chen in the popular series. “I can’t say that I’m a huge fan of Bluey, so I wasn’t familiar with that as a reference for why it was a big deal – but the streaming numbers are blowing my mind,” she tells The Spinoff. O’Neil was in Aotearoa with her Rookie co-star Lisseth Chavez to attend Armageddon, New Zealand’s largest science fiction and entertainment expo, where she would come face to face with some of the local fans responsible for watching those millions and millions of Rookie episodes. 

For the few New Zealanders who aren’t streaming The Rookie on repeat, the series follows a group of dedicated officers fighting crime in the gritty streets of Los Angeles. It’s inspired by true events and centres on the personal and professional life of John Nolan (Nathan Fillion), who changes careers in his mid-40s to become the oldest rookie at the Los Angeles Police Department. O’Neil plays one of Nolan’s new police colleagues – and secret girlfriend – who joins the force on the same day (two of season one’s episodes were directed by New Zealand filmmaker Toa Fraser). 

Each week, The Rookie sees the dedicated LAPD officers pushed to their limits as they deal with a series of unpredictable challenges in their efforts to uphold the law. In many ways, the show is a traditional police procedural series in a crowded TV landscape of bigger budget, bingeable TV shows – so what is it about this American weekly cop drama that has New Zealand fans streaming its episodes so many times?

For Canadian-raised O’Neil, the answer is simple: it’s much more than just a show about fighting crime. “At the heart of it, The Rookie is about a group of people who have become a family,” she says. The series has a little bit of everything – action, romance, comedy, intrigue – and O’Neil believes this combination of dynamic relationships and explosive adventure means The Rookie has universal appeal. “We hear all the time that ‘I watch this with my grandma’, or three generations are coming around to watch. It’s enjoyable for everyone.” 

In the eight seasons that O’Neil has played the ambitious Lucy Chen, she too has experienced a little bit of everything. Her character has been shot, kidnapped, drugged, locked in a barrel and buried alive. She’s fought crime as an undercover officer, risen through the ranks to become sergeant, delivered a baby while under siege, and even once accidentally auditioned for American Idol. That particular episode blurred the lines between fact and fiction for O’Neil, who began her performing career in 2005 when she won Canadian Idol at the age of 17 – a life-changing experience she describes as “a really weird summer camp”. 

The show’s universal appeal is also helped by social media, where The Rookie enjoys huge popularity with young people. The show has 3.3 million followers on TikTok, many of whom are teens who discovered the show not on their TV screens, but through clipped moments shared online (The Rookie went on to be the most streamed broadcast show for teens in America last year). “The show has found an entirely new audience through TikTok,” O’Neil says, adding that she loves to plant sneaky clues in her TikTok videos to keep the show’s dedicated fans guessing. “Our fans are really smart, and they pay attention very closely.”  

Winning over audiences in New Zealand was never something O’Neil anticipated when she put on Lucy Chen’s police uniform as a fresh-faced rookie in 2018. In fact, it’s been a welcome surprise for O’Neil to discover just how beloved The Rookie is on this side of the world. “I don’t think we have a reference for how successful the show is,” O’Neil says of life as an actor in the US. “Those are closely guarded state secrets. When we’re in LA, they don’t tell us those things.” 

O’Neil has relished playing the same character for eight years in a show that continues to surprise and delight its fans, and hints that New Zealand audiences can look forward to a particularly dramatic season eight finale. “We drop off in a place that makes me very eager to see the next script, because I want to know what happens with Lucy,” she teases. Millions more streams of The Rookie lie ahead, with spinoff The Rookie: North in the works and a ninth season of The Rookie recently announced. The long-running series shows no signs of slowing down – which is exactly what O’Neil wants. 

“It’s been such a joy to grow with Lucy,” O’Neil says. “I’m having a blast. I just hope it goes on and on and on.” 

The Rookie streams on TVNZ+ and screens on Mondays at 8.30pm on TVNZ2.