The writer, director and star of new local thriller Loop Track reflects on his life in TV, from the frustrating early days of VHS to the 2000s sitcom moment that always makes him cry. 

Whether he’s purring on Facebook as Gingerbread the cat, flapping his arms around with Paula Bennett on TVNZ’s Give Us a Clue or hyperventilating on the big screen in new thriller Loop Track, Tom Sainsbury has conquered screens big and small over the course of his prolific career. The comedian and writer has starred in Shortland Street as the skittish stalker Jason Fitzpatrick, hosted Snack Masters alongside fellow Shorty alum Kimberley Crossman and even helmed his own studio chat show on Three in Tom Sainsbury’s Love Hour. 

Rattling through the rest of Sainsbury’s extensive biography, you’ll find a laundry list of most of the major local comedy productions of the last decade. He has credits on Wellington Paranormal, Super City, Golden Boy, Creamerie, Kid Sister, 7 Days and Jono and Ben, as well as local feature films such as Nude Tuesday, The Breaker Upperers and Pork Pie. All those impressive achievements, and yet it was a pitch perfect panini-praising Paul Bennett impression that propelled Sainsbury to a new level of fame as “Snapchat dude” in 2017. 

In his latest project Loop Track, a feature length thriller that he wrote, directed and stars in, Sainsbury could not be further from the cosy, pashmina-laden world of Paula Bennett impersonation. He plays Ian, an anxiety-ridden, jeans-wearing divorcee who heads into the bush and quickly becomes paranoid that someone – or something – is watching him. Filled with chilling imagery, mysterious characters and a taut score, Loop Track is a true blue New Zealand nightmare with a climax that has to be seen to be believed. 

So how did Sainsbury get to be one of our most well-known onscreen personalities and prolific screenwriters? He says he owes a lot of it to TV. “Looking back, all the ingredients were there. What I would do is I would watch a lot of television. My parents were busy working on the farm. When no one was around, I was allowed to watch a lot of television programmes,” he told RNZ in 2018. “Then I would recreate them either in my bedroom or I would go into my mother’s extensive garden or I would walk around the farm recreating it in my head.” 

We asked Sainsbury to dig a little deeper into his television past, reflecting on everything from the frustrating early days of VHS to the 2000s sitcom moment that always makes him cry. 

My earliest TV memory is… Hiding under the dining table because I was terrified by the old men in the Muppet Show. These days they’re my favourite characters and I relate to their cantankerousness. 

The TV show I used to rush home from school to watch was… The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (Will Smith was so cool and Carlton and Hilary were my comedy heroes).

The TV moment that haunts me the most is… When the VHS didn’t record the last eight minutes of The Empire Strikes Back. I was furious for a week. 

My earliest TV crush was… Uncle Jesse from Full House made me feel things. And then the lead in the La Bamba movie tipped me over the edge. 

The TV ad I can’t stop thinking about is… Who else can remember the Watties Spaghetti Monster? What a moment in time! These days David Correos in the Burger King ads makes me love him all the more. 

My TV guilty pleasure is… Survivor. I can’t get enough of it and now I’m going through the episodes from decades ago. It’s so good. 

My favourite TV moment of all time is… when Maggie was born on The Simpsons and Homer realised it was all worth it. I also cry with joy and sadness when Tim and Dawn get together in The Office Christmas special. 

My favourite TV character of all time is… I had a huge crush on Courteney Cox as Monica in friends. But I can’t get enough of Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Veep and Lisa Kudrow in The Comeback. 

The most stylish person on TV is… Hilary Barry in her off-the-shoulders numbers. She also just oozes style whenever and wherever. 

My most used streaming platform is… TVNZ On Demand, I’ve found some real hidden gems in there. 

My favourite TV project I’ve ever been involved in is… Wellington Paranormal was such a comedy dream. I feel forever privileged to be involved and laugh all day with the rest of the cast. 

My defining onscreen role is… The dancing alien on Masked Singer NZ?? But probably my six-week stint on Shortland Street. People know me from that more than anything else! 

My advice for anyone who wants to be on TV is… Become friends with people working in the industry. They’ll more likely think of you when a job comes up. And I reckon take any job going and do the best you can. And if you want to write for TV, write for theatre first. A good way to hone your craft. 

The TV show that defined my lockdown was… Tiger King, like everyone else. Still can’t believe tigers are so cheap to buy in Florida. 

The TV show I wish I was involved in is… Succession, of course. What a masterpiece. Or Game of Thrones. Though no one would be able to take me seriously, marching around with a name like Vymarian. 

My most-watched TV show of all time is… The Simpsons. I’ve watched hours and hours and hours and weeks of it. 

My most controversial TV opinion is… TVNZ should be entirely government-funded and focussed on artistry. Lol. 

A show I will never watch, no matter how many people say I should is… Love Island and Married at First Sight. Look, I know I’ll end up loving both of them. And getting hooked. But I don’t have time to get involved in these people’s lives! 

The last thing I watched on TV was… I’ve just finished the second season of Yellowjackets. It’s good, man. I’m hooked. And repulsed. I’m also a die-hard Melanie Lynskey stan. 

Loop Track is out now in cinemas nationwide.

After the Party antihero Penny may be the most dynamic female character we’ve seen on New Zealand television. Robyn Malcolm tells Tara Ward about the rarity of playing a complex middle-aged woman. 

A woman in her 50s cycles into a Wellington boys’ high school, incessantly ringing her bell to demand people move out of her way. Her jaw is set, her hair messy, her face bare. In the classroom, she watches pornography that’s been caught on a student’s phone. She screengrabs a frame and projects it in front of the class, launching into a blunt, confronting lecture about how porn will ruin their sex lives. We’re only a minute into After the Party, but already the message is refreshingly clear: Penny is not your conventional TV drama heroine. 

That’s because middle-aged Penny, played by a magnificent Robyn Malcolm, is a rare beast on television. Women past childbearing age are generally relegated in film and television to supporting, maternal roles, or they are written out altogether. A 2021 report  discovered that while women over 50 make up 20% of the population, they receive only 8% of screen time. Another 2019 study – cheerily titled “Frail, Frumpy and Forgotten” – reported that females made up only 25% of film characters aged over 50+ and an extremely bleak 0% of lead roles. 

It’s a phenomenon familiar to New Zealand actors. In a 2019 interview, Lisa Chappell said her television work “dried up” once she turned 40 and Jennifer Ward-Lealand pointed out the scarcity of older women on television. “Generally, you don’t see many women over 50 regularly on our screens. It’s still extraordinarily youth-focused.” Elizabeth McRae, famous for her role as receptionist Marj in Shortland Street, told The Spinoff she was treated as less interesting than her younger colleagues. 

Robyn Malcolm, one of our most prolific and beloved local actors, has been through it too, after auditioning for roles written as women in their fifties only to see them given to actors 20 years younger. “They call it aspirational casting,” she explains. “A 50-year-old woman does not want to watch a 50-year-old woman play a 50-year-old woman, apparently. They want to watch a 30-year-old woman play a 50-year-old woman.” 

Frustrated by this industry trend, Malcolm and her friend and writer Dianne Taylor decided they’d do something about it. Between their two living rooms, they brainstormed about the television shows they loved, the characters that inspired them and the kinds of women they wanted to see on screen. “I love Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep, but apparently in America, you have to wear white and smile and laugh an awful lot to be palatable,” Malcolm says. “We were like, ‘this is not who New Zealand women are. This is not who we are’.” 

The character of Penny was born, and Malcolm and Taylor built the story of After the Party around her. Malcolm admits they deliberately put Penny through the wringer. “We wanted to create a character who was neither hero nor villain, who was deeply fallible, and who was not necessarily the most attractive of women that you’d see on screen,” she recalls. “Somebody who might be a bit challenging, who was going through that journey that a lot of women in their mid to late fifties do, which is actually, ‘fuck it, I don’t care whether you like me or not’.”

Directed by Peter Salmon (INSiDE, Mystic), After the Party explores what happens after science teacher Penny accuses her husband Phil (Peter Mullan) of sexually assaulting their daughter’s friend, and nobody believes her. Phil’s unexpected return to Wellington after five years capsizes Penny’s world, and while Penny’s daughter Grace (Tara Canton) wants to forget and move on, Penny is determined to prove Phil’s guilt. How far will she go to be believed in a community that already doesn’t trust her?

The taut, tense drama is the best we’ve made in years, and Penny’s “fuck it” attitude drives every scene. There is no After the Party without Penny, who brings her full self to every societal sphere: she’s a teacher, a coach, a daughter, a friend. She’s prickly and combative and doesn’t always behave well, but Malcolm plays her with a warmth and sensitivity that pulls the audience in. Penny dresses up as a pirate for her grandson’s birthday, but she also breaks the law in a one-woman environmental protest and isn’t afraid to call one of her students a “little c*nt”. Rather than fading into the background as menopause hits, Penny commands attention. 

The only time Penny is silent and still in After the Party is when she becomes a life model for an art class, and it’s no coincidence that at an age when many women report feeling invisible, Penny could not be more seen. Malcolm says the scenes give the audience a private, meditative moment with Penny. “She’s not looking to be noticed, but it’s where she’s at her most visible, because she’s got her clothes off and she’s being drawn — but she’s being drawn without judgment.” 

Penny is no stranger to judgment; she refuses to keep quiet about her ex-husband’s crime, even when it makes everyone else uncomfortable. People might dismiss this sort of outspokenness in women by calling them a “Karen”, a term that once called out class and racial privilege but has evolved into an all-encompassing sexist insult. Malcolm and Taylor spoke a lot about Karens while co-creating After the Party, and were determined to see Penny redefine what it is to be a woman with a voice. Malcolm reckons Penny is a Karen “on steroids”, and she’s not sorry about it: “‘fuck you, I am a Karen’”. 

Malcolm’s antihero may well be the most realistic, dynamic female character we’ve seen on New Zealand television. We all know women like Penny, and it’s a role Malcolm relished bringing to life on screen. Penny was born out of Malcolm’s own anger, and the positive reception to After the Party proves that audiences want to see characters like Penny on screen: women with lived experience, the sum of all their complicated parts. 

“My experience with really, really good writing is that people are very different human beings, depending on the circumstances,” Malcolm says. “We can be angel and devil, all in one day.” 

After the Party screens on TVNZ1 on Sunday nights at 8.30pm and streams on TVNZ+.