The international model and star of The Traitors NZ shares his love of Dynasty wig-snatching and how he ended up on Xena. 

He’s currently captivating viewers with his steely gaze in The Traitors NZ, but Colin Mathura-Jeffree has long been one of the most fascinating figures in our local celebrity-sphere. A television host, actor and international fashion model who has worked with Versace and Jean Paul Gaultier, he’s also a prolific and strangely profound Google reviewer. “I love weaving history into my reviews, because we all have history with places,” he told The Spinoff earlier this year. “We can’t live in the past, but we can wear the memory like a jewel.”

Perhaps the most vivid Mathura-Jeffree memory jewel for most will be when he burst into living rooms around the country in 2009 as the innuendo-dropping, eyeliner-wearing, lamington-throwing host of New Zealand’s Next Top Model. Since then, he’s worn a meat dress to the music awards, hosted Hottest Home Baker, competed in Dancing With the Stars NZ and acted in several movies. He’s also a massive pop culture fan with an enormous action figure collection, and has always fostered a deep love for all things television.

“TV is wonderful,” he told The Spinoff. “TV is a real Aladdin’s cave of treasure. I don’t think people really give it the respect it deserves, because they are so distracted by TikTok.” So, without further ado, please enter Colin Mathura-Jeffree’s cave of TV memory jewels. 

My earliest TV memory is… This question makes me smile. We would always watch television shows together as a family. Wherever we were in the house, our names would be called to hurry up and we’d know the ETA of whatever we were watching. We would lounge in our favourite chairs with freshly brewed masala chai or coffee and some delicious homemade cake, or occasionally a snack of Murukku or potato chips. 

The TV show I used to rush home from school to watch was… I didn’t really rush home to watch telly because I was always with my friends playing Battlestar Galactica or Buck Rogers. In my mind, I would always play Alexis Carrington Colby Dexter. You do the math. 

The TV moment that haunts me the most is… Watership Down. A really emotional journey for me as a little Colly Woggles (my parents’ nickname for me). The most wonderful animation of a group of cute little bunnies bouncing through the most hauntingly tumultuous journey of life and death, culminating in ‘Bright Eyes’, the most beautiful song by Art Garfunkel.

My earliest TV crush was… I really was entranced by Robin of Sherwood and its beautiful soundtrack. I remember finding Robin Hood (Michael Praed) to be so handsome. I’m sure it was a crush but I also wanted to be just like him. A secret hero. Fun. Open. Fighting for justice. A good human. Even as an adult I have my own fancy bow and arrow set and still take delight in exposing bad people. 

The TV ad I can’t stop thinking about is… My favourites are Fruju’s “Ooh ahh” and Cadbury Creme Egg’s “Don’t Get Caught“. As a model I can say it’s rare to do an advert you’re proud of, but they do pay exceptionally well. 

My TV guilty pleasure is… Travel shows – trains, planes and “celebrity explains”. I watched Joanna Lumley in India with enormous jealousy. I think travel shows are so healthy for the soul. It isn’t about rubbing someone’s nose in elitism, it’s about sharing the diversity of life on Earth. 

My favourite TV moment of all time is… I loved those big fights on Dynasty. They’re just so enormously silly and hilarious. I said to Ricardo Simich once that we should have a fight in public like that. I’d wear a bald cap and wig and in the fight he could pull the wig off of my head. He just smiled and said “Yessss Colin…” then edged away from me in case I initiated it enthusiastically right away. 

My favourite TV character of all time is… Currently Chicago P.D.’s Hank Voight, played by the husky voiced Jason Beghe, who also has the world’s best jawline on an actor. He’s a formidable cop who dances on the line of the law and gets justice done right. 

The most stylish person on TV is… Wonder Woman. Remember when she would throw her arms out and spin in an explosion of disco music and lights and become the most glamourous hero of the hour? I remember when her younger sister tried and failed the spin, but at her second attempt exploded into a star spangled Wondergirl. I was so inspired by what I saw, I tried it too and spun thunderously into my mother’s expensive crystal, shattering the glassware. It’s amazing I’m still alive. 

My most used streaming platform is… I don’t know – I’m not an astrophysicist. 

My favourite TV project I’ve ever been involved in is… In the 90s I flew back from modelling in Asia and no one was home. I lazily rolled on the couch, turned on the remote and Xena Warrior Princess was on. I groaned, but suddenly the scene changed and my old friend Daniel Sing appeared on screen with an evil sneer on his face as the Emperor of China.

I sat up and drank it all in, saying to myself “I want to act, I want to be just as fabulous.” Exactly six months later, I was riding into the Xena set on horseback as the silk-pyjama-wearing, sword-wielding Maharaja of India trying to save my kingdom from an evil conquering force.

The TV show that defined my lockdown was… The news. 

My most controversial TV opinion is… That TV is healthy to watch. It’s a great moment of escapism when life is hard, where I can shut the door, turn off my phone, put on my pyjamas, open the fridge to find the right snacks, lounge under a duvet and flip on the TV to fall into another universe. I find it can always shake off any self doubt and give me a positive spin on the real world, just like a reboot. 

The last thing I watched on TV was… I watch 80s music videos all the time, they are just so invigorating and centering to me and remind me of being a teenager again. As a 51-year-old man, I can tell you that life doesn’t get easier but it also doesn’t get worse. I’ve got all these tips and tricks which pull me back and lift me up, and 80s music videos is one of those tricks. That’s what The Traitors did for me as well, it lifted me up and also blew my head off. 

As told to Alex Casey

You can watch Colin Mathura-Jeffree in The Traitors NZ on Monday and Tuesday night on Three or here on ThreeNow.

A star-studded local drama turns a Northland drug bust into a Guy Ritchie-style misadventure. Mostly, it works – for two very good reasons.

This is an excerpt from The Spinoff’s weekly pop culture newsletter Rec Room. Sign up here.

I asked my wife a quick question on our commute recently. “When did you last discover a local drama show that you desperately wanted to see?” Her response: “Harry.” She’s referencing the excellently gritty Oscar Kightley cop show that came out in 2013 (only episode one is available for streaming). Ten years is a long time for someone not to connect with a local drama series, but it’s hard to argue with her answer. For many reasons, mostly financial, we don’t really make shows like Harry anymore. On Monday night, that changes, with something rare floating onto our screens. Finally, we have a local drama series worth getting excited about.

They’re in track pants and worn shirts. He’s wearing a dusty cap, she’s got pictures of poached eggs on her winter socks. The pair hunch over their dog, looking concerned. “You like that?” asks Heather, gently cuddling his mane. Her husband Ed holds a heat lamp over the legs of their ageing, arthritic golden retriever. “Good boy, Toby,” he says. Ed’s voice is instantly recognisable, a muscular presence that’s powered him through high-octane franchises like Speed, Aquaman and, more recently, Star Wars.

In Far North, Temuera Morrison has a far gentler role to play. Alongside Cheryl West herself, Robyn Malcolm, the pair play a small town Kiwi couple. They’re instantly familiar. It’s like you already know and love them. Heather and Ed have lived a life, they’re a little rough around the edges, but their hearts are in the right place, and they’re enjoying the quiet life. They look after their neighbours, swap gossip with friends on the beach and spend their evenings massaging the dog.

Morrison and Malcolm are very good at this. Of course they are: they’re veterans, local screen legends. It’s taken three decades to reunite the Shortland Street alums. Why that’s happened is almost certainly an indictment on our struggling local TV industry, yet all is forgiven the instant you see the two of them paired up in Far North. It’s an unmissable performance. If Far North was only about Heather and Ed living the good life, I’d happily tune in. You would too. Together, they’re dynamite.

Spoiler alert: Far North is not just about them. Set in the small Northland settlement of Ahipara, this six-part thriller is about far dodgier things. There’s a boat full of meth sitting off Ninety Mile Beach with a group of slowly starving Chinese sailors on board. There’s a Tongan-Australian gang trying to land those drugs on the beach to turn them into $500 million. And there’s a group of Chinese gangsters coordinating it all from overseas. Heather and Ed are the cosy couple caught up in the middle of this shitshow, and the rest of Far North’s chaos rotates around them.

I could tell you what happens next but it sounds so far-fetched you might accuse me of making it up. It’s the kind of thing Guy Ritchie might dream up on vacation. Much of the gang’s antics are so stupidly inept you have to wonder if it really happened. Yeah, it did. Go Google it (or don’t, if you want to avoid spoilers). Go read Jared Savage’s book Underbelly: Inside NZ’s Biggest Meth Bust. This is serious. People are in jail. Patrick Gower spoke to one of them in the middle of a 27-year sentence.

So come for the crooks, if you like. How a bunch of wayward drug lords tried to land a boatload of meth on a Northland beach is a hell of a story. Far North’s creator David White certainly thinks so. He drove to Ahipara and knocked on the door of the real-life Heather and Ed as soon as he heard about it back in 2016. “I bought their life rights on the spot,” he says in the show notes. “It was like my Tiger King mixed with Narcos.” He fills Far North with prestige TV hallmarks: drone shots, text overlays, regular global city jumps, and dialogue drawn straight from court documents.

Not all of it works. Far North’s early moments vibe too comical for something so serious (Wellington Paranormal’s Karen O’Leary and Maaka Pohatu are in the cast). At first, the Tongan-Australians trying to land the drugs on the beach seem too flippant, and their stupidity is played for laughs. Likewise, the show’s Chinese gangsters come off like clichés, complete with their own soundtrack of Chinatown horns announcing their arrival. One has a particular attachment to blowtorches.

But by episode three, Far North finds calmer waters. That’s thanks largely to Robyn and Tem as Heather and Ed. They’re that rare thing, a couple of Kiwi characters you can instantly connect with. They feel like they could be from your own family, friend circle or workplace. They’re great company. “I’ll drop him off some smoked marlin to say thank you,” says Heather after watching her neighbour take a baseball bat to a group of gangsters loitering outside. No doubt that marlin will pair well with a jar of her homemade chow chow too.

Far North airs on Three on Monday at 8.30pm and is available for streaming on ThreeNow.