Christian Cullen’s life in TV (Image: Tina Tiller)
Christian Cullen’s life in TV (Image: Tina Tiller)

Pop CultureOctober 12, 2024

‘You’ll love it, but you’ll hate it’: Christian Cullen on becoming CTI’s most unlikely star

Christian Cullen’s life in TV (Image: Tina Tiller)
Christian Cullen’s life in TV (Image: Tina Tiller)

Former All Black and current Celebrity Treasure Island castaway Christian Cullen looks back on his life in TV.

Every season of Celebrity Treasure Island brings with it a surprise breakout star, and often it’s the person you know the least about or have the lowest expectations for. This season, as we’ve already yelled from the treetops, former All Black Christian Cullen is that star. He began somewhat of a self-aware curmudgeon, mumbling and grumbling about the windy camps and sharing bunks, but has blossomed into a total crack-up with tight alliances to boot.

When The Spinoff visited Celebrity Treasure Island earlier in the year, we got to ask Cullen how he felt about the great outdoors. “Look, I’m quite an outdoorsy type person, but not a sleep-in-the-elements type of guy,” he said. “I like the home comforts: the food, the bed, the couch, the Sky TV…” So why, then, has he hurtled himself into this world of pain? As it turns out, he’s been asked to go on CTI before, and turned it down.

“This year, I wasn’t a straight out no, I was a maybe,” he explained. “I talked to the wife and the kids, and then rang a few mates, and they said ‘you’ll love it, but you’ll hate it’.” What got him over the line was the charity element of the show. “Over a year and a half ago, we lost our brother-in-law to a brain tumour, so that was probably why my wife was quite keen on me coming on and raising awareness,” he said. “That was probably another big part of it.”

On the gameplay and strategy side of things, Cullen said he much prefers to be an observer than a do-er. “I’m pretty relaxed, pretty quiet, pretty loyal,” he said. “I don’t like to stand out in the crowd. I like to walk in the room and not be the centre of attention.” Unfortunately for him, his memorable turn on Celebrity Treasure Island has now put him under the brightest spotlight of all: The Spinoff’s My Life in TV interview series.

‘Mysterious smooth guy’ Christian Cullen (Photo: TVNZ)

My earliest TV memory was… Dungeons & Dragons on a Saturday morning. I think it came on about 7.30, 8 o’clock in the morning, which was tough for us, because we always had Saturday morning rugby and sport. If you missed it, you were gone. So we were always happy when there was a later game or you were playing at home and you could watch it.

The TV show I used to rush home to watch was… I was quite a big Friends fan when I was a bit older. That was on at 7.30 at night. I’d have training and go, “man, I’ve got to get home for Friends.”

The TV show that’s stuck with me is… Top Town. I used to love that. That’s the sort of stuff that as a kid you go “man, that was awesome, I’d love to do that.” My kids would watch that today and go, “what is that?”

My favourite show to binge watch is… I’m quite a big TV watcher now, and I’ll watch a lot of shows like The Blacklist or Jack Ryan. There’s a lot of episodes and a lot of series. I’m a binger – I could watch one series in pretty much 24 hours. You’ll look at your watch, and it’ll be like two in the morning, and you’ll think I’ve got to go to sleep. But that’s the skill of the writer, right? When one episode finishes, something happens and you go, “I got to watch the next one”, so you keep on watching it. I can watch numbers and numbers of episodes, and not give up until the finish.

The TV ad I can’t stop thinking about is… “Turners Turners Turners!” Tina from Turners. I like her, she’s got a great personality. 

Christian Cullen in a CTI challenge, watched by Tāmati Coffey, Bubbah and Mea Motu (Photo: TVNZ)

My guilty TV pleasure is… I used to be a massive Shortland Street watcher for a long, long time. If I was away, I’d have to tape it and then come back and watch two or three episodes. It went a bit culty when Munter from Outrageous Fortune was on it. Something happened in the bush and I thought that was a bit strange, and I stopped watching it. Every now and again when it comes on and I think, “far out, who are those guys?” Chris Warner is still there, which is pretty cool. He is the show. If I ever saw him [Michael Galvin] in the street, I’d probably call him Chris. It’s lucky Suzanne Paul’s called Suzanne Paul.

My favourite TV project that I’ve ever been involved with is… I did one for the Rugby World Cup, which was pretty cool. We did it in Samoa and I’ve got relations there because I’m part Samoan, so it was quite cool to go back into the village and then do the show. There were heaps of laughs and good people running it, and then we had a little bit of a holiday. That was good fun.

The TV show I’ll never watch, no matter how many people tell me to, is… Michelle Langstone said Peaky Blinders was cool, so I started watching it, and I couldn’t get into it. People say it’s awesome, but obviously you’ve got to get through like, two or three episodes, but all the other ones like The Blacklist and Jack Ryan and Game of Thrones got me straight away.

The last thing I watched on television was… Season eight, episode nine of The Blacklist. I tried to get through it before I came on CTI, but I couldn’t. Married at First Sight was on last night, but MAFS does your head in, because they obviously get people that are total opposites.

Celebrity Treasure Island screens Monday-Wednesday on TVNZ2 at 7.30pm and streams on TVNZ+.

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OPINIONMediaOctober 12, 2024

The Weekend: When did you stop listening to new music?

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Madeleine Chapman reflects on the week that was.

I will preface this newsletter by acknowledging that I have been old from the day I was born. I was born prematurely but was 10 and a half pounds. A friend once looked at a photo of me at two days old and said, “you look at least nine months old”. Ever since, I have been assumed to be older than I am.

But only in the past few years (I’m 30 now) have I felt genuinely old in the sense that I don’t know what’s going on. My partner – who is legally older but spiritually younger than me – will occasionally explain a TikTok trend, or play music that I’ve never heard but immediately enjoy. While she’s doing that, I’m finding myself inexplicably pressing play on a random Spotify playlist titled “The 2000s indie scene” and positively strutting to work in the morning.

There’s a safety in this bubble, and if I was more inclined to feel younger, I wouldn’t have Coast FM and Flava as the two most-used presets on my car radio.

But once a year, my bubble is unceremoniously burst when I’m made to read the lineup announcement for Laneway. Even with the recent shift to One Big Headliner (Charli xcx), I found myself shocked and troubled by my complete lack of recognition of virtually every other artist on the poster. I felt Old (capital O), and wondered whether I was doing myself a disservice by wilfully ignoring new artists. Beabadoobee, an artist I’d literally never heard of until Wednesday, makes music that is extremely up my alley. Why am I depriving myself of new music discovery, and when did it begin?

Growing up, I had so many older siblings that music genres and tastes were thrust upon me, namely rap, RnB, yacht rock and old pop. As a teenager, I realised there was a whole world of music that no one in my family was interested in and therefore felt bold and new: enter the 2000s indie scene. It became my fulltime job to find new music to share with my friends. I browsed music forums and went down deep Youtube rabbit holes searching for hidden gems. Bon Iver released his first album and I was all over it, having gotten hooked on a Youtube video of him doing a “MySpace session” in 2007. I collected white guys with beards who wrote sad guitar songs. Damien Rice, Ray Lamontagne and Iron & Wine were the holy trinity.

Then came the discovery of Cool Women (Florence and the Machine, Bat For Lashes etc) then more experimental pop and truly random small artists, until I was at university and reading the 2014 Laneway lineup and freaking out because it had genuinely all of my favourite artists playing in one day. Wow, I remember thinking, how impressive that they managed to get the coolest, most popular artists all in the same year. But was it really a stellar lineup or were there 30-year-olds in 2014 looking at the poster and muttering “this is all gibberish” like I was on Wednesday?

The 2014 Laneway lineup and my proud souvenir (Frightened Rabbit setlist)

I can basically pinpoint my musical curiosity cliff to getting a job. Suddenly music went from a hobby that took up a lot of time to something I needed in order to relax in small moments of free time. And in those moments, I wanted familiarity and comfort. That’s why, for the past eight years, my Spotify wrapped playlists have looked eerily similar, with a couple of new artists sprinkled in.

My relationship to music has changed. And while I don’t have a fear of irrelevance (being 55 when you were 12 really helps with that), I do miss the joy of finding a new artist to follow all on my own, or realising a new discovery has three prior albums and being overjoyed rather than filled with resignation. Maybe it’s impossible to revive that sense of discovery and the world expanding around you as a teenager and to try would only lead to disappointment. But I’m probably too young to have given up already.

Perhaps the Laneway announcements can be a guide instead of a youthful threat. I probably won’t go to the festival but I’ve saved beabadoobee’s albums to my library so that’s a start.

This week’s episode of Behind the Story (LIVE)

Chris Pryor and Miriam Smith are arguably New Zealand’s best observational documentary makers. After two award-winning feature-length documentaries (The Ground We Won and How Far is Heaven), Chris and Miriam turned their attention to the shorter form, and dived deep on home education – parents who teach their kids at home. The six-part series follows six different families approaching education in six unique ways. From a dahlia farm to a bus, to a simple living room, Home Education explores the many reasons parents choose not to send their kids to school. Chris and Miriam joined me, live from the series launch at The Spinoff offices, to discuss observational filming, the allure of conviction in beliefs and how making the show changed their own views as new parents.

Listen here, on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

What have readers spent the most time reading this week?

Comments of the week

“I love this! In 1984 I was in the third form at Wainuiomata College and my teacher was Moana Jackson. As a class project that year, we made a short film – a sort of Jekyll and Hyde-type horror film. I was the producer. With exactly $0 budget, we shot it on location at the college but some of the filming was done at night which felt particularly grown-up. One of my favourite memories from school, thanks to an inspiring teacher.”

“How are we supposed to moon anyone if there’s some second, smaller, temporary moon? Do we need a second bum?”

“Thank you Shanti, I live on the hill above Surrey St and we were among the many self-evacuating like you in the early hours of Friday morning as water flooded through our house. We lived there in 2015 too, when I got an urgent phone call to come collect the kids from the St Clair primary school. This is the most authentic article I have read on the floods, perhaps you need to experience it. I agree the Council did a great job both preparing over the last few years and in advance of the rain and during it. Our house is damaged and we don’t quite know what will happen right now, still I have hope for my community going forward with the lovely people in your article.”

Pick up where this leaves off

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