The star of Double Parked takes us through her life in television, including a quest to find Play School pens and a glitter disaster on The Tribe.
She’s best known for Outrageous Fortune, Westside and Double Parked, but Antonia Prebble also holds a unique television accolade: most onscreen births performed by one person, possibly in history. “For some odd reason, I have been cast as so many pregnant women who give birth as part of the series,” she tells The Spinoff. Her first was in The Tribe, age 14, where her character arrived in the show nine months pregnant, and was giving birth by episode four.
“I think my approach was just to scream quite a lot and writhe around in agony,” she laughs. “To be honest, that process hasn’t changed too much.” Since that performance on The Tribe, Prebble reckons she has pretended to give birth six times on camera, most recently in Double Parked. Playing Steph, who falls pregnant and gives birth at the same time as her partner Nat, Prebble says that having two newborns on set had its fair share of hurdles in season two.
“Even though it is challenging having babies on set, we wanted them in the scenes as much as possible,” she explains. “It just completely changes the dynamics and the focus of the scene when you have a real human baby, rather than a doll.” Having two babies in the cast also had its upsides – if one was crying in a solo scene, they could sometimes do a sneaky swap. “Ultimately, it went a lot better and smoother than I thought it would,” she laughs.
When it comes to having babies in real life, Prebble recalls having high hopes of finally watching Game of Thrones when she first became a new mum. “I think I watched a couple of episodes and I was like ‘this is not appropriate, this is not the right vibe for me in this time’,” she laughs. “I look back at that time and I think maybe that was a real lost opportunity.” Luckily, she had ample opportunity to explore her own television history with us for My Life in TV.
My earliest TV memory is… The classic opening credits of Play School: “Here is a house, here is the door, windows one, two, three, four”. I remember loving that. I particularly loved these felt pens they had – they were really short and thick, and made this excellent squeaky, really satisfying sound. And I always wanted to find felt pens like that, but I never did.
The show I would rush home from school to watch is… The show I was totally addicted to and would rush home from anywhere to watch was Dawson’s Creek. This wasn’t after school, per se, but if I was out anywhere, even with my friends at a social gathering, I would have to go home and watch Dawson’s Creek. It was a big part of my life. I bought the soundtrack, I had posters on the wall. I still remember when Joey got on the boat with Pacey, and they went sailing around, and she chose him over Dawson – that was epic.
My earliest television crush was… Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Pretty stereotypical, but I was a big Home Improvement fan. This was also the time when TV Hits magazine was out. It always had heaps of posters, and Jonathan Taylor Thomas would be frequently featured in the magazine, and there were often posters of him. I had a lot of posters of JTT on the wall.
The TV moment that haunts me is… From when I was filming The Tribe. The costumes and makeup were very elaborate, everything was handmade and we had all this crazy hairstyling. So I remember being 15 years old and sitting on set in my costume and makeup, and there was a makeup artist doing final checks on everyone. I picked up this little bottle of glitter, and she was like ‘oh, can you please not play with that? I don’t want it to go anywhere’. And I’m like, ‘I’m fine. It won’t go anywhere’.
Next minute, this whole big pottle of glitter went into the air, all over my face, and all over my costume that we only had one of. I just remember sitting there covered in glitter, ruined makeup, ruined costume. I just felt so ashamed because I had just been told not to play with it, and I was led off set, and they were desperately trying to clean me up and couldn’t really do it, so they just put me at the back of the wide shot. Yeah, that moment still haunts me.
The New Zealand television ad I can’t stop thinking about is… There are really so many from my childhood that I loved. All the kind of storytelling ones, like the Milky Bar Kid, the Crunchie train ad. But if I had to choose a winner, then I would say it’s “I’m an utter peanut butter nutter.” I could still sing the whole song, so it clearly embedded itself deeply in my brain.
My favourite TV moment of all time is… There’s an episode of West Wing that was a presidential debate broadcast live. They rehearsed it like a theatre piece and then broadcast it live, twice, once for Eastern Time and one for Western time in America. It’s absolutely incredible. I’ve seen the behind the scenes of it and they rehearsed it for so long, and they did all the cutting of it live, and I think they even used a real TV moderator. It’s just fantastic, it’s such an incredible feat.
My favourite TV character of all time is… Keeping with the West Wing theme, it’s probably CJ Cregg. She’s really smart, incredibly good at her job, independent, assertive, powerful, but at the same time really funny, a bit clumsy sometimes. Alison Janney is just the most extraordinary actress. There’s this one incredible shot that lasts about five minutes, and it’s CJ arriving in the White House, making her way through the corridors and then going into the press room to give a press update to all the journalists there. It’s just a masterclass, and really shows the brilliance in the writing and the performances on that show.
My favourite character I’ve ever played is… Probably Rita West. I think she was the first grown up character I ever played. Until then, I played a lot of children or young adults, but Rita was absolutely a woman. I really enjoyed kind of stepping into the power of that.
My favourite TV project I’ve ever worked on is… I always feel like the project I love the most is the one that I’ve done the most recently, so I do currently feel like it’s Double Parked. I’m not saying it’s my favourite only by virtue of it being the most recent, because it was really such a joyful project.
The TV show I wish I could be involved in is… Mad Men. I love that show. For me, each episode was just a little piece of perfection for my taste. I love the style, I thought the characters were brilliant, I thought the writing was wonderful. It was just a perfect TV show. And I love, I love that era, like I would just love to play a character and get to look like that and wear those costumes. I think it would be just a sumptuous feast.
My most controversial TV opinion is… I don’t feel like Baby Reindeer is on the right side of morality. I know I’m not alone in thinking that, but I don’t think it was the right decision morally to make that TV show and say it’s a true story when the woman that it’s about is still alive and clearly unwell and identifiable. There’s obviously the other side of the argument that he’s entitled to tell his story, but surely there’s got to be parameters on that. As soon as I started watching it, I just felt really icky about it, like they shouldn’t have gone about it like that.
A show I’ll never watch, no matter how many people tell me I should… American Horror Story. I’m really a wimp. I couldn’t sleep after watching Scream, the comedy horror film, for weeks when I watched it as a 16-year-old. So I keep away from anything scary. I’ve been told by a lot of people that American Horror Story is awesome, but it’s not for me.
The very last thing that I watched on television is… My husband Dan and I are watching Sprint, which is a Netflix documentary about all of the best sprinters in the world in the lead up to the World Championships. It’s really fascinating getting a behind the scenes look at these people, and then seeing a lot of them competing in the Olympics.