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Pop CultureMay 1, 2017

Shocking: Anika Moa continues to give no fucks in a Ponsonby cafe

Senior writer
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Alex Casey sits down with Anika Moa ahead of her return to television in All Talk With Anika Moa season two. Warning: contains burps, swear words and tangents about flaps. 

Interviewing Anika Moa is a little bit like attending a celebrity roast, except she’s the celebrity and you are the one getting mercilessly roasted. She’ll demand that you babysit her kids for “four bucks an hour, probably more than you make at The Spinoff”, she’ll tell you that you need a makeover “like Anne Hathaway in the Princess Diaries” and she’ll gleefully post terrible photos of you on Instagram for her 10K strong following to see. But, thanks to her magnetic personality, a deluge of giggles and the cheekiest dimples this side of Harry Styles, you simply can’t get mad at Anika.

I have started an odd tradition of interviewing Anika once a year, mostly because it’s the most fun you can legally have during work hours. This year we met at a Ponsonby cafe to talk about the second season of All Talk With Anika Moa, her riotous late night talk show on Māori TV. “I already had a coffee today, that’s why I’m psycho” she chirped, whilst taking the first sips of her hot chocolate. I would later watch Anika burp into that same mug, sealing it up with her hands like The BFG trapping children’s dreams.

Before we got into what would prove to be an incredibly loose interview, Anika showed me whose Instagram stories she was watching. There was Art and Matilda (“They had such a beautiful holiday, I was so happy for them”), Shaun Johnson (“Look at what he’s eating”) and NASA (“I always skip it”). Once she was done blasting an exceptionally loud video that JLo had posted – while announcing “THIS IS MY HERALD” to our fellow cafe patrons – we got stuck into some serious, hard-hitting questions.

When was the last time I saw you… six months ago? Has heaps changed for you since then?

Not really. I’ve grown my hair a little bit.

Well, you got married. Congratulations.

Thank you. I did get married.

I really enjoyed the incredibly stunning, incredibly blurry photos of your wedding in The Herald.

We saw those photos a couple of days after we got married, because we were in the wops with no reception. My wife, who I love, is very sensitive about it, but I don’t care as much. It’s an invasion of privacy but it’s their problem not mine. It’s just so boring!

You didn’t have any idea you were being papped from afar?

It’s funny because the photographer – who is a cunt – would have had to climb a mountain, jump over a stream, and climb another mountain to get those pictures. There was no other way. The other funny this is that I walking around wearing my Spanx all morning.

They would have had a clear view right into our cottage – which is gross – and I wasn’t even wearing my wedding dress most of the time. There will be all these photos of me trying to get my tit into my Spanx and fake rooting Natasha and playing my guitar. Someone out there has some real page three shit. Whatever. Dicks.

What else has been going on – you did a weird kids theatre thing?

It was part of the kids festival in Wellington, and I played to 1000 kids every day. I didn’t swear, I was real good. Apart from after my first show, when my manager came up to me and said “Anika, can you not talk about drugs on stage?”

Anika as “Ninja Rat”

How did you work drugs into a kids show?

All I said was “don’t do drugs kids.” I reckon it was a great message, but I forgot that they were all five. They’ll be going home and saying “Mum, what’s drugs?” Yeah, so I did that for a week in Wellington and that was fun. Have you been to Wellington?

Yes I have.

Isn’t it amazing?

I enjoy it for a few days at a time…

… Because then you get bored, right? You’ve seen Peter Jackson, you’ve seen the Beehive, you’ve seen The Cake Tin – you’re done. I just got pissed the whole time. That’s what you have to do.

Hold on: with all this theatre work, does this mean you are going for your EGOT?

Yeah. Emmys, Grammys, Oscar, Tony. That’s the full house. I wonder if Leonardo DiCaprio would ever… nothing, anyway. I’ve got a real Leonardo DiCaprio thing at the moment. Mmmm Leo.

Have you seen his documentary about how the world is ending?

No, I don’t care about that. I just want his body on me. Don’t care about that other shit. Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, now I’m back here making my dumb TV show.

It’s not dumb though is it.

Nah, it’s not. I always get really low on confidence before I start a new thing and I start hating myself and the job that I’m doing. But my team is so good. Paul Casserly is a genius and I hate him because he’s too brainy. This is his thing: he loves clever smut, but if I walk up to him and do a fart he’ll ignore it. He won’t look at me, he’ll just keep on writing his smut. Making a living on smut.

Sounds like smut appropriation to me.

He’s just a grumpy old man is what he is. A grumpy old smut man. This season is pretty much already booked out for guests. Natasha [Utting-Moa, producer] went through and booked everyone we had ever had a dream about.

So you’ve got the same studio setup and everything?

Yep. The difference is I’m going out to do a lot more field interviews this time around. Last season we had other people out doing them, this year I want it all to be about me. I don’t want anyone else to get famous from my show apart from me. I love doing field stuff, I love travelling and hanging out and talking to people.

Anika Moa appears as the musical guest on Anika Moa’s All Talk With Anika Moa

The last time I talked to you, you were quite nervous about interviewing people.

I was shit scared. I’ve learned that you need to ask a question and then let people talk, instead of asking them a question and answering it for them.

That’s a pretty key part of it, yeah. So wait, you were just asking a question then replying immediately like weird Sméagol?!

Pretty much, I was the Sméagol of New Zealand television. Also, everyone gave me shit about not being able to read off the autocue and I was real sensitive about it. I got Ali Mau to give me lessons. I went hard out, paid her heaps, and I still can’t do it. If you watch the show, you’ll see how frustrated I am in my head trying to read the fucking autocue. I’m such a loser.

Is autocue the only option?

Yes. I can’t remember anything. It’s hard because I like freestyling and improvising shit, but when you’re in a studio and you have to pay people, you have to actually deliver. So this time around we are only doing nine episodes, and recording two a week. It’s real quick, bom, bom BOM.

When’s it on the telly?

Don’t know, don’t care.

Anika Moa serenades Ali Mau

Good. I saw you were with Angella Dravid the other day, isn’t she a star?

Angella is the funniest woman I have ever met. We shot something with all the comedians who are nominated for the Billy T this year. She was the only woman in the line-up of guys and they were all funny, but she had me crying with laughter. I couldn’t interview her. It’s as simple as her answering just “no” with her big eyes and I just lost it. I got my rocks off with her, she’s fucking cool.

Have you got other interesting guests in the pipeline?

I interviewed Robyn Malcolm, which was like interviewing a goddess. I interviewed Frankie Adams and the first thing I asked her was to teach me how to do sour puss face.

[A man nearby laughs very loudly into his coffee]

There are heaps of people I want to get who are just too famous and busy for me now. Like Taika Waititi. And Lorde. Man, I don’t want Lorde to have a backlash.

Stan Walker: not too famous and busy for Anika, yet.

Is Lorde having a backlash?

I don’t know, I’m just guessing. I don’t have time to read anything, I’m so boring now. My kids take up 99 percent of my time. Do you think I look older now? I could be, like, 20 right? My vagina’s not 20. It’s 50 with all the use it’s had.

Count the rings, is that what people say?

Count the flaps.

Wait… how many flaps do you have?

Heaps and heaps, it’s a Māori thing. Hey have you been watching The Bachelor NZ?

[redacted defamatory statements about reality TV stars in New Zealand, out of which Anika seamlessly segues into some sponsored mobile phone content]

Alex, you might be up to date with reality TV, but I’m up to date with electronics because of my Huawei P10. Huawei. It’s the way of the future. Can you do a plug for Huawei in the article?

Hashtag spon, hashtag ad.

Hashtag Huawei P10, hashtag New Zealand, hashtag Scar Jo.

Anika talks to nobody on her Huawei P10

I saw on Twitter that someone messaged you to say that you have “mean tits”?

He did. But he hasn’t seen them without the bra on. It’s all smoke and mirrors. What other feedback have I had? Someone told me I was wearing too much makeup on screen and needed to take it off, and then another Aunty told me that I didn’t look made up enough on screen. You can’t win. Do I have boogers up my nose?

No, you don’t. Well, in terms of the backlash that women get from being on TV, that doesn’t sound too bad.

I also get quite a few people coming up to me going “you’re not as fat as you are on TV.” I’m like, “kia ora, kia ora.” It’s not that bad but, if I was a man, nobody would say anything like that at all. They would all just be like “wow, those were really clever questions. Amazing work, man.” For me it’s constantly about what I’m wearing, what I look like, how heavy I am, and nothing to do about my work. You and I both know that my questions are great.

Anika Moa yelling “hashtag Mazda” out of the window of her Mazda.

They are. Who do you consider to be your television rivals?

I don’t know. Jono and Ben? Duncan Garner? Hilary Barry [Anika is in hysterics at this point]. Imagine me and Hilary together on Breakfast, that would be amazing. I just want my show to get really big. I want it to be like Chelsea Handler. It’s too small at the moment, but I want it to be bigger. I want people all around the world to watch it.

Ah well, good things take time right?

Totally. When I first moved from Christchurch to Auckland to do music, it took me a good three years to find my feet and figure out how to talk to people. This is exactly the same, with TV I’ve started at the bottom. There’s nothing that scandalous about my show, it’s just humour and me connecting with people who I think are talented, interesting and amazing. People who are just like me.

Last time we talked you made up your catchphrase “don’t expect greatness but expect it to be great.” Have you got a new one?

More Reading

Please like my show, but if you don’t I don’t give a fuck.

All Talk With Anika Moa returns to Māori TV on Wednesday at 9.30pm

This content, like all television coverage we do at The Spinoff, is brought to you thanks to the excellent folk at Lightbox. Do us and yourself a favour by clicking here to start a FREE 30 day trial of this truly wonderful service.

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Pop CultureApril 30, 2017

What Broadchurch got right (and then very wrong) about rape

broadfeature

The latest season of Broadchurch has been applauded for its nuanced handling of sexual violence in a way seldom seen on television. Charlotte Graham looks at what the show did right, and what it got very, very wrong. 

Contains spoilers for season three and frank discussion around sexual violence, please take care. 

I don’t watch TV shows or movies that feature rape anymore. I need to save my sanity for news stories about rape, the times my friends are assaulted or raped, dumbass shit that people say at parties about rape, and just random surprise instances of rape-related collateral that pop up in everyday life.

I’d read rumours about the ‘groundbreaking’ new season of Broadchurch: that it centred the narrative on survivors and worked to explain rape culture in a way that television has traditionally missed. Women have been sexily dismembered in crime shows since the dawn of time, serving only as a backdrop to man detectives engaging in idle circlejerks about whodunnit.

Remember when Criminal Minds used to actually be about forensic profilers trying to get into the minds of serial killers? Then Mandy Patinkin wandered off and never came back, Thomas Gibson got fired for kicking a writer and the show inexplicably booted all the women characters for a while but then brought some of them back, which was awkward because one of them was meant to have died?

Like many other crime shows, the intelligent musings on criminal psychology changed to 32 minutes of a lady being chased through a forest in lacy knickers, followed by nine minutes of Matthew Gray Gubler chewing the scenery. But the third season of Broadchurch was different… for seven out of eight episodes, at least.

Here are some of the things they did really well in those first seven episodes:

1) They did not depict any rape in a show about rape.

This season told the story of Trish Winterman (Hayley Cropper off Coronation Street), who is raped at a party. I watched the first episode with my trigger finger poised near the spacebar on my laptop. Surprisingly, the show managed to wring every drop of necessary emotion out of the situation without ever a showing the aggressive act itself.

Instead, the story only ever came from Trish, and Trish was believed by those who mattered. Even when it came up that she’d been drunk at the party, and that she’d had sex with her best friend’s crappy husband the morning of her rape, the message was: that doesn’t fucking matter. Did she ask to get hit with a cricket bat then raped at a party? No. So it’s rape. This should not have been revolutionary, but it was.

2) They showed the procedural stuff that TV doesn’t usually bother with.

It was a great public service to depict what actually happens when someone shows up to a police station to report a rape. It was emotionally devastating, but realistic and important. I loved the fact that Trish had Victim Support on standby for when she needed it, because there are similarly wonderful organisations around the world.

Of course, in real life, there are always a couple of caveats. You might get a shitty cop who doesn’t believe you (the cops on Broadchurch are all wonderfully supportive and encouraging to the survivor, another change for the telly), or there might not be the facilities to give you the support and help you need in the long term.

Please do not let this put you off – if you’re in New Zealand, ACC can help you.

3) They showed a full spectrum of sexually abusive behaviour, committed by otherwise normal men.

The rape bogeyman – the hulking dude who jumps out of alleyways to commit what people imagine are “actual” rapes – has grown out of our misunderstandings and willful ignorance about consent and sex.

Too many shows depict rape in a vacuum, committed by bonafide gold-plated psychos. It allows people to relax, watching at home, and think: not me. Not anyone I know. With statistics showing 1 in every 4 or 5 women are sexually assaulted in their lifetimes, all the rapes must be being getting done by someone. Why would it not be someone you know?

In service to the idea that rape comes at one end of a spectrum of sexually controlling, manipulative and violent behaviour, Broadchurch created a town of skeevy pervs. Setting aside whether there would be quite that many predators in such a tiny village, they manage to paint the problem without ever feeling preachy.

Sure, the ex who installed spyware on his wife’s computer might not have raped her, but he still wanted to control her life and her movements. Same with the boss who stalked Trish, keeping thousands of pictures of her on his phone. Same with the boys passing pictures of naked girls round at school, without the girls’ consent. Same, even, with the toxic masculinity that led to Mark Latimer’s obsession with finding and murdering Joe Miller as revenge for Joe killing Mark’s son.

Broadchurch made the point that sex crimes were about power, not sex, and that predatory, violent sexual behaviour didn’t only include rape. It also showed that it was “normal” men who did this stuff: dads and bosses and husbands and friends. It was such a relief to hear someone say acknowledge on mainstream television that predatory sexual behaviour is a power-grab perpetrated by ordinary men.

Question: How did it take so long for mainstream television to notice?

Answer: because they don’t really let women write or make the shows. That’s why!

So Broadchurch S3 nearly had it all, until it shat its pants on national television during the final episode last week. For all the things that went right, here’s what went wrong:

1) The story’s twist took the heat off the perpetrator

As soon as Hardy and Miller (David Tennant and Olivia Colman) realised whose DNA was on the sports sock at the start of episode eight, I thought, “Ahhhhh, that’ll be the twist. That cab driver has a son, and the father-son DNA might be a close enough match for them to think it’s the abusive Dad but, actually, it’ll turn out to be the teenage son who’s been shopping porn around his school.” This turned out to be correct, which was amazing because I am horrible at guessing twists.

I get that Broadchurch is a drama, not a school speech about how rape is terrible, so they had to have some plot twists that were not as socially aware. As the son’s guilt was realised, it turned a taut show into a damp squib. It turned out Michael, the son, only committed the rape extremely reluctantly – metaphorically at gunpoint – at the hands of an older boy.

This made me furious, not least of all because it took the blame away from the rapist. The kid was 16 and he hadn’t even wanted to rape a lady! You felt sorry for him, really. You still felt sorry for Trish, but it took the edge off your ferocious anger on her behalf. It allowed people watching to turn off the telly with a satisfied sigh, and saying, “See?! Women like to pretend they’re the victims in these cases, but there are two sides to every story!

No there aren’t, and fuck you Broadchurch. Most rapes aren’t committed by a perpetrator who is conveniently underaged and being forced to do it at the hands of a violent psychopath. They’re committed by men who primarily want power over a person so they just fucking take it. After telling this story ON ITS OWN SHOW for seven fucking episodes, Broadchurch let its compelling message about sexual violence fizzle out, all for the sake of a cheap plot twist that I spotted coming a mile off. Great writing, shitlords.

2) Turns out it was a gold-plated psychopath after all.

Broadchurch turned Leo into the exact Rape Bogeyman they’d spent all season trying to deconstruct. In a scene reminiscent of every boring crime procedural ever, smug Leo coldly talked about his enjoyment of the various rapes he’d committed, while Hardy and Miller hung on his every word. Just once in those scenes, when a rapist is going on about power making his dick hard, I’d love to see a cop say, “No one fucking cares mate,” and leave the room.

But no, Leo got not just the last word, but quite a few of them. The scene where Trish learned her attackers’ names was rushed, and she didn’t get too much to say. But we learned all about how much Leo liked to film his rapes and watch them back later, a story we’ve seen on every crime show ever made.

It also allowed Alex Hardy the most awful clanger of a line in an otherwise decent series. When he went outside to comfort Ellie Miller on the Police station steps after Leo’s interview, Hardy told her: “He is not what men are.” Almost literally, “Not all men.”

The whole point of the season up to this point had not been “yes, all men,” but rather, “yes, a lot of men, and you probably know some of them, and did you know that rape’s not the only way men exert violent control over women?” And then in one sentence, the writers of Broadchurch swept all of that away. The rapist was a cold, sneering psychopath in an alleyway all along.

3) A happy ending for the cyberstalker.

At the season’s end, we saw Trish’s ex-husband – a man who has spied on her and tried to control and police her behaviour since they split up – coming over for Chinese takeaways. Sure they have a kid together, and the show doesn’t say for sure what their relationship will be going forward.

But Trish. GIRL.

He was watching you through your fucking webcam through spyware he installed on your computer! Do not let that motherfucker in your house! OR, let him bring the Chinese round and then tell him to leave it on the doorstep and fuck off. Maybe he can watch you enjoy it from his house. On his laptop. Psych!!

And therein lies the problem for Broadchurch. What seemed like a trailblazing way of talking about sexual violence might have just a build-up to a plot twist all along. What appeared to be the centring of a survivor’s narrative turned out to be the co-opting of that narrative in order to create mystery and suspense.

So the criminal gets caught. The town comes together. And Trish gets Chinese takeaway with a dude who broke into her house in the middle of the night to steal her laptop and put spyware on it, which really is too high a price to pay for sweet and sour pork.

I’m tired. Wake me up when someone makes the show that Broadchurch was pretending to be.

Click here to watch Broadchurch on TVNZ Ondemand

This content, like all television coverage we do at The Spinoff, is brought to you thanks to the excellent folk at Lightbox. Do us and yourself a favour by clicking here to start a FREE 30 day trial of this truly wonderful service

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