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Laura Tupou
Just six weeks into her new job, Laura Tupou was forced to front The Project on her own.

Pop CultureAugust 27, 2021

How Covid-19 left Laura Tupou hosting The Project alone

Laura Tupou
Just six weeks into her new job, Laura Tupou was forced to front The Project on her own.

A week ago tonight, Laura Tupou watched in horror as her last co-host on The Project was forced to leave the studio. Chris Schulz asks her how she kept her cool on a Friday night like no other.  

Laura Tupou’s first thought was that her colleagues at The Project were playing a prank on her. Ever since a level four lockdown had been announced, Tupou and co-host Jeremy Corbett had been joking about what would happen if one of them was taken out with a Covid-19 scare. Mainstay Jesse Mulligan was already isolating at home, and they’d axed the fourth guest host spot for safety. Hosting duties rested squarely on the two of them.

“Jeremy was like, ‘You know, you could be the last person standing,’” says Tupou. “‘Maybe it’ll be ‘The Tupou Show.’” The gag was that a single host is basically an unthinkable prospect for a live weeknight show usually filled with four big personalities: Mulligan, Corbett, Tupou, and a guest role that changes every night. Together, they build banter, crack jokes, and have a laugh, and things are especially loose on a Friday night.

Project
A typical night on The Project involves three hosts, Jeremy Corbett, Laura Tupou and Jesse Mulligan, plus a fourth guest host. Photo: THREE

Then, last Friday night, it happened: Corbett received a text message saying he had been at a location of interest and was required to isolate, walking out of the studio just minutes before airtime. Tupou was left on her own, with one of the most complicated half-hours of live current affairs television she’d ever faced ahead of her, and absolutely no one to do it with.

Here’s how the night unfolded…

6pm: Tupou and Corbett begin their rehearsal, running through the night’s entire episode word-for-word. Gags are worked out, conversation flows are sorted, timing issues resolved. Everyone knows their place. Despite Mulligan being forced to sit the episode out, and the live audience axed, the rehearsal runs smoothly, although Tupou says The Project was already down one key staff member. “Our autocue person just disappeared,” says Tupou. “We were trying to read something in rehearsal (and there was) no autocue. She just got pinged.” Corbett, who had set his phone to silent for the rehearsal, misses several calls.

Laura Tupou
Laura Tupou finds herself alone on The Project desk. Screengrab: ThreeNow

6.40pm: Corbett is sitting at The Project’s desk, completing some last-minute prep, with his suit on and his laptop open. He checks his phone: there’s a text message. A few nights earlier, he’d MC’d a Bayley’s Realty awards night at Spark Arena at which a Covid-19 case had been confirmed. “Time froze, then I said out loud, ‘I’ve got a curve ball,’” says Corbett. “Everyone knew straight away what it meant. That was it. I was untangled from my mic and out the door within minutes.”

Corbett heads straight to a testing centre, then home. Tupou’s on her own. “I was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh. What the heck? I don’t know how I’m going to do this by myself,’” she says. “I thought … Ha ha – great joke guys. Come back now.” Ironically, the exact same thing had happened at The Project’s 7pm competition Seven Sharp on the same night, with Hilary Barry leaving her Seven Sharp co-host Jeremy Wells to fend for himself. She’d been at an event at Spark Arena too, but on a different night. The Herald reports she left TVNZ “in a hurry”.

6.50pm: Tupou’s first hurdle is a live cross to promote that night’s episode with Newshub at 6 host Melissa Chan-Green. The script, which included banter with Corbett, was thrown out and Tupou winged it. “I can’t chat with myself – that’s insane,” she thought. Instead, she decided honesty was her best option. “I’m on my lonesome tonight,” she tells Chan-Green. “We’re dropping like flies.” Behind the scenes, The Project producer Jon Bridges is frantically calling in favours, trying to find someone who can help Tupou out. “We were trying to figure out what we’re going to do,” says Tupou.

6.55pm. Tony Lyall, The Project’s head writer, is still at his desk. By chance, he’d put together The Project’s opening segment, a humorous piece about what do while sitting in the lengthy Covid-19 test queues. Lyall grabs his laptop, runs downstairs to The Project’s purpose-built studio, throws a suit on, and rushes through hair and make-up. A script is thrust into his hands. He has just minutes to prepare before going live.

Tony Lyall
Tony Lyall had just minutes to prepare to host The Project. Screengrab: ThreeNow

7pm: “It’s just me here – little lonely Laura,” says Tupou as Newshub at 6 host Chan-Green crosses to her again. “Literally, like, 10 minutes ago, Jeremy got pinged.” That night’s episode of The Project, one unlike any other, has begun. As she introduces the first segment, Tupou jokes: “Let’s trial ‘The Tupou Show’. Off-camera, Lyall continues trying to consume every line he has to deliver that night. Because they’re written for Corbett, many have to be thrown out.

7.03pm: Lyall sprints onscreen, jumps in Corbett’s chair and plugs in his laptop. He stretches and says: “It’s lovely to be here.” When Tupou complains that Lyall should let her run the show on her own for a little longer, Lyall replies: “There were a lot of people out there saying, ‘Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up.’ It was very stressful.”

7.06pm: Despite only learning about his hosting duties 15 minutes earlier, Lyall handles Corbett’s Isolation Update – a series of funny home videos – with aplomb. When they cross to a Sydney correspondent to compare the country’s different lockdown responses, Tupou fills Lyall in on what’s coming up. “It was the most complicated (episode) I’d been involved in,” she says. She decided the best course of action was taking it one segment at a time. “There were so many moving parts.”

7.10pm: During the first ad break, Tupou tells Lyall what’s coming next: news headlines, a piece filmed in Queenstown pre-lockdown about driving in the snow, and a live cross to entertainment reporter Kate Roger with some TV binge options. “That’s kind of how we got through it,” says Tupou. “We were just like, ‘OK, you just say whatever, I’ll just react to whatever you say.’ And that’s sort of what we did. It was quite different to the rehearsal.” After some banter about using half a block of cheese for a bowl of spaghetti, Tupou slams her palm on the desk and declares: “This is a great show!”

The Project
Jesse Mulligan joins The Project remotely. Screengrab: ThreeNow

7.20pm: “Is this supposed to happen?” asks a confused Lyall as Mulligan’s voice floats into the studio like an appearance from God. Clearly Lyall didn’t quite finish reading his script. Mulligan’s here to do his regular ‘Scenes of New Zealand’ segment, revealing a series of social media posts that are totally Kiwi-as. Remotely, isolated, Mulligan dances the hosts into the second ad break.

7.25pm: “What the heck is going on?” asks Tupou as Corbett’s face Zooms into view after the ad break’s over. “It’s like ghosts of washed-up hosts past here,” ad-libs Lyall in his best line of the night. “What happened? Why did you have to run away?” he asks Corbett. Corbett calmly explains his last-minute exit and confirms he’s already had his Covid-19 test. He doesn’t look too stressed: he managed to rush through it after after getting into the wrong queue. Then he says: “I’m home – and I’m home for a while.”

7.26pm: “Imagine I’m Jeremy Corbett,” says Lyall, flapping his hands around his face as he introduces a piece filmed by the host earlier in the day, before he was told to go home.

Jeremy Corbett
Jeremy Corbett joins The Project while isolating at home. Screengrab: ThreeNow

7.30pm: The Project wraps up for the night with Tupou waving and Lyall air-kissing audiences goodbye. Tupou says she didn’t have time to process what had just happened before the congratulatory messages started. “It’s quite a bizarre feeling. It’s like, ‘This is what I have to do.’ You realise how significant it is afterwards when everyone’s like, ‘Oh my gosh – you just did that?’ Yes. Yes, I did.”

7.35pm: Mulligan sends Tupou a text message. It reads: “Cool as a cucumber.” Tupou knows exactly what it means. A few nights earlier, Corbett and Mulligan had been trying to think of things that might “rark” Tupou up. “I am quite a relaxed sort of person,” says Tupou. “We couldn’t think of anything in particular (so) I think this was like a test to see if I was going to get really nervous and break down or something. But nope, ‘Cool as a cucumber.’”

The Project and Seven Sharp screen weeknights at 7pm.

Keep going!
Look at all these games! Here’s the kicker, though: You don’t have to pay a cent for any of them. (Image: Tina Tiller)
Look at all these games! Here’s the kicker, though: You don’t have to pay a cent for any of them. (Image: Tina Tiller)

Pop CultureAugust 27, 2021

The best free games to play while you are stuck at home

Look at all these games! Here’s the kicker, though: You don’t have to pay a cent for any of them. (Image: Tina Tiller)
Look at all these games! Here’s the kicker, though: You don’t have to pay a cent for any of them. (Image: Tina Tiller)

Sick of watching things mindlessly? Keep your hands busy too with these free games to play during lockdown.

Already done with The White Lotus? Scared that Love Island is over and now you have nothing to fill an hour a day, six days a week? Want to do something with your hands but finding it pretty hard to run your weekly D&D games over Zoom? 

Well, my friend, have you heard of video games

One of the big issues with gaming is that it’s an expensive hobby. The consoles alone can run up to several hundreds of dollars and, depending on the alert level, might not be available at all. Then there are the games themselves. While indie games can be pretty cheap, the larger, big-ticket games generally start at around $80 and can go right up to $120. That’s a lot of money to spend on something you’re not sure is any good.

Luckily, some of the most fun games to pass the time are completely free. I’ve rounded up a few of the best ones that are available on a variety of screens – consoles, computers, phones – as well as a few that don’t need a screen at all.

(A fair warning that some of these games involve in-app purchases, so if you’re frantically scrolling this to find a game for someone who is not the credit card holder, keep that in mind!)

Mobile games

Two Dots (free for iOS and Android, in-app purchases)

The premise of the original Dots sounds simple: connect dots vertically or horizontally and make a square for more points. Two Dots complicates things by throwing in power-ups, objectives and campaigns so that there’s some sense of progression. There are many, many worlds and levels to play through, with one world being added every three weeks – that makes 3875 since the game’s release in 2014. Get thee connecting!

Old Friend (iOS and Android, in-app purchases)

Take off your seatbelt, because you absolutely don’t need to buckle up for this wholesome game from Dunedin studio Runaway Play, one that I wrote about earlier this week. The player is in charge of a dog sanctuary, based on the real life Old Friends sanctuary in Tennessee that shelters elderly dogs. During the game, you adopt old dogs – who are also based on real-life dogs – and look after them. If you feel fuzzy and warm reading that, imagine how you’ll feel playing it! 

Pokémon Unite (Nintendo Switch, available on iOS and Android in September, in-app purchases)

Pokémon Unite is a battle arena game where you play as a Pokémon and fight other Pokémon, and that’s probably all you need to have you either typing the name frantically into your search bar or scrolling past this entirely. Our podcast manager Te Aihe gave this game a better sell than I ever could in last week’s Rec Room newsletter: “I flew around the map as Charizard and Fire Blast-ed the enemy team’s Pikachu to a crisp – it’s everything I want in a video game.”

Console games

Genshin Impact (Android, iOS, Microsoft Window, PS4, PS5, in-app purchases)

Want to play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but don’t have the several hundred dollars required to buy a Nintendo Switch and a copy of that game? Genshin Impact is the next best thing. This open world action role-playing game allows the player to roam around a fantasy world, completing quests, procuring materials, and generally losing themselves somewhere that isn’t locked down. If you’re looking for a visually stimulating game with a rich, robust open world  –that won’t break the bank – then look no further.

Fortnite (honestly, pretty much everywhere, in-app purchases)

If you still need me to tell you what Fortnite is in the year 2021, then you probably shouldn’t be playing it. But if you’re curious, Fortnite is a super addictive battle royale game. Essentially, you’re dropped on an island with 99 other players and have to find weapons and other equipment to become the last one standing. Games are short, sharp and quick (especially if you’re bad at it, like I am). Pop stars occasionally do in-game concerts and no, I don’t know how that works either.

Among Us (same as above, in-app purchases)

Want a game that will have you mistrusting all your friends? Then look no further than Among Us! The space elevator pitch is that it’s the party game Mafia, but with aliens. A small group of online players are rounded up on a spaceship. A smaller handful of those players are the Imposter, while the rest are Crewmates. Crewmates keep the ship going, Imposters sabotage and kill the Crewmates while trying not to get killed themselves. Fingers are pointed, alliances are broken, and the games are short so you can go through them multiple times a night. If you’ve got more questions, I’ve written up this handy little guide here

Computer games

Minesweeper Deluxe (PC, in-app purchases)

Sometimes these lists are just public services. Yes, you can play Minesweeper. No, you don’t need to drag out your old computer to do so. It’s right there, readily available for you to waste hours of your life on. Warning: No actual sweeping is involved in this game.

Catan Universe (browser-based, also for Nintendo Switch, iOs, Android)

Now you don’t need to see the whites of their eyes to hate somebody for stealing your grain, you can do it online! Yes, Catan Universe is a browser-based Settlers of Catan. If that brings back flashbacks of cardboard hexagons flying across tables, I apologise. But if you’re a huge fan of this board game classic, there’s no better alternative to get your settling fix.

Sort the Court (browser-based)

Extend your realm past your bubble with this simple but surprisingly addictive game where you take on the role of the king of a realm. You can rule the kingdom with an iron first, take the high road, or just be an utter asshole. This indie game revolves around you simply approving or disapproving of the wishes of your subjects, leading your kingdom down one road or the other. Discern the good from the bad, or go with your whims! All you do is hit “yes” or “no”, and reap what you sow.

Real life games

The floor is lava (your house, or other floor-based dwelling)

Put on ‘Pompeii’ by Bastille, because it’s 79AD and Mount Vesuvius is erupting! You know the drill. The floor is lava – you make your way from one side of the room to the other without touching the floor. Touch the floor, you lose. Don’t touch the floor, you win. Easier if you’re a child, but if you’re an adult, there’s nobody stopping you.

Neighbourhood Explore (your neighbourhood)

This idea comes courtesy of The Spinoff Group’s creative director Toby Morris, who found a way to keep his kids interested during their daily walk. “Every time you come to an intersection you choose which direction to go with a rock paper scissors (child one wins so you left, but if child two wins you go right),” he says. “Everyone gets one override card that can veto a decision once. If you win three rock paper scissors in a row you win an extra override card. Walk was twice as long as usual but everyone had fun.”

Who do we love? (your friend group via Zoom)

Love, like a bottle of pinot gris, is a dish best served chilled (yes, pinot gris counts as a “dish” in level four.) Simply wait for a lull in conversation with trusted friends, then pop this wholesome question: “Who do we love?”

Everybody goes around and lists one person, group, system or thing they love and why. No debate is entered into. At the end of the round, everybody feels a little bit better by putting the good vibes out. (Love can also be substituted for “appreciated”, or if you’re a couple deep and with the right crowd, you can substitute it for “hate” or “grinds my gears”. Nobody’s judging you but your front-facing camera.)

But wait there's more!