INTERVIEWS WITH MADELEINE SAMI. It's interesting to learn about her more, since they're friends and I've highlighted the parts where she mentions Taika.
From NZ Herald, link broken.
Madeleine Sami - the chameleon
January 2, 2011
Nicky Watson is a muse. New Zealand's favourite calendar girl was the inspiration for one of Madeleine Sami's alter-egos on the new show Super City, which will be screening on TV3 this year.
As the show's creator, co-writer and star, playing five characters, one of this country's greatest acting talents has been handed her perfect vehicle to shine.
Sami has already proven her dexterity for multiple roles, winning plaudits for her breakthrough theatre performance in Toa Fraser's hit play No 2. In Super City she plays an ageing promo girl, competitive gym instructor Iranian cabby, wealthy divorcee and homeless girl.
"Making up lots of characters is what comes most naturally to me," says Sami.
She had been working on the idea for some time before Chris Lilley's hilarious Australian mockumentary Summer Heights High hit our screens.
"I was gutted that someone beat me to it and did it so well," she says.
Despite being along similar lines, Sami says her show has more drama mixed in with the comedy. She has had expert help from director and good mate, Taika Waititi, on striking that balance.
Sami says she is hugely patriotic about her hometown, but the show's name is a dig at the newly united city's grandiose title.
"The name 'Supercity', I find it ridiculous for Auckland. It's such a huge name and Super City, the show, is about the little lives that go on inside the 'Supercity'."
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-news/entertainment/4566240/Sami-but-differentSami but different
NICOLA RUSSELL, Jan 29 2011
Talented Madeleine Sami has spent the past eight months as five people, writes Nicola Russell.
SHE'S one of New Zealand's hottest things in acting, improvisation and comedy, has her own new show coming out soon on TV3 and, if that wasn't enough, has just recorded an album with her band.
Her best friends include Boy director Taika Waititi, Outrageous Fortune's Antonia Prebble and Bro' Town creator Oscar Kightley.
She's Madeleine Sami and she is sitting opposite me in an Auckland cafe, crosslegged like a schoolgirl, casually dressed without a speck of make-up. She's naturally gorgeous but unnaturally tired.
Tired because she has spent the past eight months as five people – Pasha, Jo, Georgie, Linda and Azeem – for her new TV3 comedy/drama Supercity.
When she wasn't playing multiple personalities, Sami was holed up in a room with playwright Thomas Sainsbury and director Waititi.
"It was a really full-on experience – probably the most full-on role I've ever done. When I was writing it I didn't think about how long it was going to take and the fact I was going to be playing five leads in a show. Pretty much, I didn't have any days off and there wasn't a scene I wasn't in. In fact, there wasn't a shot I wasn't in.
"I went to Fiji last year, at the end of shooting. It was a bit hard to unwind after doing 16-hour days for six weeks – a slow process of getting back to myself. Having to be five different people for six weeks does things to your brain a little bit, but I'm normal now," she jokes in an abnormal voice.
Supercity's intensity has left little room for socialising. Sami even wrote Prebble a cameo on Supercity so she could spend time with her.
"A couple of years before this we just were party girls all the time.
"I was practically the third person at her flat. I had a toothbrush there. I haven't seen anything of her all year. We have basically been text buddies and now she is down in Christchurch doing this play and I miss her," she says in an exaggerated sad voice.
When Waititi is in town, he, Sami and Kightley catch up. "We just joke around, have a bit of a drink and talk about ideas. Oscar's got a really similar sense of humour to Taika and I. He's very smart and very dry. Cool guy. I try to hang out with those guys whenever I can."
It's in these moments with family and friends that Sami's characters are often born. "I often break into characters with my friends and with my family. It's kind of like a testing ground to see if a character works. Georgie, she's the homeless girl in the show, came out when I was actually rehearsing for a play.
"Maybe I was a bit bored of rehearsal and I started playing this character and the other actors started responding to her."
Sami relaxes by playing music, "having a bit of a dance and a drink", going to the gym and walking. Her favourite place is where she grew up: Onehunga.
While at Onehunga High, she did theatre sports and acted with what is now known as the Massive Theatre company. "The first year out of school I went, `Okay I'm going to try acting'. I did a show called Bare and started touring it in festivals around the world."
With Bare and then the hit play, No2, Sami spent years touring her craft internationally. Roles in Shortland Street, Jaquie Brown Diaries and Sione's Wedding followed. It's a long list of achievements for a young actor but she downplays it.
"I just don't think there is anything else I can do. I'm pretty useless at most other things, except for acting – like making up silly voices and doing characters."
I point out her modesty. "Well, you don't want to say you are good at stuff all the time," she laughs. "That's why I find it so hard doing interviews. Give me a character and I'm fine. I just hate talking about myself, it's scary."
It transpires Sami was head girl at Onehunga High School and dux at sports. "That means I was brainiest at sports," she mocks with a cheeky smile. She also had a band with best high school friend, Outrageous Fortune's Wesley Dowdell.
"He's a drummer, and we had a band called The Unripe Melons. We won the 1997 talent quest with a song about a stalker."
She now sings and plays guitar in a band with her two sisters, aptly called The Sami Sisters, and they have just mastered their new album.
"We all sing and we all write songs. It's basically three singer-songwriters for the price of one. The style of our music is quite mixed. There's a bit of '80s, country, '50s – a bit of everything."
At 30, she is the oldest of her two sisters, 23 and 28. "I'm the oldest on paper but my sisters rule the roost. They are far more dominant than me. I'm kind of like the fence sitter... Sometimes I'm, like, `I wish Daniel was here'."
Daniel is Sami's "shy" older brother with a great karaoke voice. He lives in Australia with her two nephews and a niece.
If he lived here Sami says he would also be in the band.
Born to a Fijian father and a New Zealand/Irish mother Sami describes herself as a "curried potato". Her sense of humour, she says, undoubtedly comes from her mother's side.
"My mum's family are all Irish Catholic – hilarious people. I would say I got my start in acting by doing Kylie Mole impressions at family parties when I was, like, eight. My cousins are funnier than me."
Her mum is a regular supporter at The Sami Sisters performances. "If mum's in the audience we've got the banter. My mum's got proper white hair and we heckle her."
I ask what her father, who recently died from a liver ailment, gave her. "My good looks," she quips. "Nah, my dad actually was the one who had a guitar at home, so probably the music side of things. Dad had his own wacky sense of humour, too."
Fitting all her achievements into the 12 years since leaving school is no mean feat, helped perhaps by the fact she doesn't sleep a lot.
"I'm not much of a sleeper. I'm one of those people who wakes up really early even if I've gone out all night and I'm hungover. I'll still wake up early and go to the gym to try and sweat out the toxins."
At 30 Sami says she has stopped putting so much pressure on herself to achieve. She is more comfortable in her own skin.
"I like being 30. I feel more settled in myself. There are certain things I don't give a **** about now: body issues or being cool. I never cared about being cool because I've always been a dork. I've always just been that crazy actor girl."
Supercity premieres soon on TV3.
www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv/4630264/The-many-faces-of-Madeleine-Sami (I think it's broken as well)
The many faces of Madeleine Sami
Last updated 12:26 08/02/2011
KIMBERLEY ROTHWELL
Madeleine Sami; the girl who graced the cover of Metro magazine with a tiny, gorilla-suited Peter Jackson as she swung from the Sky Tower, the headline reading "Auckland Rules Ok! How Wellington is losing the culture wars", is sitting at Ernesto wearing a pair of dark sunglasses. It's the last day of the sound mix she's doing at Park Road Post, one of the film companies Sir Peter has his fingers in, for her new show Super City. It's surprising, one might think, that such a proud Aucklander would venture down to Sir Peter's stomping ground to put the final touches on a show that celebrates Auckland. Surprising they let her through the door.
"I totally forgot about that [Metro cover]!" she laughs. "I'm sure he would have had a sense of humour about it. It was quite a sensational article, deliberating stirring up some sort of argument. I think that article is more about Auckland finally having the confidence to say, 'hey we've actually got a bit of an arts thing going on here'."
That "arts thing" is one of the areas Sami touches on in Super City, a show in which she plays five characters from different points of the Auckland spectrum. There's Georgie, a homeless woman, who sleeps in the public library and dines at the city mission; Azeem, an Iranian immigrant with an out of control monobrow and a passion for all things Maori; Pasha, a promo girl and party animal who might be getting too old for her hot pants; Jo, a closeted gym instructor who's had highlights done on her pubic hair; and Linda, a well-meaning, wealthy ex-private school girl who's decided to become an arts patron.
Not only is Sami in practically every shot, she's also co-written the show. "I love, I embrace all that is wonderful about Auckland and everything that is gross. Within each character there is something that is gross and endearing about Auckland. A lot of the characters are deluded about who they are. Who they are clashes with what they want, and what they expect of themselves. They have this idea they are this one thing, but when we see them, it's so obvious to us they're another."
The production's been two years in the pipeline, with hours of research hanging around taxi drivers, cheerleaders, rough sleepers, art galleries and gyms. Some of the people they met have ended up in the show, including Paddy, Jo's fiance, who is really Sami's personal trainer. Even co-writer Tom Sainsbury made a cameo.
The tight budget - the show got just over a $1 million from New Zealand On Air - and the desire to take their time shooting, meant that many of the crew ended up with multiple roles. The shoot was kept as simple as possible, with Boy's Taika Waititi directing.
"Every crew member had about three jobs," says Sami. "Our unit [catering] girl Trish set up her table, but we didn't have a continuity person, so she'd be doing that while we were shooting, and then she'd go back and be making sure there were enough bananas, and cutting up carrots to hand around to everybody. I was doing casting and directing at one point, and writing music. We'd turn up to set and go 'oh ****! We forgot to cast that part'. It was really fun. We didn't want it to feel like a TV show, where people get really precious about their departments. This was like making it as easy as we could to just push record on the camera and shoot."
Sami wanted the script to act as a foundation for the story, as a launching point for any improvisation.
"Taika's really good with that as well, he loves guerilla-style film making. We would point and shoot and see what would come out. I always find that the most exciting stuff, when random stuff happens."
To create these characters, Sami's had to undergo some, shall we say, physical transformation. To become Azeem, she's donned not only a full beard but a monobrow that could have its own show.
"I'm obviously quite a delicate little woman, so we struggled with Azeem . . . we needed something that changed me quite a bit, a squarer jaw. If you're going to give me a moustache and a beard, we thought we'd go the whole hog, to balance out the face or something, I don't know. A lot of Iranian men were very clean shaven and very neat and tidy, so Azeem is quite scruffy."
There's also Pasha, who's bleach blonde, blue-eyed, and spray-tanned. "You know what, it's so funny how people change around you when you're blonde, blue-eyed and dress like a ****. Because people get crushes on you. I would get people flirting and hitting on me when I was dressed up like her. It was kind of disheartening, it's so cheap."
It's got to be a lot of pressure on the actress to have the show finally make it to the screen? "Am I going to poo? Is that what you're asking me? Yes. I will probably have a good, stiff drink in the morning."
The Details
What: Super City
When: Friday, 10pm
Where: TV3
- The Dominion Post
Her style of creativity, relying on improvisation is similar to Taika's. I'd be very stressed out on the set like this!
Appeared on NZ Life Style Yahoo website in March 2011, link broken.
Madeline Sami: Putting super in the city
This Kiwi star put in the hard yards playing five roles in the TV series she helped write
Eager to lure hot-shot director Taika Waititi to work on her new show, Madeleine Sami had to pull out all the stops.
The Kiwi actress knew she'd have to offer a lucrative deal to sign on the Boy director to her new show, Super City.
But after being assured he would be treated like a king and surrounded by a bevy of beauties, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker agreed to join his good friend on her quest for small-screen glory.
'I lured him with promises I could never fulfil,' Madeleine says. 'I told him we'd get him a deckchair on set, that he would be pampered, he'd have his own masseuse, everyone would call him "sir" and no one would look him in the eye.'
But Taika was prepared to take the job for their friendship – and the drawcard of directing a show filled with attractive talent.
'We decided early on that "babenessness" [good looks] should be compulsory for our crew,' Madeleine says, laughing. 'Just for when spirits are down and everyone's a bit tired, we could look at each other and go, "Hey, it's cool. We're all still babes."'
After years of playing second fiddle to the Bro'Town boys and Jaquie Brown, the raven-haired beauty takes all the leading roles in the new TV3 comedy-drama.
Take five
It follows the lives of five Auckland residents – Jo, a personal trainer, Azeem, an Iranian immigrant taxi driver, Linda, an art critic from the chic suburb of Parnell, Pasha, an ageing blonde Indian cheerleader, and Georgie, a homeless chick.
'I love Auckland so much,' Madeleine explains. 'Every aspect of it, the rich, the poor, the ethnic, the tacky, and the slutty. I wanted to combine all these bits into a show. And of course give myself all the main parts.'
However, taking on all five roles was a challenge for the actress of Indian and Irish heritage.
'It was confusing trying to remember who I was at the end of the shoot,' she says. 'It was exhausting. I was pretty much in every single scene, so it was definitely a test of my stamina.'
The project has consumed Madeleine's life since she wrote the script two years ago, with playwright Thomas Sainsbury. But while filming kept her from family and friends, it didn't come between her and her music.
Band of sisters
As she was shooting the series, Madeleine also found time to record an album with The Sami Sisters. The band features her and her two younger sisters, Anji, 28, and Priya, 23, who she managed to weave into the show.
'My sisters have a cameo as a band [on Super City]. But it's sort of blink-and-you-miss-it,' she says, adding they're going to be spending quality time together in the coming months.
'We're rehearsing a lot at the moment. We are practising for an album release, which should be in the next couple of months.'
Now with her show about to debut on TV3, the multi-talented star is focusing on reconnecting with those closest to her.
'I've had no life for the last two years. I'm starting to reconnect with my friends and family now,' Madeleine says. 'Ahh… it's nice to have a life back.'
By Tammy Buckley
• Super City screens on Fridays, 10pm, TV3
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