Friends Niva Retimanu (left) and Beatrice Faumuina have launched a new podcast Straight Up, in which they talk to well-known New Zealanders about adversity and resilience. Photo/Brett Phibbs
An Olympian and a newsreader walk into a radio studio . . . Kim Knight follows Niva Retimanu and Beatrice Faumuina as they create Straight Up, the podcast that takes them outside their comfort zone and inside the worst days of well-known New Zealanders.
"Do you know what I've got to do? I've got to slap my face."
Eyes wide and palms flailing, Niva Retimanu literally beats blood into her cheeks. Slap-slap-slap. "Waaaah!"
This is how a newsreader who has been up since 3am gets ready to go again.
"Right!" she announces. "Now I'm awake!"
Early July, and it's cold enough for jumpers and scarves. Retimanu's voice would melt ice but today, in a glass-walled meeting room in central Auckland, she's concerned.
"The first thing I thought of is that she and I both have very deep voices. We sound very similar to the ear. Years ago, I said to her, 'you know if you finish discus throwing, you should get a job in radio' . . ."
Beatrice Faumuina shakes her head. "No."
Chalk and cheese. Studious swat and drama queen. Tech whiz and old-school Luddite. Retimanu and Faumuina joke about their differences, but a new podcast project highlights their common ground: Samoan, female - and first.
Retimanu has been a journalist and newsreader for more than 30 years. She's run eight marathons, written one book, and been named newsreader of the year seven times. For the past four years she has worked on the Mike Hosking Breakfast show - the only person of Pasifika descent reading the news at Newstalk ZB, the country's No 1 commercial radio station.
In 1997, Beatrice Faumuina became the first New Zealander to win a world championship track and field title. She now holds six medals - five golds and one silver. She has competed at three Commonwealth and four summer Olympic Games and, after her retirement from sport, moved into business leadership and development roles, including four years as a Trade Commissioner and Consul General in New York.
Retimanu and Faumuina are trailblazers. But at almost every point in their separate careers they shared an uncomfortable truth: Nobody else in the room looked like they did.
Faumuina: "When someone excels, you've got to ask them about the environment that has made them be successful. Can you replicate that? Can you add to that? Are you in a role that is conducive for you to learn to excel but to also, potentially, move you into another role over and above what you are currently doing? What I've learned, over time, is you have to become acutely aware of where things are really good for you."
Today is shaping up to be really good. The microphones have been adjusted for height, the tissues are ready and, any minute, the pair will greet their first podcast guest. It's a dry run of the real thing, a prelude to the late-winter and spring recording sessions that will form the backbone of their new project, Straight Up with Niva and Beatrice.
"How long do we have to talk?" asks Faumuina. "It's going to be exhausting."
"I can talk non-stop," says Retimanu. "In my counselling sessions, I've done it for 47 minutes non-stop. It's just been me and she hasn't said a word."
Faumuina: "One of the greatest coaches went to counselling sessions for more than a year and only ever said one word. His learning mechanism was through observing behaviour. When you're sitting in the stands and your athlete is competing, you can't call out."
Retimanu: "It's a good thing I'm not doing that job."
The women have known each other for 15 years, introduced by a mutual acquaintance who thought they might click. How does their friendship work?
Retimanu: "We never did the 'you're so amazing, I'm so amazing'. We connected in a fun way. We got on with each other, because we just talked about everything else but ourselves."
And last year, they got talking about talking. Retimanu was with Faumuina in Wellington, when she was invited to speak to the Hurricanes rugby team during the team's Pasifika week celebrations. A few weeks later, Retimanu fronted up to the Auckland Blues to share her mental health story.
"Beatrice and I would get together and talk about these events. We felt a responsibility to do as much as we could for Pacific people . . . "
Faumuina: "We saw some common themes coming through over and over again. And it was about the health and wellbeing of people, and understanding how much they go through to be successful - whether it be in sporting, or business or the education sector. And we started thinking what are some of the conversations we should be having in that space? Because people do come unstuck when they feel isolated."
Retimanu and Faumuina are your invested besties; the ones who are asking others how they got through, so that you can too. In an interview with Sonny Bill Williams, he tells them "you remind me of my sisters". Retimanu fires back, "at least you didn't call us aunties!"
When the newsreader first told her radio colleagues about the podcast, one asked if it was going to be a comedy. It's true that Retimanu is very funny. But that humour is the flipside of the alcohol-soothed years of grief and depression that came after the death of her parents and the loss of friends to suicide.
One morning, she woke up and thought: "Enough is enough. What's going on here? Ask for help."
She remembers Faumuina's quiet support.
"It's not like she's ringing you up every day to interfere, but she'll just send a little wee text, or a message like 'how are you going today?' She picks her time and she's always calm."
Retimanu began training for marathons (famously finishing last in every one she entered) and sought counselling. As a Samoan-born New Zealander in a high-profile job, Retimanu says she realised she could be a role model. Straight Up with Niva and Beatrice, the podcast that launches today, is the next logical step.
"To us, the podcast has to be the best dinner party you'd ever go to. But we're mindful that it's about resilience. And to get to resilience, you have to go through adversity and challenges. I hadn't realised how emotional it would be," says Retimanu.
"It's big," nods Faumuina.
The podcast's premise is simple. Direct and "straight-up" chats with well-known New Zealanders about personal challenges and how they found the resilience to get through. The Weekend Herald had planned to follow the making of the show. But, just as production was cranking up, Auckland's Covid lockdown hit.
For the past few months, Retimanu and Faumuina have been dialling in via Zoom. On the day they interviewed broadcaster Toni Street, she was at home, Faumuina was at a studio in Mt Wellington and Retimanu was downtown at Newstalk ZB. Sonny Bill Williams spoke to them from Sydney, but the personal connection is palpable - the rugby and rugby league superstar turned down higher-profile interviews specifically to support this Pasifika-led venture.
Retimanu: "I loved him before, and I love him even more now. I just felt that overwhelming sense of cultural identity. We are Samoan, he is Samoan and he is special to us. For me, working in the media, I felt quite overwhelmed because I thought, 'this is the first time for me that I've been involved in a project with another Samoan woman . . . I've been in the media for 30 years . . . as a Pacific broadcaster, that's the first time I've had a moment like that, where I've been involved in something mainstream with other Pacific people."
Faumuina: "In so many industries, we are either the only ones, or there are very few . . . and it's not just us. I'm also thinking of our Māori community and our Asian community. Time and time again, generation after generation, they will say 'if we don't see someone who looks like us or sounds like us, then that's not an industry that welcomes us'. And that's sad."
The world-beating discus thrower might have been a Silver Fern or a White Sox. She represented Auckland in both netball and softball, but when she qualified for the 1992 World Junior Athletic Championships Faumuina's course was set. Three decades later, and she's well accustomed to media appearances. She's done the glamour photoshoots and magazine puff pieces. She has also been on the receiving end of harsh criticism from opinion writers. Throughout her sporting career, her successes (and failures) belonged to an entire country that viewed them through a media lens she couldn't control. What's it like to finally be in charge of the narrative?
"It just feels very different to being on the other side . . . I completely understand why you won't see some well-known people talking. Because we don't feel comfortable. Because you are sometimes used to develop another story, and your own truth doesn't come out."
At the end of each podcast interview, Faumuina and Retimanu reflect on what they've heard and how it relates to their own experiences. The show kicks off with Sonny Bill Williams, but guests cover the spectrum. Upcoming subjects include Street (whose recent book details the deaths of her siblings and her own health battles and surrogate pregnancy journey), drag performer Edward Cowley (AKA Buckwheat) and Lance Burdett, the crisis negotiator synonymous with the Napier siege between police and gunman Jan Molenaar.
"There are really tender moments," says Faumuina. "When you have a guest who has really pushed to the edge of their vulnerability. And you sit there and go 'I can relate to that'. And then the tears come. You hear about someone's journey and you think how on earth did that person overcome that? And then they actually talk you through it. We don't necessarily always hear those stories. We never hear about how they've managed to keep going - and that's what has excited me about this. You think, well, there is so much more to that person."
Faumuina is speaking three months after the Weekend Herald sat in on the pair's practice run. Aucklanders have been allowed to extend their lockdown bubbles and meet up outdoors. Faumuina is in a summer dress and Retimanu wears a pair of giant sunglasses. Inside, Faumuina's mother, Roini, is lighting candles on a triple-tiered, cream-filled chocolate cake.
"Happy Birthday dear Niva . . . "
The newsreader joins in with gusto: "Happy birthday dear Fa'aniniva Tapa'au Fa'asisina Fa'aopoopo Retimanu . . ."
Later, she says: "She and I are so different. She's really good with IT and she has her charts and her laptop and I have my pen and paper. She'll ring me and go 'what's your plan' and I'll go 'Gurrrl, I haven't even had breakfast - my plan is to eat food! You know, instead of a New Year's resolution, she makes a plan every birthday. Why do you do that, Beatrice?"
"I've done it since college," says Faumuina. "In the week leading up, I spend a lot of time writing about the year, which prepares me for the year ahead. I'll look at my diaries, my monthly reviews and say 'this worked for me, this didn't work for me; getting rid of that, absolutely pursuing this. It's just given me that clarity."
Faumuina is a documenter. Diaries, selfies, and mind maps on her iPad. She calls it "only-child syndrome". Raised by her mother and grandmother, with a weekend sports roster that included track and field, netball and softball, she had to be rigorously disciplined. (Roini says Beatrice would get changed in the car between codes - and they only ever lost one softball gear bag, left on the roof of the car. "It was expensive!" says the teacher and accountant, who was, during this period, working full-time and studying in the evenings).
Faumuina: "My mum's got a lot to do with it. Our whole lives were about organising and getting ready. We weren't in a position to waste time or money. Whether it was for training or competing, school or exams . . . If I haven't been able to achieve a certain goal, I ask myself two very simple questions: Did I commit to it fully? And if I did, I'm okay with the result. But if I committed to it part-time, of course the result was going to be unfavourable."
She tells a story about the time she was ranked in the world top 10 for her sport. She went to the Atlanta Olympic Games to win a medal and finished 23rd.
"I came home and I hadn't medalled. I hadn't competed well. At the airport, when mum picked me up, she said 'are you staying or going?' It was the question she asked me right then and there.
"I was pretty upset. Of course, I was disappointed because I felt like I'd let everyone down, including my own family. And she said: 'This is the choice, If you're going to stay, then how far do you want this to go? And if you go, then there is no room for a conversation that says I wish I'd stayed'. The frustration and disappointment I had right then, it fuelled me to get ready for the 1997 world championships and every other campaign after it."
In 1997, in Athens, Greece, Faumuina threw 66.82m to win gold.
The best mentors ask why, says the athlete-turned-business-leader.
"Why is this important? Are you committing to the right thing? If you're getting injured, or you're getting sick a lot, you need to ask yourself why?"
She says she has been lucky to be surrounded by good people, but:
"It takes time to know who those good people are. The people who say you're not acting the way you normally do, or you're not dressing the way you normally do or you're not being as responsive. Over time, we've learned that these are triggers that someone might be in a different place - and then you have to figure out how do you, as a loved one, try and be the best, supportive person."
Faumuina says that if she'd been asked to make a podcast even five years ago, "I would have thought 'no way'. We cannot ask people to reveal parts of themselves without revealing parts of ourselves. But now, the timing is right".
Retimanu and Faumuina grew up at opposite ends of the country. The latter in Auckland, in that tight household of three women from three generations; Retimanu in Invercargill, with her parents, who had met on a boat from Samoa. Neither spoke English or had a formal education, but her dad had a lead on a job in Southland at the Ocean Beach freezing works. Both women are born here - and of Samoa.
"It's about being the best of both worlds," says Faumuina.
"It's being mindful of what our parents did, the migration story, and being able to do both sides really well. You see young people being told you could be one or the other. You could be Pasifika or you could be Kiwi. We'd say why can't you be the best of both? Why are you being pigeonholed? We've learned to adapt. Change and move it again. Change and move it again.
"When you've gone through a hard time or a great time, you still need to get up and keep moving. That comes through in the podcast. You go through all the highs and lows, but the willingness to keep going - to not stand still and freak out - is really important."
Retimanu: "When my parents died, I went through this cultural identity crisis. Your parents migrate, you grow up and they tell you the stories of how hard it was, but then all of a sudden I was 20 and I thought: I actually don't know who I am. So I went to Samoa for a year on a one-way ticket and I ended up working for a radio station and it was the best thing I ever did, because I could make a connection."
Sometimes, she says, people ask her brothers if they're related to that newsreader and when they say yes, there's an assumption she is their sister-in-law - because how else would she have that Samoan surname?
"Working in mainstream radio, people would hear me and assume I was Pākehā."
As a newsreader, Retimanu must play it straight and scripted - a million miles from the "Niva the Diva" nickname bestowed by the podcast production team.
"Now, people will possibly get a personal perspective on who we are. We're a bit cheeky. There's a bit of banter in there."
Dream guest?
Retimanu: "Oprah!"
Faumuina: "I'm undecided. I really am undecided."
Retimanu: "Actually, who needs Oprah? Move over Oprah, here come the other two brown biatches!"
Faumuina: "I've always said I'd like to create my own pathway, thank you."
Retimanu nods. "Yeah, that is what she said. Which is actually so her."
LISTEN: Straight Up with Niva and Beatrice launches today. New episodes every Saturday morning, with more coming in January 2022. Listen on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
Broadcaster has written a new book about the joys of getting older.