Actor Johnny Barker. Photo / Supplied
Johnny Barker will forever be remembered as The Ferndale Strangler, Shortland Street's only serial killer but, as well as being an actor, he is also a musician and a respected director whose credits include Funny Girls, Jono and Ben and James Mustapic's Abandonment Issues. Barker is also starring in Mean Mums as Mr Le Peitie premiering August 18, 8.30pm on Three.
When I was 4 we moved from Whangārei to West Auckland and I grew up in Avondale, where my grandmother and my aunts lived in the same cul de sac. It was a great childhood, although one of my earliest primary school memories is of getting my bike stolen. It was a yellow Morrison BMX and I'd ride it to Arohoe Primary. One day I came out to get my bike and it was gone so I had to walk home. When I got there, I sat on our front steps and bawled my eyes out, knowing I'd have to tell my parents that my bike had been stolen.
Then, all of a sudden, my bike went flying past with a girl on it. I ran down the street and saw her turn left down Astley Ave. I kept chasing, then I saw the bike outside the dairy. I ran up to it, and this girl came out. Even though she looked like she was going to smack me in the head, I said: "That's my bike." I used my biggest voice, which was pretty small and she said: "If you tell anyone, I'll smash you." I was just so happy to get it back.
At school, I wasn't great at paying attention to things like maths and English and I spent a lot of time wondering why we did certain things. At the time I didn't realise it was all about finding your path, so I did sometimes feel down on myself for falling behind in certain subjects. I wasn't bombing out, but I wasn't great. I was also more interested in making short films and videos. I was very lucky to have some wonderful teachers at Avondale College, they supported us and even entered our films in competitions. When we won some prizes I started to think film-making might be something I could do for an actual job.
I was definitely the class clown, but because my teachers recognised how deeply I was into film and video production, they let me get away with a lot and the path sort of lit up in front of me. I was also lucky to go straight from school to South Seas Film and Television School. They didn't usually take people straight out of school, they preferred students to have grown up a little, or have worked for a year, but because I'd been so proactive about making films at school, I was accepted. I truly loved my year of directing and script-writing and acting and growing up.
I'll have to blur the names for legal reasons, but straight out of South Seas, I got a job at a music television outfit. All I had to do was play music off a scheduled roster. So basically a radio station for music videos. But one day I grabbed a few videos I thought would be cool to listen to, or watch, and I chucked on some bands I was into at the time, like Supergrass and Radiohead. Back then, I'd only heard about Rage Against The Machine and I wanted to check them out but, instead of playing them on my own time first, I chucked on Killing In The Name Of and it went out live at 10am on a weekday. But what I didn't know – that song has about 200 F-bombs and they were exploding through the screen and into people's homes. Within seconds the phone was ringing off the hook, then the boss called and said: "For the love of god get that off air now!" I was terrified the whole company was about to go down in flames because of me, so I ripped the tape out and threw in a Britney Spears video. I still feel bad about that.
To learn as much as I could about the film industry I started at the bottom. As I fell more deeply in love with the craft of film-making, I was also cast in little roles on TV shows and in movies. I was also lucky to be cast in lots of commercials, and they used to pay really well, which meant I could also fund my musical exploration.
People often tiptoe around the topic of Joey Henderson but I love talking about him. When I was cast in 2001, I got the impression Joey was this goofy fun nurse. As time went by, and characters started dying, we all wondered, who's going to be the killer? One day I was called into the producer's office and told it was me. At first, I didn't know if it was a good thing or a bad thing, because I knew I was going to lose my job. I confided in a couple of people, and my friend Jared reckoned it was cool, because I would be playing a two-sided character and I'd have to work to make the villain likeable. I'd also get to mess with the audience by getting them on side, then I'd do all these terrible things.
The only tough thing was when the overwhelming response of feedback washed over us like a tidal wave. We could see it coming, but when it hit, oh boy, every man and his dog wanted to tell me how they felt. It was also a huge lesson in the intensity of local fame. Since then I've been recognised in the strangest corners of the Earth from Vietnam to the Cinque Terra in Italy, because Kiwis love to get around. But I will always feel proud of what we did with a soap opera. For a 7pm timeslot, we really pushed the boat out.
I've got to throw some credit to my wife though, because to start with, I was terrible at fame. In fact, I was absolutely spun out by the whole thing. Then about a year after Joey, when I was working on another project that saw me travelling around the country, we were in a small town and some girls said something to me and I responded tersely. My wife Abbi, although she was my girlfriend at the time, she pulled me aside and made me realise that all those girls wanted was a little moment of connection. It didn't have to be a big thing, but she helped me see that they were saying: "I see you, can you see me." It was that simple and from that moment on I embraced it. I take my hat off to my wife for helping me see that.
Our boy Miles was born with some health issues and quite early on we discovered he had a thing called a lipoma, a fatty mass at the base of his spine. It's just a thing that happens now and again, but it meant there were lots of meetings with doctors and discussions over what to do when he was very young. Because we chose to have surgery, there were some pretty tough times up at Starship. The worst part was the operation. We thought it would take about four hours and, after seven hours we were still sitting there waiting for him to come out of theatre. Of course, we were falling apart, imagining the worst, then we got the phone call that everything was going to be fine. There were quite a few tears. because of course you feel so incredibly vulnerable when your child is in hospital, but thank goodness for those doctors. Miles is totally up and running now and he is utterly delightful. Parenthood is awesome.
I really started honing my directing craft years ago when I was making music videos for Jester, the band I was in. That was a really playful place to develop my craft and learn about cameras and lighting and putting things together. Those videos led to making short films and diving into other storytelling techniques. It hasn't been a fast track, I never thought it would be, but I've really enjoyed adding to my bag of tricks, and I now feel ready to step up and make feature films and TV series. I still love to strap on my acting skates but, as the years have gone by, I've fallen more deeply in love with directing.
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