The 30-year history of Shortland Street is one of renewal. With the exception of Michael Galvin’s eternal Dr Warner, faces come and go – and sometimes even come back.
But it’s rare to see the kind of event lined up for Monday, May 1, when six new cast members arrive in a single episode. There’s a dramatic premise for the mass debut: all six are new surgical registrars – and they all covet a permanent position as a resident surgeon. Let the rivalries begin!
There’s another angle. One of the new registrars is Chris Warner’s son, Harry. Harry has completed medical school and he’s back from China, where he followed his son Xun and Xun’s mother, Zhilan Li (Bridget Wong) – and Dr Warner will be tasked with teaching him alongside the others. Twenty-year-old Toi Whakaari graduate Xander Manktelow takes over the Harry role from Reid Walker.
It’s Manktelow’s first recurring role (he had a guest role in an episode of the teen drama Mystic), but for another of the debutants, it’s the first time on screen. Clémentine Mills plays the “quirky, mischievous and chaotic” Quinn Cox, who, she says, “has the best of intentions but doesn’t always navigate things the right way”. Mills has a theatre background and appeared in three Pop-Up Globe productions, but like latter-day stars Rose McIver and KJ Apa, the first line of her filmography will always be Shortland Street.
It’s been a very different path for Tatum Warren-Ngata, who plays the “intelligent and ambitious” Stella Reihana. The 2017 South Seas Film and TV School graduate has already had roles in the bilingual youth drama series Ahikāroa, The Panthers, Creamerie and Jane Campion’s Academy Award-winning film The Power of the Dog.
As if to underline her range, she also won the role of Cordelia in Auckland Theatre Company’s forthcoming production of King Lear. But in a recent interview, she singled out Martin Henderson and Lucy Lawless, who she performed with in the third season of My Life is Murder, as role models: “It was inspiring for me to watch, as a younger actor, just going, ‘Wow, they’re so organised’, with their own prep and their own craft.”
Ariki Turner, who plays another one of the new registrars, Noah Forrester, already has a role in Lee Tamahori’s forthcoming colonial epic, The Convert. His character is billed as a “calming” and “romantic” presence among the ambitious newbies, but there are hints that he feels the pressure more than the others.
By contrast, Britt Adams arrives at Shortland Street with an ambition: to become the youngest female head of surgery in the hospital’s history. Will she be conflict-prone? Highly likely. Adams is played by Madeleine Adams, who comes off more than a dozen roles, including in Alibi, Mystic and The Brokenwood Mysteries and the feature films In a Flash and Black Christmas.
The new crew is rounded out by Matamata-born, Otago-educated Aidan O’Malley, who has appeared in Golden Boy and the Auckland Theatre Company production of The Haka Party Incident.
For viewers, there are two questions: which fresh face will win the resident surgeon’s job? And which will we be reading about in Variety in five years’ time?
Shortland Street airs on TVNZ 2 weekdays at 7.00pm and is available for streaming online on TVNZ+.
