22 Apr 2024, 00:00

There’s not a whiff of Hollywood about LA-based Kiwi actor Grace Palmer. That’s a good thing. Kiwis don’t much like the local-girl-made-good who comes home, like, oh-so-California. “Can someone get me an oat milk latte and a papaya salad?”

Instead, Palmer is swigging “my DC” ( Diet Coke) from her bag, admits to being addicted to supermarket lollies, and asks me, “Can I get you a drink or something?”

She’s upbeat, likeable, self-sufficient. She’s chosen and collected the clothes for the Reset magazine photo shoot herself – a mixture of Stolen Girlfriend’s Club and Ksubi pieces, and a selection of her own shoes from a sizeable collection – and lugged it all up from the basement carpark. Cheerfully.

Not long back from Canada where she’s been shooting Animal Control, a new Fox comedy series, she’s fizzing about what she sees as her first big break. It pays well, she plays a lead – one of five animal control officers who find themselves in hilarious situations - and most of all, it’s “so fun”.

“When you’re working on a comedy you laugh all day, every day. Or you are trying not to laugh and you’re trying to make other people laugh. It is such a joy.”

Set in Seattle, the series was shot in the Vancouver winter, and the cast endured 15-hour days in the cold.

“It was freezing. There was one day that we couldn’t legally shoot because it was too cold.”

But still, it was comedy, something that Palmer is good at. Comedy, she says, makes her “heart sing”. By comparison, dramatic acting takes it out of her.

“You are exhausted emotionally because it’s a lot, particularly if you are trying to make yourself cry, or you’re giving birth in the middle of a (erupting) volcano.”

The volcano reference harks back to her Shortland Street days where she cut her acting teeth playing nurse Lucy Rickman. Palmer, now 28, was 19 when she landed the role. In the nearly three years on the show, her character created a sex tape, was held hostage, got married and had a baby while a volcano was erupting. When Palmer signalled to the producers it was time for her to go, Shortland Street scriptwriters gave “Lucy” a dramatic send-off. After she gave birth to her baby daughter in the back of a car half buried in ash, she haemorrhaged and died.

“It was outrageous,” she laughs.

Next up was LA in 2018, after landing a part in the survival drama Adrift, filmed in Fiji. The movie is based on the true story of Tami Oldham Ashcraft who survived for 41 days drifting in the Pacific Ocean after the yacht she was on was damaged in a hurricane. Palmer’s role was small, but that didn’t matter.

It was her first “Hollywood” experience and the lead was played by Shailene Woodley, one of her acting idols.

“She was just the coolest, nicest person in the world. I was just soaking up the experience more than anything.”

On her own in LA, she rented a place in West Hollywood and sent out audition tape after audition tape, often in both Kiwi and American accents.

“There are many tapes that I’ve sent out into the ether and I’ve never heard anything about, and you don’t know if anyone sees them. But occasionally you’ll get the good one.”

For the girl who grew up in the small settlement of Tai Tapu, South Canterbury, with a large extended, blended family until she was 18, it was tough.

“It was hard and it was lonely,” she says.

Now, when not away filming, Palmer lives with her husband, actor Rawiri Jobe, who also acted in Shortland Street. He currently plays a detective in crime series My Life is Murder, starring Lucy Lawless as a fearless investigator.

The couple bought an apartment in Auckland last year to use as their Kiwi base, but before Palmer had a chance to “nest” she was off to Canada for four months to shoot Animal Control.

She arrived in Vancouver without having met any of the show’s casting directors in person and without knowing which accent they favoured. It turned out they loved the sound of Kiwi.

“For this (Animal Control) they wanted to hear the comedy in different accents. They really liked the New Zealand accent. The humour in this (show) is very dry.”

It’s a role that Palmer says has changed her life.

“It’s made by some pretty epic people who have done a lot in the comedy world, people who have worked on The Office (the US version), New Girl and Family Guy.”

As animal control officers, the cast face absurd scenarios – a racoon stuck in a church organ, a professional football player with a pet snake wrapped around his neck, and “a guy whose pet rabbit has got into his magic mushroom chocolate”. Palmer is laughing at the memory.

As both a writer and actor, Palmer has plenty on the go. She played a make-up artist in dark comedy Bad Behaviour, starring Jennifer Connelly, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Her main incentive was to work with Jane Campion’s multi-talented daughter Alice Englert who directed, co-wrote and acted in the film.

Palmer has another TV show in development in New Zealand and is waiting to hear if Animal Control will run to a second season, in which case she’ll head back to Canada.

Two great dads

Palmer’s acting pedigree is a mixture of nature and nurture. She grew up in a creative family that she describes as “very extended, blended whanau”.

Her parents are Tony Palmer and Janine Morrell-Gunn, both TV producers. And producer and presenter Jason Gunn has been her step-father for most of her life. Palmer says she had “two great dads” growing up. It was from Gunn that she learned the knack of mimicking accents.

It was with one of her sisters, Eve, that she created and co-wrote Good Grief, with screenwriter Nick Schaedel, a two-season comedy series currently on TVNZ+.

Two sisters, Gwen (Grace) and Ellie (Eve) inherit a run-down funeral parlour from their late koro (grandfather). Gwen is the vape-smoking rebellious sister who tells type-A Ellie that “You’re way too young to be this cringe, eh.”

Gwen just wants to head off to Bali to become a DJ. But hair-in-a-tight-bun Ellie is determined to honour their grandfather’s legacy and have a go at being funeral directors. While Gwen is gagging over a recently deceased man in the embalming room, Ellie tells her brightly, “Just put the clothes on the body, like playing Barbie. Pretend he’s Ken.”

A mixture of eccentric characters – the company’s caterer and psychic makes “vagan” muffins for a client but adds cream cheese icing because they came out a “bit bland” – whacky funeral scenarios and funny lines create laugh-out-loud moments in the show.

And, yes, the characters of Gwen and Ellie are extreme versions of the two sisters’ personalities. Palmer was always considered the outrageous one in her family.

“She’s (Eve) not as anally retentive and I’m not as delinquent but that is the dynamic,” Palmer says. “That’s definitely our sense of humour.”

Home base, apart from the Auckland apartment and one at Venice Beach in LA, is still the “quaint and gorgeous” Tai Tapu. Her parents live five minutes away from each other and sister Eve lives between the two.

Palmer describes herself as “clingy” as a kid, easily homesick, easily bored and distracted. (She’s since been diagnosed with ADHD). At school she was the fidgety, impulsive kid who said the wrong thing, at the wrong time to the wrong person.

“I had two teachers who refused to teach me. I wasn’t allowed to take art history or classics because the same teacher taught that and she didn’t like me.”

Family thought Grace would have a sports career. She played touch rugby and cricket for Canterbury, was in an array of representative sports teams and was a competitive gymnast for six years.

But Palmer told the careers adviser at St Margaret’s College in Christchurch that she wanted to be an actor.

“She said ‘you’ll probably wind up singing in a bar.’ I’m not joking. You should put that in.”

Despite her clinginess, at 18 she got on a plane to Sydney – she jokes that her mother forced her – to find out if she could make it on her own. A brave move.

“I’m very brave,” she responds quickly. She’s happy with that description. Her middle name is Mana, strength in Maori; her grandfather Tom (Ngāti Kahunganu ki Wairoa) had the same middle name.

“When he died the kids had it tattooed on them.” Palmer’s is on her wrist.

Now she has to cover the tattoo when she’s acting. Palmer says she has lots of other tattoos as well but they’re out of sight. And then, as if to prove she’s the outrageous member of the family she delivers this with a giggle: “The other ones are on my arse so if I’m doing a show where you can see my arse I’d probably need to question what the show is.”

Makeup: Claudia Rodrigues, Clothing: Stolen Girlfriends Club, Ksubi, Paloma Wool. Jewellery: Paloma Wool

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