Terri Clark: How Are You Today? Rena Owen: I'm Good Thank You. I'm
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Terri Clark: How are you today? Rena Owen: I'm good thank you. I'm excited for our two hour premier tomorrow night. Time has gone so fast. My goodness. But it's here, it's here tomorrow night. Obviously, I hope it does very well. Terri Clark: I hope so too. I really enjoyed it. I watched the two hours and I'm excited to see where it's going because there's so many mysteries involved. Rena Owen: Yes. I think that's something, as an actor, I thought was one of its strong points, is that everything was always unpredictable including for us actors because we would never quite know what would be in the next script. We got to ask that question, the same question the audience asked is, what's going to happen next? It just kind of gave it an edginess and that unpredictability and that's very much related to Ryn, the leading girl. She is a totally unpredictable species. I think, I certainly know and I would be surprised, if not everyone else realizes, if that central character did not work, the show wouldn't work. Everything rests on Ryn and she's such a stunning young woman and she's kind and she's incredibly disciplined and studious. She takes her craft very seriously. Terri Clark: I actually had the pleasure of speaking with Eline this morning, so it's been a fun day for me, getting to talk with the both of you. Pardon me, my voice is starting to go. Rena Owen: Oh that's okay. Yeah, it happens to all of us. We both come out of that kind of old fashioned school of thought, about the value of training and craft and honing and refining your skills. The show rests on her shoulders. She is the central leading character and she almost is creating a template for the future mermaids, that will come to new seasons. God be willing, we get to do multiple seasons and she's stunning and she's just lovely to work with. She's so there and she's so present and in charge of her craft. She's a joy to work with and as Helen, most of my scenes are with her, so we forged quite a very strong connection and relationship throughout the pilot and throughout the 10 episodes or the season, I should say. Terri Clark: I love that. Speaking of training, when I was doing my research on you, I noticed that you're one of nine children and that you started preforming locally at a young age. Is being part of big family like that, is that kind of how you came by wanting to perform? I know a lot of performers that come from big families, do so almost as a means to stand out initially. Is that kind of how you came about [crosstalk 00:03:45]? Rena Owen: No. It's a very timely question and particularly coming from a woman and in brief. I was born hypersensitive. I was born a typical creative or artist, whichever word you want to use. I was very hypersensitive. I had a vivid imagination. I had a flair for creativity and it started at a very young age. I mean, I was first published when I was eight years old. I entered a children's poetry contest and I won it. From age five I was always- Terri Clark: That's amazing. Rena Owen: Yeah. I was always in the performing arts. At the time it was the, Maori Culture Club and we would regularly entertain the tourists. You've just got to kind of think Hawaii. I grew up in the Bay of Islands, where basically tourists would come during summer and we'd entertain them and school. As a result of being in that cultural club, I got into the high school musicals. I knew at a very young age, that I had found my place in the world and it was very much in the arts and it was on the stage and it was performing. However, at the end of the 70's, there were three things going on. One, as a woman, my career choices were, I could be a secretary, a teacher or a nurse. Terri Clark: I know that's what you went to school for. Rena Owen: Exactly. Secondly, I had no role model. I mean, I'm a biracial girl. My dad's Native New Zealander and my mum's European. You know, we didn't have brown faces on our screens, so it wasn't something I grew up with going, "Well gosh, that's an option to me." I mean, 15 years later with the success of "Once Were Warriors," that's the thing that pleased me the most. It told me these were the brown kids and they could be actors and writers and directors and story tellers. The answer to your original question is, no. My need for performing was very much part of my passion and my imagination and my sensitivity. Absolutely, when you're the middle child, we would do things in groups. Sometimes I'd be with the older group and then sometimes I'd be with the younger group. I was the one in the middle that was the odd one out but I wasn't the odd one out because there was nine of us. I was the odd one out because I was the creative. As my mum would say many years later in those generations, they didn't quite understand artistic children. It's very different now. I was talking to another journalist about this yesterday, how every generation affords the next generation certain privileges. I got to do stuff my mother never got to do. Children now or our youth, are growing up knowing that, not only is it okay to be different, it's the aspired for thing. You're defined by your differences. They don't have to hide their quirkiness or their sexuality or those things that make them different and stand out from the crowd. It's very different times we live in and that's life and that's the evolution of our species. Yes, I did go nursing. I got accepted for teaching and nursing. I'm going to confess, I was watching a British TV soap called "Angels," and it was all about doctors and nurses. I remember saying to my mum, "Nevermind teaching. I'm going to go nursing." I got this romanticized notion of meeting a doctor. Well I never met a doctor. I never hooked up with a doctor, but I did train for three and a half years. I did qualify as a general and obstetric nurse. Then I left New Zealand 21, going on at 22. I did have aspirations of going to med school to become a doctor but the next seven years of my life took a very different course. I ended up in London. I'd played with fire, I got burned. I did a lot of things that you do when you're young and you're dumb. It's a combination of being tightly naïve and arrogant. I remember clearly that age, when you had no concept of the future. You had no concept of death. What's that word? You're just invincible. That's what you're like when you're 21, 22. I kind of went AWOL, it was my first taste of freedom. The good thing about that is, I was still in my early 20s and it made me realize that I had done nursing, to fulfill society's expectation of me as a woman and it's also with the career that pleased my parents but I still had all this creativity. I still had all this passion and sensitivity. Instead of going to med school, I enrolled in a place called, The Actors Institute, in London in 1985, end of 1985. I've been doing it ever since and I continue to write. I went on to write stage plays. They got produced and published. As a person or as a creative, really I've seen it as my medicine. I just have a need to be creative, whether it's through acting or writing. I also found that choosing the path of the artistic path, I knew right back then, that it was [crosstalk 00:09:32]. Terri Clark: I'm having a little trouble hearing you now. I'm sorry. Rena Owen: Oh. Sorry honey, yeah. Sorry, I should keep the phone close to my mouth. I knew that choosing the arts was going to be the harder career, in terms of security but the wonderful journey I've had with doing what I do is, it is a path of self discovery and I also think that the arts provides a whole lot of healing. Terri Clark: I would agree with that, definitely. Now you mentioned your writing and I know that you've written a lot of plays and you've done a lot of theater. How do those mediums differ for you creatively from say, doing film? Rena Owen: Okay. You're breaking up a little bit, so hopefully I'm not the same. Let me just clarify that question. How is acting and writing different for the theater, to doing it for film? Terri Clark: Yeah. I know you both write and you also do theater.