She’s getting the blame for breaking up New Zealand’s favourite TV family, but Roz Turnbull says she would be friends with her on-screen alter ego, Cat Gibson. They’re both blonde, tall and romantics at heart – but apart from a set of motorcycle leathers hanging in her wardrobe, that’s as far as the similarities go, Roz says.
While Cat is the single, bikie chick who rode into Shortland Street’s Ferndale a couple of months ago and captured the heart of family man Murray Cooper, Roz is a happily married mum with two young boys, Jed (6) and Dan (3). And the motorcycle gear? It comes courtesy of Roz’s husband Lance, who used to be a motocross rider. “People say, ‘You’re Cat, aren’t you?’ I have to say, ‘It’s not real, I’m really a mum of two from south Auckland.'”
On screen, Shortland Street’s Cooper family has been torn apart by Murray’s decision to leave his wife Wendy for a new life with Cat. But Roz says when the cameras stop rolling, “everyone is really fun”.
After years working on other programmes such as Outrageous Fortune, the pace at which Shortland Street is filmed came as a surprise. “I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It’s awesome. I enjoy the speed of it,” says Roz. But it’s not always easy managing the schedule of a full-time actress with two young children. “It is hard on the kids,” she admits.
But the stunning actress makes sure she has a support system. Her mother lives nearby, and on the day the Weekly visits she’s convincing Jed and Dan to brush their hair. Help is also at hand from a friend with children the same age as Roz’s, who steps in when the Shortland Street schedule means she has to leave for work very early in the morning. “I get my callsheet the week before and we plan from there,” explains Roz.
She says she and Lance often spend time in the evenings working out who is picking up whom, which uniforms are needed and what lunches need to be made. “So Lance can just drop the kids off and go to work. Now the kids are a bit more selfsufficient it’s easier for him.” But when they come together at the end of the day, Jed says he enjoys seeing his mum on screen. “I love it!”
Shortland Street’s ratings have been through the roof since Cat entered the picture and Roz says that’s probably because so many people can relate to her character’s situation. “There are probably lots of people who don’t want to watch but can’t help themselves, so many people across the board can relate to it. There’s been quite a backlash against the fact that they’ve broken up the one family which could have stayed together.”
Being the face of that break-up hasn’t fazed Roz. “It’s a soap,” she laughs. Roz studied in Australia, but most of her life has been spent in and around Auckland. She grew up not far from her new home in south Auckland and before it was built a year ago, lived just around the corner.
The rural setting is a great place to bring up Jed and Dan, although when Lance was working on the other side of the city the commute started to get to him a bit, Roz says. Despite only having been on the Shortland Street set for a matter of weeks, she’s already been stopped in supermarkets and shops by the show’s fans. But being the country’s most famous “other woman” has its drawbacks, as Roz found while out shopping recently.
A group of young women were following her around, she recalls. “I looked up and made the mistake of making eye contact. They said, not even quietly, ‘Yeah, she looks like a b***h.'” Then, at the checkout, she ran into them again. “I looked up, smiled and said hi.”
As the on-screen drama unfolds, Roz reckons Cat may be getting too much of the blame for the Cooper family’s painful meltdown. “Cat’s story is a love story. It’s about her and Murray – she just fell in love with him. She gave him the opportunity to tell her to go and he didn’t want her to.”
Roz thinks Shortland Street fans should consider giving Cat a second chance. “I would like to think I play her as someone likeable. I hope I do her justice.”
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