Michelle Langstone is shaping up to be quite the dark horse of Celebrity Treasure Island. She was part of the coup that successfully wrested power off captain Suzanne Paul, survived an elimination challenge against Tāmati Coffey, and formed a tight alliance with teammates Millen Baird, Janaye Henry and Christian Cullen.
And she’s accomplished all of this while managing to avoid painting a giant target on her back as the game plays out.
“I just love the show,” the acclaimed actress and award-winning writer, 45, smiles as she explains her strategy. “I’d never watched reality TV at all until I started watching Treasure Island.”
The genre’s often derided as light and fluffy, but for Michelle, that was exactly what she was looking for. Having just welcomed baby boy Sunny, the McLeod’s Daughters, 800 Words and The Almighty Johnsons star wanted something undemanding to blob out with at the end of a hard day’s mothering.
“He’d be in bed, so I’d watch while eating dinner. Then, I inevitably crashed on the couch,” she recalls, thinking back to exhausting days as a new parent in 2021. “I found it super-charming, warm and silly. I really loved it.”
While some TV stars are struggling with roughing it on a remote beach on the Coromandel Peninsula, Michelle’s affinity for the great outdoors, along with her knowledge of CTI, have made her a formidable opponent, even if some of her teammates have been slow to catch on to that fact.
“I love camping, I love swimming, I grew up on boats and I’m a real nature nerd,” Michelle says, before revealing her top Celebrity Treasure Island secret – she’s intimately familiar with the lay of the land around Te Whanganui-A-Hei/Cathedral Cove as her family would regularly sail down from Auckland for the holidays.
“We used to bring our boat down to the Coromandel all the time, especially the first boat that we had, which leaked like hell,” she laughs. “I’ve spent endless summers around here. It was always a big expedition. It would take a while to get down on our puttering, little boat and then we’d be here for three or four weeks. I love it here. It’s beautiful.”
While Michelle could happily natter away for hours about all the birds she’s spotted around Team Aihe’s base camp, we gently steer the conversation towards her iconic role as Fiona “Fee” Webb on everybody’s favourite Aussie drama, McLeod’s Daughters.
“Oh, my God, that’s 20 years ago!” she laughs. “It really got into the heart of viewers that show, which is a beautiful thing. People just watch it and rewatch it. I do still get fans coming up to me to ask if I was in it. That’s staggering because I’m 45 now.
“It’s always when I least expect it. For example, when I’m at the beach, covered in sand and salt, and I look like a wet rat. But people are usually super-nice about it.”
She’s had plenty of high-profile gigs since, on shows like One Lane Bridge and The Brokenwood Mysteries. However, Michelle’s favourite role is that of mum to wee Sunny. She describes the IVF process that led to his conception as “really tough” for both her and her husband, Arun Jeram.
“They couldn’t say that it was me and they couldn’t say it was my husband,” she sighs. “Doctors called it unexplained infertility. They didn’t know why.”
Her first IVF transfer was unsuccessful, stirring up many emotions. She detailed these with aching clarity in her debut book, an acclaimed collection of essays titled Times Like These. The couple’s second IVF had a much happier result.
“I don’t think I would’ve done this show if I hadn’t been a mum,” Michelle admits. “It’s taught me so much and it given me courage in a new way.
“It’s very funny, tiring and challenging – kids really push your buttons and change you in ways you could never expect. But motherhood has expanded my world. It’s like I live in 15 worlds instead of one.”
Celebrity Treasure Island screens 7.30pm Monday to Wednesday on TVNZ 2 and TVNZ+.
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