What was he talking about? He said, ‘I had a near-death experience last year. And then two major, major surgeries within six months. They were of such a nature that I will never be the same. I do expect to compete in triathlons again. In the past, it was always to compete for a podium spot; now, finishing would be the objective … I think I can beat it. I think I can do it.’
He was being very obtuse about the surgery. He would not elaborate. Later, while I hung around the house, he told me. You don’t want to know.
On the record, I asked him whether he felt physically chastened and humbled. He said, ‘Actually, that contributed to some of the issues. It’s certainly no excuse for anything that I’ve done, but to see the body fail … it took a mental readjustment, one that I wasn’t fully prepared to do … I clearly was stressed out and wound too tight. I was dealing with physical issues of some magnitude.’
The death of the body, and then the death of a brilliant career. The way Buchanan seemed to grope at the air around him, like a man who was lost and was trying to figure out how he had got there and why it had happened to him, suggested that he was suffering what I think of as a symptom of trauma: a need to relive it, an addiction to the experience. Was he, in fact, traumatised by his sacking? He said, ‘It has been the worst thing that has happened to me in New Zealand by a far, far stretch.’
By the time I left, the phone was back on and Alejandra’s luggage had been found. I walked backwards up the driveway and he was still hollering, a castaway signalling that he was still alive.
[December 2]
25 Adam Rickitt
The Guy Whose Head Exploded
Two hundred years of settlement and still the English come, blinking in the bright New Zealand light, happy to be here, tickled by the scenery, put at ease by the warm welcome, excited at the possibilities of opportunity and commerce in these lazy sensual isles at the end of the world. Adam Rickitt said, ‘Hopefully I’m a good chap.’ Slim, pretty, twenty-eight, house-trained in expensive boarding schools in the English countryside, he has recently taken out permanent residency in New Zealand.
We met on a humid December morning at the Shortland Street studios. Rickitt said, ‘I love working on this show. It cares about acting. It cares about story line.’ He plays the role of Kieran Mitchell, an English backpacker who fell for Libby, then had an affair with Claire but became a suspect when she was found strangled to death, and the stress caused his brain to explode. Fortunately, surgeons restored him back to health.
As a teenager, Rickitt became famous when he won a role on Coronation Street. I asked whether he was regarded as an A, B or C-list celebrity back in England. He said, ‘Not A. A-list is Hollywood and the Prince of … uh … William. The C-list is page three models sleeping with footballers. I’m probably B-list. I don’t worry about it. I got into this business to be an actor.’
He said soaps were his favourite medium. ‘Soaps have a stigma but I think it’s wrong. I genuinely think it’s wrong. Speaking to Ian’ – Ian McKellen – ‘when he did his stint on Coronation Street, he was shocked at the level of acting you have to do.’
Rickitt’s done long runs in West End theatre: ‘But after a year, even if you’re Laurence Olivier, it gets a bit boring.’ Did he think he was a good actor? ‘If you ask John Gielgud on his deathbed, “Are you the best actor you’ve ever been?” he would say, “I could do better tomorrow.” As an actor you’ve always got to look to do better in the next scene.’
Olivier, McKellen, Gielgud – the names of the knights dripped off his tongue. But a closer measure of his association with royalty is that one of the last television shows he appeared in before coming to New Zealand was alongside Lord Freddie Windsor, a tabloid clown who was thirty-first in line to the throne. They starred in a reality show that replicated the experience of the Argentinian rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes in 1972, and who could survive only by eating the flesh of the dead. ‘It was a genuine documentary,’ said Rickitt. ‘We followed in their footsteps. We slept where they slept. We ate – well, not exactly what they ate, but we ate nothing but raw meat.’
Any attempt to parody Rickitt would count as a pointless exercise; he was his own vicious satirist, continually and unintentionally sending himself up something wicked. He talked about his plans to produce a historical epic set in New Zealand, made by his company, which is called Narcissus Films.
He said, ‘It’s all based on the land wars. It’s such a fascinating subject and so few people know about it.’ What era, exactly? ‘The actual land wars. You know, the settlement and the wars of the Maori up to the Treaty. That whole period, it just fascinates me. You have all these films like Braveheart and Dancing With Wolves, and you have this amazing opportunity to do it here. But it’s something you can only do with the utter, utter partnership with the Maori community. It’s their story as much as the British.’
I pointed out that the land wars were subsequent to the 1840 Treaty. ‘Yeah yeah. But that whole settlement period. And the whole, you know, what went on beforehand. And I just think … I mean, visually, it’s going to be stunning.’
I felt it fair to warn him about River Queen. Had he seen it? ‘Yeah yeah. And I’ve also got the land
