Many people may know New Zealand actor Ana Scotney for her incredible performance in the film adaptation of the Patricia Grace novel Cousins.
She talks to Jesse Mulligan about her latest film Millie Lies Low and the podcast True Justice.
Ana Scotney Photo: IMDB
After first auditioning for the role in 2018, Ana Scotney says it's been a relief to get Millie Lies Low out into the world.
The film crew were only three days into principal photography when the pandemic hit and production stopped.
“In retrospect, I’m sure we’ll look back in a decade and go oh my gosh, remember that little independent comedy-drama that we made amidst the global pandemic.”
Co-written by Eli Kent and Michelle Savill – who also directed the film – Millie Lies Low is about a young woman selected for an internship in New York. She's set to leave when a moment of panic causes her to miss her flight.
The idea came from Savill's own experience of missing a flight to France to share her 2012 short film Ellen is Leaving.
“As I understand it, she had this moment where in her turmoil – it was going to be $3000 to get a new flight – she was like dang, what am I going to do? I’m just going to have to pretend that I’m over there for two weeks'.
“She didn’t do that, she went to France, but I think that was the seed of the idea – Millie takes the path that Michelle didn’t take.”
The film opens with Millie having a panic attack on the plane.
“I think that it’s apt that film is about a young woman with a really intense moment of anxiety in her life, as a microscope of what’s been happening for us over the past few years.”
Ana Scotney in Millie Lies Low Photo:
- Related: Ana Scotney on her favourite things (Afternoons)
Within the “hectic passage of time that’s been the Covid moment”, Scotney found herself living in Byron Bay and working on the Netflix show God’s Favourite Idiot.
“For me the cool thing about that project was having the opportunity to work with two rangatira, in my eyes, working in the medium of comedy, specifically in the American context.
“I would say at first I was quite characteristically Kiwi – shy and nervous.”
Scotney describes Wendy, her character on God’s Favourite Idiot, as a “gift-giver”.
“I feel as though in the office workplace environment – which is where the show is set, in her world – she takes care of people, she’s a little sweetie.”
Wendy’s storyline revolves around a crush she has on a colleague: “That was really cute to convey quite a gentle soul moving through the world.”
While the show might lead to more work in the US, Scotney says she’s really fulfilled by the stories now being told here in Aotearoa.
“With being a performer I suppose there’s this assumption that the grass is greener working internationally and I think that would be a really cool experience to be able to understand more about scale, being a part of projects where you kind of have to push yourself to understand a sensibility to another part of the world.
“That being said, I think we’re at a point in our storytelling, especially for screen, where we’re on the precipice of seeing some really amazing stories come forward that are personally interesting to me because they explore a way of being from Aotearoa that embraces intersectionality – to be of, in my case anyway, both a Māori and a Pākehā cross culture and to be of different diasporas from other parts of the world and how those voices exist within the New Zealand context.
“I know there are people developing work in those spaces and I think that’s really, really cool.”
Among a raft of recent projects, Scotney co-hosts the podcast True Justice which focuses on people with lived experience of the criminal justice system.
She says it was important for her to be involved as she's always had an interest in supporting true stories that don’t always get airtime.
“I think from the perspective of a middle-class, well-educated Māori but also someone who is wahine Māori and who has been fortunate enough through my work as an artist, be involved in a rehabilitative wananga inside the penal space, I wanted to contribute to this as something I take quite personally, from the point of view that Māori women make up 65 percent of the total prison population of women in this country – that's something that breaks my heart, if I’m perfectly honest.
“[I'm glad to] have the opportunity to understand more and contribute to this kaupapa as a means of popularising what I think could otherwise be quite difficult for people to hear of [and] understand a bit more about what are the forces at play that inform an individual or a community to pursue a specific trajectory.”
- Related: The inside word on True Justice
