Kura Forrester: 'I'm sort of moseying along life, going everything's crack-up eventually'

After a big but wonderful year, comedian and actor Kura Forrester (Ngāti Porou) is counting down to a bowl of Christmas Day ambrosia with her mum.

On The Mixtape, she chats to Charlotte Ryan about developing a thick skin at French clowning school, making friends with her hearing aids and romping onstage with her mates in the risque stage show Camping.

While actors are "quite geeky", musicians are the coolest out of all the artists, Forrester says.

"They have the best fashion. And they're the hottest. I wish I was one sometimes… I'm always just in awe of what they do, really."

As a performer, Forrester listens to music as an "energy lifter" but sometimes chooses to conserve all the energy she can.

"I'm gonna be 40 in March. I need every beat I can get."

Wellington is "sort of home" for Forrester, who was born in Lower Hutt and raised in Dunedin and the coastal Wellington suburb of Plimmerton.

"My dad had a boat. We would just walk down to the train station if we wanted to go into town. It was gorgeous… We had a nice beach home life and then city schooling.

On the 30-minute train ride to Wellington Girls' College, Forrester admits she was one of many "naughty and annoying students".

"All the commuters going into their nine-to-five jobs were up the front of the train and the last three carriages were all the school kids.

"The dramas that used to happen, the breakups, the makeups, the fights, the getting off the carriage, running on to the next one… A lot of cool stuff went down on those trains."

After getting into acting at Wellington Girls', Forrester discovered her gift for comedy while performing in a play at an alcohol-free teen nightclub.

"I was funny in it and I didn't really know where it had come from or how I was doing it, but people laughed and I was hooked. That was definitely a moment."

Later in Paris, she studied to "find her inner clown", with the famously fearsome French clown master Philippe Gaulier.

"You are in a sense of crisis most of the time, but he's also one of the most funniest people I've ever met, so you have to just learn not to take yourself so seriously as well.

"I learned a lot from that man and [developing] thick skin was one lesson. But also having a really good funny bone and being able to see the funny side and being able to take direction as well."

Forrester was waitressing at Kiwi chef Peter Gordon's London restaurant and missing live performance when she first had a go at stand-up comedy.

"I knew I wasn't going to get an agent over there. I knew I wasn't committing to London as a place to live forever, so I did stand-up comedy because it was accessible and easy. Then that kind of grew and grew and grew, and then I came home [to New Zealand] straight into comedy. "

Forrester was in her 20s and had pulled off the same Amsterdam pub crawl two nights in a row when she first noticed that her hearing wasn't great and tinnitus was setting in.

After her mum, who wears hearing aids, encouraged her to get her hearing checked officially two years ago, Forrester now has her own behind-the-ear hearing aids in a dark brown shade that matches her hair.

She's still getting used to the experience of wearing them, but not because they attract unwanted attention.

"When I've got them on no one notices. However, when I've got them on I feel a little bit plugged into something. The sound feels stereophonic… They do really work but it's not like AirPods where the sound is quality."

This week Forrester is feeling exhausted but happy, after finishing a sell-out season of the risque comedy show Camping with her friends Tom Sainsbury, Chris Parker and Brynley Stent.

"It was just the funnest production to be a part of and it was easy. We sold loads of tickets and it brought joy to so many people. It was a wonderful, wonderful time."

After three years playing receptionist Desdemona 'Desi' Schmidt on Shortland Street Forrester is fine with being recognised in public, unless she happens to be "hungover at the supermarket buying tampons".

Posing for selfies is just something you have to get used to, she says, especially in small Kiwi towns populated by "really hearty watchers" of the TVNZ hospital soap.

When both a selfie request and the fan's smartphone are handled efficiently, the whole thing can be over within 20 seconds, she says.

"It's a fine art."

Kura Forrester's mixtape:

'Hey' by Bic Runga

Bic Runga's 1997 album Drive was the first album Forrester bought with her own money - a huge purchase back when CDs went for about $35.

"This album I loved and still love to my core. Her music is the type of music that I would love to make if I did make my own music - that folky-feeling female sound. If I could I would have picked the whole album, but this one is one of my faves."

'Settle Down' by Kimbra

This song, which features in Camping, has not been out of Forrester's head for three months.

In the original 2016 version of the show, her character's "talent" was performing "a kind of erotic poi dance" to it.

This year the "talent" was updated to operating a loop pedal, which Forrester had to then learn to do.

"I was like 'Oh, looping. How hard can it be?' It's really hard."

'Two Worlds Apart' by Little Simz

"She's so cool and inspiring. She is definitely a 'psych-up for comedy' one for me.

This song opens my latest hour of comedy Here if you Need.

"She's just somebody that I feel empowered by. I feel very femme. I feel very strong, tough, kind of like 'I don't really care what anyone else thinks'. Say what I want. She seems to be just be the most perfect person for me to [listen to] and feel like I can go out and do stand-up comedy and kick some ass."

'Ready or Not' by The Fugees

"[The Score] was the second album I got given by Santa Claus. I love The Fugees. I love Lauryn Hill. I love the sound of it, the stories they tell. However, I was quite young when I got this album.

"It was a cassette tape and we were driving somewhere for a family holiday, and my dad said, 'Do one of you kids want to put on one of your tapes that Santa got you?' He put in The Score and it was like 'eff this and that, you mother-effing…' Dad was like 'Who got you this?' I was like 'Santa'. He said 'Okay, yeah, cool'.

"Some of the songs on the album, they're pretty hardcore. The Fugees were kind of my first introduction to hip hop and I just love it to my core."

'Even After All' by Finley Quaye

"This is my heartbreak song. This is the song I listen to when I get dumped or or if I want to cry. It's also a song I love listening to on an aeroplane when you're coming into land and you sort of see that skyline or whatever. It's a beautiful song for that kind of thing.

"The biggest joy in the world is being able to do acting while you're having heartbreak, because you just get to not be yourself for a couple of hours.

"Breakups are the best for gags. Heartbreak is so funny even though it's so tragic. We love the tragedy of it all. I'm sort of moseying along life going everything's crack-up eventually."

'Dive' by Olivia Dean

"She's got a beautiful voice. She's amazing and I just particularly like her lyrics. This is like an 'early in the morning' song, for me. It's a rise and shine, maybe while you're in the shower, kind of song. I find it very uplifting, really hopeful and just beautiful."