News of New Zealanders via Global Media

Photographer Robin Hammond Hands Camera to Refugees

Photographer Robin Hammond Hands Camera to Refugees

New Zealander Robin Hammond has spent two decades crisscrossing the developing world and telling other people’s stories, Guardian correspondent Lizzy Davies writes. For his latest project the award-winning photographer has embarked on a paradigm…

Starstruck Another Triumph for New Zealand Comedy

Starstruck Another Triumph for New Zealand Comedy

“Australians have known for decades that New Zealanders are the funniest people in the world: we’ve been claiming hilarious Kiwis as our own since John Clarke crossed the ditch in the ’70s,” Ben Pobjie…

Apple’s Zane Lowe the Great Communicator

Apple’s Zane Lowe the Great Communicator

When Apple launched its music streaming service in 2015, it hired New Zealander Zane Lowe to be, effectively, its face and voice. Apple Music may not do Spotify numbers but, in Lowe, they have…

Chalmers Brothers Promote Band With Car Wash

Chalmers Brothers Promote Band With Car Wash

Originally from Hawkes Bay, the Los-Angeles-based Chalmers brothers, who perform as indie rock band Emperors Night, are promoting themselves by washing cars for free in exchange for a follow in their Instagram page, Richard…

Ballroom Culture Transforms QTPOC Community

Ballroom Culture Transforms QTPOC Community

Safe spaces for QTPOC communities in a country seen by the rest of the world as progressive are rare, but trans women are finding space and solace in Auckland’s balls, Beatrice Hazlehurst reports for…

Lorde’s Sunny New Single a Lesson in Patience

Lorde’s Sunny New Single a Lesson in Patience

“Lorde has said she was ‘waiting for the right moment’ to release her comeback single, Solar Power, and opted for 11 June to coincide with the year’s only solar eclipse,” Laura Snapes writes for…

Meg Mason’s First UK-Published Book Well Received

Meg Mason’s First UK-Published Book Well Received

New Zealand author Meg Mason’s “moving novel”, Sorrow and Bliss, “about mental illness and sisterly love finds hilarity and wisdom in anguish, without ever diminishing pain”, Clare Clark writes in a review for The…

Crowded House Is Back and Loving It

Crowded House Is Back and Loving It

With this month’s release of Crowded House’s latest album, Dreamers Are Waiting, journalist Russell Brown interviews the “reconstituted” band for The Sydney Morning Herald at Neil Finn’s Roundhead Studios in Auckland. They’re fresh from a…

Ladyhawke Bites Back with Guilty Love

Ladyhawke Bites Back with Guilty Love

Ladyhawke, aka Pip Brown, 41, has been through some tough times, but she’s come out on the other side, Robin Murray writes for music and fashion magazine, Clash. The New Zealand alt-pop force took…

Dive into Your Superconscious with Chris Duncan

Dive into Your Superconscious with Chris Duncan

If you’ve felt like you’re at a psychological plateau lately, relief may be only a page turn away, Forbes contributor Serenity Gibbons writes. Gibbons has put together a list of books, including You’re Not…

Al Jazeera’s Elizabeth Puranam Reports from India

Al Jazeera’s Elizabeth Puranam Reports from India

In the beginning it was a shock, people dying around her while desperate families begged hospital officials for help. Auckland-raised Al Jazeera anchor and journalist Elizabeth Puranam, 37, wouldn’t say she’s used to it,…

Ten of the Best from The Chills Back Catalogue

Ten of the Best from The Chills Back Catalogue

Dunedin-formed band The Chills is releasing a new album, Scatterbrain. To celebrate, The Guardian counts down 10 of their top songs. “A singular band, The Chills are difficult to stylistically define because their diverse…

Actor Kerry Fox Looks Back at Life in Lower Hutt

Actor Kerry Fox Looks Back at Life in Lower Hutt

New Zealander Kerry Fox, the star of Shallow Grave and Intimacy looks back at her Lower Hutt childhood, driving at 15, her parents disco dancing and an Abba fan club in her shed. “The highlight…

Stuntwoman Vanessa Cater Kicking up an LA Storm

Stuntwoman Vanessa Cater Kicking up an LA Storm

New Zealand-born stuntwoman Vanessa Cater has just finished putting her body on the line in Marvel’s new TV show The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. Before that, the action woman has worked in The…

Violinist Benjamin Baker Teams Up on New Album

Violinist Benjamin Baker Teams Up on New Album

“In July this year, New Zealand-born violinist Benjamin Baker will be part of the online line-up for the East Neuk Festival,” Ken Walkton writes in a review page for The Scotsman. “Meanwhile, here he…

Advice for Budding Female Comics from Rose Matafeo

Advice for Budding Female Comics from Rose Matafeo

New Zealander Rose Matafeo, 29, is a staple on the UK stand-up circuit; you probably know her face from regular appearances on panel shows, or from her critically-acclaimed comedy special Horndog. But now, she’s…

Christchurch Teen Flynn Cranston Flies Up Charts

Christchurch Teen Flynn Cranston Flies Up Charts

Fifteen-year-old Flynn Cranston has become the youngest New Zealander to enter the Billboard music charts, after co-writing and co-producing hit single Richer with US rappers Rod Wave and Polo G, David Skipwith reports for…

Talented New Zealanders Make Forbes Under 30 List

Talented New Zealanders Make Forbes Under 30 List

New Zealander Stella Bennett, aka Benee, and Joshua Nanani, who goes by the name of Jawsh 685, are among the musical talent in the Entertainment & Sports category of this year’s Forbes 30 Under…

Mansfield and Woolf’s a Transformative Friendship

Mansfield and Woolf’s a Transformative Friendship

“Stories of friendships between artists are often told as love stories: the chance meeting, the electric first encounter, the mysterious mutual recognition that would change everything,” Megan O’Grady writes in a feature about creative…

Film Fest Director Marten Rabarts Adapts

Film Fest Director Marten Rabarts Adapts

Marten Rabarts, the globetrotting New Zealand film executive turned festival director reflects on a year spent grounded, watching whales from his home office and the formative influences of Wendy Palmer and Michael Kuhn, Sandy…

Rhys Darby and Terminix Unite for Campaign

Rhys Darby and Terminix Unite for Campaign

New Zealand actor Rhys Darby joined Adweek for an exclusive interview about his new campaign with American pest control company, Terminix. Darby, 47, is no stranger to humour – or bringing it to the ads…

Peter Jackson to Receive Visual Effects Accolade

Peter Jackson to Receive Visual Effects Accolade

New Zealand film director Sir Peter Jackson will receive the Visual Effects Society Lifetime Achievement Award at the 19th annual VES Awards, which will be presented during a virtual ceremony on 6 April. “Sir Peter…

Wurld Series’ New Album Thoughtful and Witty

Wurld Series’ New Album Thoughtful and Witty

“Wurld Series seem to know how to escape millennial disaffection more than most. The Christchurch band, led by songwriter Luke Towart and producer and drummer Brian Feary, fight the encroaching threat of an optimised,…

Sinead Boucher and Stuff Break up with Social Media

Sinead Boucher and Stuff Break up with Social Media

Stuff’s decision to quit Facebook did not come out of the blue. In 2019, after the horrific mass shooting at mosques in Christchurch was livestreamed on Facebook, the company, headed by Sinead Boucher, began…

Kenneth Rea Teacher to Outstanding Actors

Kenneth Rea Teacher to Outstanding Actors

The mentor to some of Britain’s top performers believes the best acting comes from a childhood sense of playfulness – and is fraught with danger, David Jays reports for The Guardian. Defining the core…

Artist Euan Macleod Scoops Huge Drawing Prize

Artist Euan Macleod Scoops Huge Drawing Prize

Multi award-winning artist Christchurch-born Euan Macleod has won the Australian $30,000 Dobell Drawing Prize with a pastel-on-paper work entitled Borderlands, Nick Galvin reports for The Sydney Morning Herald. Each of the 15 postcard-sized images in…

Blackpink’s Rosé Smashes UK Charts Glass Ceiling

Blackpink’s Rosé Smashes UK Charts Glass Ceiling

Auckland-born singer Rosé, 24, already a star as a member of one of the biggest girl groups on the planet, has now made history in one of the largest music markets in the world…

Deadpan NZ Comedy Acts Resonate Far and Wide

Deadpan NZ Comedy Acts Resonate Far and Wide

The peculiar brand of awkward, self-deprecating, deadpan humour Jemaine Clement, Bret McKenzie and Taika Waititi developed on stage in the late 1990s – let’s call it the Wellington School of comedy – has now…

Creative Facebook Appointment for Nicky Bell

Creative Facebook Appointment for Nicky Bell

Facebook has appointed New Zealander Nicky Bell – international innovation consultancy R/GA’s former SVP global client partnerships – as its new global VP of Creative Shop. In a statement announcing her Los Angeles-based appointment, Facebook…

Metal Heroes Alien Weaponry on the Up

Metal Heroes Alien Weaponry on the Up

Alien Weaponry are part way through a tour of their homeland, New Zealand, Eleanor Goodman reports for UK heavy metal magazine, Metal Hammer. The run of dates is called the Level One Tour, named…

Whina an Exacting Assignment for Rena Owen

Whina an Exacting Assignment for Rena Owen

None of veteran New Zealand actor Rena Owen’s tough previous roles prepared her for the demands – both physical and emotional – of playing Māori matriarch and political activist Whina Cooper, in the new…

Designer Josh Nelson Inspired by People-Watching

Designer Josh Nelson Inspired by People-Watching

Josh Nelson doesn’t own a car. Because of this, he regularly takes public transport around his home of Auckland, watching locals interact on bus and rail, Giacomo Lee writes for a story published online…

Why NZ’s Cheeky New Porn PSA Went Viral

Why NZ’s Cheeky New Porn PSA Went Viral

The New Zealand-made Keep It Real Online advertising campaign that reminds parents to speak to their children about the pitfalls of pornography and other internet harms quickly went viral when it was released in late…

Portland-Based Artist Vo Vo’s New Show Ignites

Portland-Based Artist Vo Vo’s New Show Ignites

After working four months with a tapestry company to create a textile for an upcoming show, New Zealand-born Portland-based artist Vo Vo ran into a problem: The company refused to print the design, Shannon…

Special Group Delivers for Uber Eats at Super Bowl

Special Group Delivers for Uber Eats at Super Bowl

In just about every Super Bowl, there are ads – and, by extension, an agency or two – that come out of nowhere and make a splash, Doug Zanger reports for US industry publication,…

War Correspondent Kate Webb Subject in New Book

War Correspondent Kate Webb Subject in New Book

Vietnam was less quagmire and more a crucible for more than 468 women accredited reporters during a war where lives and deaths could never be measured by lines on a map. Journalist Elizabeth Becker’s…

US Production Company Snaps Up Meg Mason Book

US Production Company Snaps Up Meg Mason Book

“The production company behind movies such as 12 Years a Slave, Gone Girl and Bohemian Rhapsody has snapped up” the film and TV rights for Foxton-born Christchurch-raised writer Meg Mason’s latest novel – a…

Six60 Play World’s Only Stadium Tour

Six60 Play World’s Only Stadium Tour

They’re currently the planet’s biggest touring band, putting on huge shows in their COVID-free homeland, NME reports. In his own words, Six60’s frontman, Matiu Walters, told the magazine how that feels. “When New Zealand went into…

Lucy Blakiston’s Insta Page Hugely Popular

Lucy Blakiston’s Insta Page Hugely Popular

Celebrities like Ariana Grande, Bella Hadid, Halle Berry, Reese Witherspoon and Chrissy Teigen are just some of the followers of Lucy Blakiston’s Instagram account, Shit you should care about. Morgane Solignac interviews the 23-year-old…

Amazing Race’s Phil Keoghan Fronts Tough as Nails

Amazing Race’s Phil Keoghan Fronts Tough as Nails

Over the last two decades, Phil Keoghan has mostly led a nomadic life, Praveen Sudevan writes for The Hindu. As the host of The Amazing Race, a reality adventure show with 15 Emmy awards,…

Stunt Royal Zoë Bell Embracing Collaboration

Stunt Royal Zoë Bell Embracing Collaboration

It’s been 20 years since New Zealander Zoë Bell arrived in Los Angeles, where she soon took her stunt double career to another level. The Waiheke Island-native made her name after the iconic stunt collaboration…

LA Gallery Owner Blown Away by Emma McIntyre

LA Gallery Owner Blown Away by Emma McIntyre

Auckland-born artist Emma McIntyre’s first show out of New Zealand, ‘Pour plenty on the worlds’, is now on in Los Angeles at Chris Sharp Gallery, the new establishment’s debut show. Sharp, who co-curated the New…

Singer Sarah Mary Chadwick Says It All on New Album

Singer Sarah Mary Chadwick Says It All on New Album

On the launch of her new album, Me and Ennui Are Friends, Baby, New Zealand-born Melbourne-based singer Sarah Mary Chadwick “interrogates the forensic intimacy and specificity of her songs”. Jenny Valentish interviews Chadwick for…

There’s Extreme Tension Coming Home in the Dark

There’s Extreme Tension Coming Home in the Dark

“The enormity of nature hits you like a freight train in the early scenes of James Ashcroft’s taut and sinewy first feature, Coming Home in the Dark,” David Rooney writes in a…

Sun Journalist Dan Wootton Heads to GB News

Sun Journalist Dan Wootton Heads to GB News

Lower Hutt-born Dan Wootton, 37, the Sun journalist who broke the story of “Megxit”, is leaving to present a daily show on GB News and write for Mail Online, Amol Rajan reports in a…

Exeloo Named America’s Best Public Toilet

Exeloo Named America’s Best Public Toilet

The West Auckland-designed and manufactured Exeloo unit was named top toilet at the inaugural Best Restroom in America awards, which were held in November, Esther Taunton reports for Stuff. The “touchless” toilet was the subject…

Elizabeth Knox’s The Absolute Book Wry and Precise

Elizabeth Knox’s The Absolute Book Wry and Precise

New Zealand author Elizabeth Knox’s 2019 novel, The Absolute Book, is reviewed alongside UK-based Everina Maxwell’s Winter’s Orbit, by Canadian writer Amal El-Mohtar for The New York Times. “Here are two novels that are, in some ways, opposites:…

Comedian Rose Matafeo’s 2021 is Shaping Up

Comedian Rose Matafeo’s 2021 is Shaping Up

With an acclaimed romcom, one-off HBO special and a new sitcom out this year, 2021 is looking good for New Zealand-born rising comic, Rose Matafeo, who is based in the UK. NME’s George Fenwick recently…

Popular Film Baby Done Released in UK

Popular Film Baby Done Released in UK

With New Zealand-made film Baby Done just released on digital platforms throughout the UK, the BBC’s Emma Jones writes about the film’s star, Rose Matafeo, and how the film explores misgivings about motherhood. Matafeo, 28,…

RuPaul’s Drag Race Heads Down Under

RuPaul’s Drag Race Heads Down Under

Emmy-winning production company World of Wonder is bringing RuPaul’s drag queen reality series to New Zealand and Australia, and it will be appropriately titled RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under, Dino-Ray Ramos reports for Deadline. RuPaul…

Local Creatives On Navigating a Post-Covid World

Local Creatives On Navigating a Post-Covid World

In a recent online i-D magazine article, young New Zealand creatives – including photographer Apela Bell (pictured), designer Charlotte Jennings, and performers Benee and Teeks – explain to readers “what it looks like on…

Trapped in Museums for Centuries, Maori Ancestors Are Coming Home

Trapped in Museums for Centuries, Maori Ancestors Are Coming Home

Writing for Atlas Obscura, Ye Charlotte Ming has taken an in-depth look at the ongoing process of repatriation of Maori remains from international museums, quoting poet and musician Hinemoana Baker, researcher Amber Aranui and…

Filmmaker Charlotte Larsen On Her Latest Projects

Filmmaker Charlotte Larsen On Her Latest Projects

US-based Charlotte Larsen, 38, is poised to become a household name. The New Zealand native has found success as a producer and actress on popular films like Gloria and Great Expectations. She is currently…

Artist Simon Denny Reflects on Berlin Art Programme

Artist Simon Denny Reflects on Berlin Art Programme

Co-founder of the Berlin Program for Artists (BPA) New Zealand-born Simon Denny, 39, (pictured right) explains why artists are essential to the fabric of Germany’s capital city in an article for UK art magazine, Frieze. “When…

Is Letterboxd Becoming a Blockbuster?

Is Letterboxd Becoming a Blockbuster?

Early last decade, Matthew Buchanan (pictured right) and Karl von Randow, web designers based in Auckland, were seeking a passion project, Calum Marsh writes for The New York Times. Their business, a boutique web…

Graeme James Revives Lost Art of Shipwreck Song

Graeme James Revives Lost Art of Shipwreck Song

“It’s been a while since” anything like “a gripping seafaring-disaster song” has “come along, but to that list we can now add ‘The Voyage of the James Caird’ by New Zealand singer-songwriter Graeme James,”…