Late last year, a podcast diving deep into Aotearoa’s most internationally successful TV comedy show was launched, hosted by the two hilarious leads of the show; (Officers) Karen O’Leary and Mike Minogue of Wellington Paranormal.
We asked Mike to tell us about the impact the global smash hit show had on his life, ahead of a special live edition of Wellington Paranormal: The Podcast.
The one-off live event in Auckland takes place on Saturday 17th February at Q Theatre – $25 tix are available here and live stream here for those unable to make it.
Wellington Paranormal: Season 1
Wellington Paranormal was born as a highly unlikely spin-off of the Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi-directed cult-smash What We Do in the Shadows. I can promise you nobody was more surprised than Karen O’Leary and I when Jemaine told us on a recent episode of the Wellington Paranormal Podcast that he turned to Taika within 45 seconds of our first scene as Officers Minogue and O’Leary and said ‘These two should have their own TV show.’ Taika apparently agreed.
I had no idea they felt this way of course; I was too busy being terrified that I was going to be fired at any moment by a couple of national icons who would realise at any moment that hiring me had been a horrendous mistake. They would find somebody else to replace me or, even better, nobody. That was largely what was going through my head for the first two days of the shoot as Karen and I improvised for the first time in our lives, with some of the very best practitioners of the art in the country, if not the world.
It wasn’t until we shot a scene where we warned their characters of the dangers of having no smoke detectors (while ignoring the burnt and smoking corpse of a vampire hunter) that I realised we might survive. Jemaine, Taika and Jonny Brugh were all laughing so much that filming had to be stopped. If you watch the scene today you can see they are struggling to keep it together.
I felt more relief than joy but it was undoubtedly a life-changing experience. Three years later, we were filming the first of four seasons of Wellington Paranormal, which was a gift from start to finish. You can act your whole life and never be lucky enough to be involved in a project that connects so intensely with such a wide audience. I’ve been stopped in the street by fans who range from the age of 6 to 86 and come from all walks of life. The show is beloved by many, particularly in the rainbow community, thanks in no small part to the mould-breaking Karen O’Leary, my partner in the show and great friend in life.
If Karen and I hadn’t had the divine luck of being paired together on Shadows I doubt either one of us would have done much in our lives that would have garnered the attention and adulation that Wellington Paranormal has. The entire experience has been one great piece of luck followed by another and anything I’m fortunate enough to do now, from hosting the Drive Show on Radio Hauraki to running talent agency Frank Management, is a straight line back to that set where Jemaine Clement whispered an insane idea to Taika Waititi:
“These two should have their own TV show.”
And as it turned out, they weren’t wrong.
Wellington Paranormal screens, or has screened, in over 100 countries around the globe including the United States, where it was the most streamed show in the nation for a week or two on its home at HBO. All with a budget of around a million kiwi pesos; barely enough, one would imagine, to have covered the soccer ball budget on mega-hit Ted Lasso which was released around the same time.
Like Ted Lasso, there haven’t been any new episodes of Wellington Paranormal for quite some time but a fella told me on a podcast recently that that might be about to change.
And that would be optimal.
The podcast is available in all good podcast apps and right here.
Wellington Paranormal: The Podcast‘s live show is on this Saturday 17th Feb at Q Theatre in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland as part of Podfest. $25 tickets are available here and if you can’t make it, a live stream is also available.
