Te Reo's Tribe How Nicole's Showing The Way

Nicole Hoey (54), From Auckland, Is the Managing Director of Cinco Cine Film Productions.

- Ciara Pratt

"I grew up in Kaikohe and my tribal affiliations are Ngati Kahu and Te Aupouri. I went to school up there until I was 12 and then came down to Auckland for boarding school.

My mother was a teacher and she taught preschoolers, I think I got a love for being very imaginative from my mother because she was constantly creating resources for her classrooms. The weekend before school started, we all had to be in her classroom making it look beautiful for the kids. She would create plays and we were always creating stories. Now that’s what I’ve spent my career doing!

I’ve worked my way up from the bottom in the television industry. There weren’t television schools when I was coming out of high school, so people teaching you on the job were your education. You had to hit the ground running and be a fast learner.

I started in television commercials where we would shoot two to three commercials a week. Working in advertising proved to be a fantastic training ground for moving into making television programmes because you had to learn from a very young age how to pitch your ideas. It does feel like I sort of fell into making TV shows.