Always a champion

A lifetime achievement award for screen production is a far cry from Robin Scholes’ early days, selling lingerie to brides.

- ELISABETH EASTHER

Robin Scholes was honoured in early November as Screen Producers New Zealand's 2023 industry champion, a lifetime achievement award. An academic who switched lanes to film-making, Scholes’ credits include Once Were Warriors, Mr Pip, Mahana and Rain and, for TV, miniseries like Black Hands. Her most recent film production is Warriors’ director Lee Tamahori’s The Convert.

You carved out an impressive career making factual television. What inspired you to change to drama?

It was a great privilege to make documentaries, because very rarely do we talk in depth to people about their lives. Eventually, I became frustrated with the limitations of reality. So, I decided to tell stories dramatically, but for a long time I was hooked on documentary.

Do any of those real-life stories still resonate with you today?

In the 1970s, I made a show about older people called A Good Age. One guy had lived on a huge station in the South Island until he gave it to his son and walked off. When I met him, he was living in a tiny cabin with his two dogs, and he said, “When I roam the hills, I realise that all this life is just a blink in the eye of eternity.”

Where does your story begin?

I grew up in a two-bedroom state house on Tautari St in Ōrākei, Auckland, with a steep, one-acre section, beautiful trees and amazing views over Ōkahu Bay. My father planted thousands of freesias on both sides of the path, and my earliest memories are of Mum teaching me how to sow seeds, and not plant them all in one spot.

Your father died when you were five. How did your mother cope, raising you on her own in the 1950s?