Sarah's silver lining ‘GOING GREY HELPED MY CAREER'

The talented star opens up about work, home, grandchildren and the intriguing contract that stipulated she wouldn’t colour her hair!

- Wendyl Nissen

Playing “snooty” is something successful Kiwi actress Sarah Peirse does very well. So the opportunity to portray a snooty winemaker in Central Otago for the new TVNZ series Under the Vines was too good a chance to turn down.

For a start, she got to work in her home country instead of overseas at the beginning of last year in one of New Zealand’s most beautiful areas, plus she worked with a plethora of Kiwi actors and crew. It was a lot of fun.

“It’s a charming show,” she says. “It’s funny, silly and also very sweet. There’s a lightness to it that was very appealing.”

Sarah, 63, says she has played haughty characters a lot in theatre, but not so much on screen.

“In my acting work, I seem to have a metronome that goes from snooty to undermined, vulnerable and potentially dead. That’s the kind of range I seem to occupy,” she laughs.

Her character Marissa in Under the Vines is one many people will recognise from small-town life in New Zealand. “She exists because she is one of a kind and there aren’t a lot of people who challenge her,” tells Sarah. “She would not function so well in a big city – she would be submerged by it all.”

Sarah says that eventually a small army of people rise up to challenge Marissa in the show and it makes for good comedy.

To play Marissa, Sarah says she used an amalgam of different accents and mannerisms.