From Seven Sharp to shorty! HILARY STEALS THE SHOW

The broadcaster admits she was a bit starstruck when she joined the cast

- Nicky Pellegrino

Before Hilary Barry got her job reading TV3’s news at 6pm, when she was still a young mum at home with two small boys, there was a regular weekday routine that helped her cope.

“Every night after the kids were bathed, fed and in bed, I’d sit down and have half an hour watching Shortland Street to unwind and decompress,” she recalls. “It really kept me company and helped keep me sane when my kids were little.”

Years later, when she moved to TVNZ to present Seven Sharp, Hilary kept hoping there might be a chance for her to appear in a cameo role on the long-running Kiwi soap.

“I was thinking perhaps of lying on a gurney being attended to by a handsome doctor, a stethoscope on the chest, anything. But it never happened,” she says.

This year, as Shortland Street celebrates its landmark 30th anniversary, Hilary was at last approached to appear on the show. Totally thrilled, she jumped at the chance.

“It was an absolute dream come true,” she enthuses.

Rather than the tiny cameo she had imagined, what the writers had in mind was something meatier. Hilary stars in two episodes of the show, screening this week (Monday May 23 and Tuesday May 24) on TVNZ 2. And the character she plays isn’t too much of a stretch for the broadcaster, who will star as herself, shooting a documentary series on the state of healthcare in New Zealand.

She admits when she saw the scripts, with pages and pages of dialogue, she panicked.

“I went from being excited to an overwhelming doubt that I could learn all those lines,” tells Hilary. “I thought, ‘I’m not an actor. I don’t know what I’m doing.’