Para Normal Activity-Karen's Wild Welly Bunch

The TV cop’s a riot at home

- Julie Jacobsn

She can’t bend spoons, but Wellington Paranormal star Karen O’Leary can do the death drop and she did once mistake the lights on top of the transmitter on Mount Victoria for an alien invasion.

Blame it on the wind. When Wellington gets a blow on, anything crazy can happen. And today is one of those days, except unlike the rest of us who get a bit cranky after what seems like weeks on end of it, Karen reckons she’s in her element.

“The wind makes people creative, it keeps them fresh,” she asserts.

It’s not clear if she’s taking the proverbial as it’s hard to tell where Officer O’Leary from black comedy Paranormal stops and Karen O’Leary starts. In-person, the Wellington comedienne is eerily similar to her alter ego, the eponymously named cop in the popular Kiwi mockumentary.

There’s that deadpan delivery, the double entendre, the easy back and forth.

“Kez, how’s my face looking?” she asks partner Kerryn Pollock, 41, who’s on make-up duty, or as Karen puts it, “face watching, so I don’t look like I’ve got too much make-up on”.

The pair met through Karen’s day job – she is head teacher at Adelaide Early Childhood Centre, and Kerryn’s now 12-year-old son Amos used to be one of her charges. They have been a couple for five-ish years – there’s some discussion about the exact time – and are engaged.

Karen, also 41, proposed following the premiere of The Breaker Upperers in May 2018. It was, from all accounts, a true red-carpet affair.