Antonia's new challenge: 'IT'S A LOVELY NEXT STEP!'

She loved playing a murderous church leader, but the actress is now expanding into podcasts, TV production and, hopefully, wedding planning

- Amy Prebble.

Thrashing around desperately in a pool, trying to avoid being drowned by your lover – who is the mother of one of the people you’ve murdered – was the perfect climactic exit for Antonia Prebble’s Shortland Street character Rebekah.

“I realised that in my whole career, I’ve never done any acting in a pool!” says the actress, who starred in six seasons each of iconic Kiwi shows Outrageous Fortune and Westside. “It was so fun. Now I will only act in a pool. Anything else is not OK.” 

Antonia always knew that playing the unhinged televangelist on New Zealand’s favourite soap would be a short-term gig, but she’s glad Rebekah didn’t meet a watery end.

“For a villainous character like her, either she goes to jail or she dies. I was quite pleased when I read that she goes to jail because then she might come back!”

 Not that Antonia will be twiddling her thumbs waiting for Rebekah’s return. After her chat with Woman’s Day, the actress is heading off to film the last day of shooting for a top-secret new show for Three.

She and her partner Daniel Musgrove also have two TV series in development, plus the first series of her new podcast, What Matters Most with clinical psychologist Jacqui McGuire, recently hit number two in New Zealand on the Apple Podcast charts.