Writer, director, actor and Taskmaster NZ contestant Jackie van Beek takes us through her life in television.
Jackie van Beek doesn’t mind admitting she hadn’t seen much of Taskmaster NZ before she agreed to appear on the show. “I literally had it on my to-do list: watch Taskmaster,” the writer, director and actor says, adding that she’d only ever watched “a couple” of episodes during the show’s six season run. But instead of hindering her performance, van Beek reckons her lack of expectations about Taskmaster NZ was a huge help in surviving the chaotic comedy contest. “It was such a spontaneous experience for me,” she says. “People were appalled and delighted by the fact that I had no idea what was going on at any given moment in time.”
Taskmaster NZ is van Beek’s latest role in a career filled with comedy and improvisation. After first appearing on our screens in Shortland Street back in the mid 1990s, van Beek went on to create, star and direct in some of New Zealand’s funniest series and films, from The Breaker Upperers, Nude Tuesday and What We Do in the Shadows, to Funny Girls and Wellington Paranormal. As well as co-creating, writing and directing The Office AU, van Beek also teamed up with husband Jesse Griffin and friend Jonny Brugh to make the improvised comedy series Educators (the fourth season will screen on TVNZ later this year).
Improvised comedy is van Beek’s happy place, which meant she was rarely fazed by any of Taskmaster NZ’s weird and unpredictable tasks, like searching a room for hidden cake, or filming an origin story for her favourite idiom. Instead, she was surprised by how creatively invigorating the show was. “I just reverted to my nine-year-old self, playing dress-ups while everyone was trapped and had to watch me. I absolutely loved it.” She also found an ally in the Taskmaster’s Assistant Paul Williams, who she “fell in love with” on her first day on set. “He was so delightful and fun and kind and such a great improviser,” van Beek says.
As the glorious mayhem of Taskmaster NZ continues, we chatted with van Beek to find out more about her life in television, including an enduring love of Cheers, her wholesome TV crush and the joy of working with one of her comedy heroes.
My earliest TV memory is… It would have been the early 80s, and I remember I’d have a bath and watch The Muppet Show. It was obviously a bizarre and silly variety sketch comedy show with incredible guest stars like Steve Martin and Diana Ross, none of whom I would have known when I was watching it as a six-year-old.
The TV show I used to rush home from school to watch was… Olly Ohlson’s After School. Mum liked that show, so she let me watch it, and then I’d try to keep watching. If Mum would walk in when I was watching W Three or The Video Dispatch, I’d say “it’s educational”, and she’d say “oh well, if it’s educational, you can keep watching”.
My earliest TV crush was… Michael J Fox from Family Ties. What used to get my heart racing was in the opening credit sequence, when he pushes off from a desk on his wheelie chair and slides across the room. He was followed closely by Chachi from Happy Days. I went from good boy to bad boy.
The TV ad I can’t forget is… That brilliant Creme egg ad from the 80s, with the “don’t get caught with egg on your face” jingle. That’s one I’ll always be able to sing along to.
The TV moment that haunts me is… In Twin Peaks when Leland and Sarah Palmer find out that their daughter, the infamous Laura Palmer, has been killed. It’s just so sad. David Lynch does it so well, because he swells that beautiful music, and the grief in that moment is done in such a big melodramatic way. I find that haunting. It taps into a deepest fear, especially as a parent. Nobody wants that phone call. Terrible stuff.
My TV guilty pleasure is… The Traitors UK. I get quite hooked into shows like that. I just watched season three, and I’m a little bit obsessed with Claudia Winkleman. She’s a new role model for me.
My first TV appearance was… On Shortland Street. I played a character called Annelise Nichol, and I was Fergus Kearney’s tearaway girlfriend. I was maybe 20 years old, fresh out of uni and Bats theatre, and I had no idea what I was doing. It was fantastic. Years later, I was asked to come back and play a completely different character, a salsa dance instructor. Sadly and slightly alarmingly, I was a lot worse when I came back again in my mid 20s – it was like I knew too much, and I was shocking. I’ve got my confidence back since then, so if I get offered a third role, I feel like I could redeem the quality of my initial appearances.
My favourite moment from my own TV career is… Filming season four of Educators with one of my comedy heroes, Julia Davis. We worked on Nude Tuesday together and became good friends. She plays my sister, and we were standing behind the school bike sheds, smoking and bickering, improvising with each other. I was like, “oh my god, this is Julia Davis, this isn’t a dream, it’s actually happening”. It was such a delight to be improvising with someone who I’ve been watching for so many years. We did feel like we could be siblings, with quite different accents.
The TV show I love and wish I was involved with is… Anything that Nathan Fielder does, whether it be Nathan For You, The Rehearsal or The Curse. I love his brain. I love how creative and mad and meta he is, and I would die to be involved in a show with him.
My favourite ever TV project is… Educators. Everyone there is just really good friends. Filming season four, Jesse and I had all three of our kids on the show. It was a proper dream come true. I’d look around and see one of them having their seventh hot chocolate, the other one complaining about their costume, the other one playing basketball when they’re meant to be doing their scene. It filled me with so much joy, and I thought, “how lucky am I?”
My most watched show of all time is… Cheers. As a teenager, I would record all the episodes and then run home from school, pull the armchair up to the TV, have about six plates of food and pop in my Cheers VHS. Skip forward 20 years, and weirdly, Jesse and I decided to lie in bed with our newborn baby and watch every single episode of Cheers. It felt very safe, always the same characters, same kind of joke, same location. There was nothing confronting or challenging about it. We’d snuggle up, I’d do a bit of breastfeeding, we’d have dinner in bed. It was winter in Australia in this very strange bogan suburb, and we just kind of went to bed for a couple of months and watched Cheers and ate noodles.
The show I’ll never watch, no matter how many people tell me to is… The Ted Bundy Tapes. I know it’s interesting, I know it’s horrific and we could really get into the nitty gritty, but I just don’t want to. It’s so dark and so sad.
The last thing I watched on television was… Jesse and I decided to watch every season of The Sopranos, because neither of us have seen it. We took three nights to get through the pilot, which wasn’t a good sign. Then Jesse fell asleep, and I just started watching Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal, season two.
Taskmaster NZ streams on TVNZ+ and screens Mondays and Tuesdays on TVNZ2 at 7.30pm.
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