TV presenter and podcast host Petra Bagust takes us through her life in television.
Petra Bagust never wanted to be on television. As a university student in Christchurch, she read Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves To Death, a best-selling text that warned that television was bad for humanity. So when Bagust began hosting a music television show on Canterbury’s Cry TV in the mid 1990s – and enjoyed every minute of it – she struggled with her unexpected fondness for the telly. “I really loved being on it, it was so fun, but I was also suspicious that it wasn’t that good for us. It was a conundrum.”
From those tricky beginnings, Bagust went on to build an impressive 30-year career in broadcasting and television. Her first major TV role was in 1995 as a co-host of youth show Ice TV, and when the series ended after six years, Bagust moved on to present a variety of beloved New Zealand shows like Travel.co.nz, Hot Property, Breakfast, What’s Really in Our Food and The Project NZ. These days Bagust works as an MC and a chaplain, but you’re most likely to find her behind the microphone in Grey Areas, her award-winning podcast that explores the complexities of growing older in Aotearoa.
Bagust describes Grey Areas as the most fulfilling work of her long and varied career. “There’s an intimacy in podcasting that’s profound,” she tells The Spinoff. “You can follow a thread and make discoveries, and the person you’re talking to can make discoveries. There’s an immense reciprocity to it.” It’s this type of connection that inspired Bagust to team up with her friend and author Niki Bezzant for Hot Mess, an upcoming speaking tour about the challenges of navigating midlife and menopause. “It’s about being in the room together,” says Bagust of meeting audiences around the motu. “It’s about saying, this is tough and elements of it suck and also it’s hilarious and let’s go.”
We got in the room with Bagust to ask about her life in television, which began all those years ago in Cry TV’s unlikely studio – a double garage attached to a former nunnery, high in the Port Hills. “When I got into telly, they were like, ‘oh, the golden days are over,” Bagust chuckles. “I look back now and I’m like, ‘no, they weren’t’. There was still a gold-plated patina to it.” From After School to Ice TV to Christmas in the Park, this is Petra Bagust’s golden life in television.
My earliest TV memory is… I have this very vivid memory as a young girl of watching Miss New Zealand and my mind boggling at swimsuits with high heels. I love the beach and I love being in water, so I didn’t understand swimsuits and high heels.
The TV show I used to rush home from school to watch was… After School with Olly Ohlson. I was so excited to see him at the baggage carousel at Dunedin Airport, 20 years after the show finished.
My earliest TV crush was… Dirk Benedict, who played Lieutenant Starbuck in Battlestar Galactica. He was quite clean cut, but he didn’t take himself too seriously.
The TV ad I can’t stop thinking about is… A Mitre 10 ‘DIY: It’s in our DNA’ ad. It could be because our daughter was cast in it. The teacher calls out a roll and every person’s name is a tool that you would buy at Mitre 10, so there’s Polly Filler and Dwayne Pipe and Bill Dingpermit. Our daughter ended up with heaps of her mates in it. I remember the makeup artist accidentally put a little burn on the teacher’s neck with the hair tongs, so she’s wearing a scarf in the ad.
My first ever appearance on TV was… On regional music television in Ōtautahi, Christchurch, on Cry TV. I did Monday to Friday, 6-9pm. I was at uni all day, and then I would drive in my Morris Marina up the Port Hills, 15km to the studio, and I would sit and host a video show for three hours. I remember my very first time on camera when they were counting down the seconds and my entire body said “run!” I didn’t, and that was the beginning.
My most watched TV show of all time is… Every series of Pride and Prejudice. I’m a full sucker. Matthew McFadyen is my number one Darcy.
My favourite TV moment from my own career is… Christmas in the Park. One year it rained the whole night. There were thousands of people who sat in the rain and watched, and we were on stage, talking and singing and dancing our hearts out. There was something truly joyous about it, in the overcoming of the adversity.
But it would also equally be sitting on a couch with Jon [Bridges] and Nathan [Rarere] on Ice TV just cracking up, riffing on something and then throwing to Bic Runga or Dave Dobbyn. It’s being in the room with people you love and a live audience, and just being in awe of the talent that’s around you.
My favourite TV character of all time is… Linda Carter’s Wonder Woman, Slow Horses’ Jackson Lamb, and Ted Lasso. Just a nice combo of those three people.
My enduring memory of Ice TV is… It was my grown-up adolescence. We got to dream up ideas and then make them. We made our own comedy-dramas – I was always the police chief or the hospital chief, and every line I had, I was shouting. We threw stuff off a building in Off A Building. The execs at TV3 said, “you’re not allowed on the sixth floor of the building”. They were worried we were going to prank them, so we did At A Building and Near A Building and Beside A Building. The following year we thought “why don’t we blow stuff up with dynamite?” But none of it was better than Off A Building.
It was pure play, and in the late 90s, there wasn’t YouTube, there weren’t cameras everywhere. Nathan, Jon and I would drive around the city with camcorders, shoot stuff and take it back to a director, and they would cut it into something hilarious. We shot an entire show from a hot tub on a hotel roof in Queenstown. We were literally in our togs making telly. We got to break into Team New Zealand’s compound. Jonny Bridges dove in and he added a little teeny, tiny fan motor to the bottom of the boat. We got to be like, “let’s drive to Cape Reinga!” It was amazing.
The most stylish person on television is… Melissa Stokes, 1News’ weekend newsreader. She is even more stylish off television than she is on. She loves New Zealand designers, she believes in creativity, and she’s willing to push the boat out.
The TV show I wish I was involved with is… I was desperate to be on Intrepid Journeys, but I was on TV3 and it was a TVNZ show. The other show that I thought was absolutely genius was Making Tracks by Nick Dwyer. He took iconic New Zealand songs and went to another country to record a new version with, say, a New Orleans brass band.
My controversial TV opinion is… TV would improve if there were more middle-aged women with grey hair on it.
The show I’ll never watch, no matter how many people tell me to is… Game of Thrones and Squid Games. I won’t watch anything that’s already up to three seasons. I can’t commit the time.
The last thing I watched on TV was… The Warriors game on Saturday night, where they won in the final seconds. But I wasn’t really paying attention, so you probably can’t count it.
Season eight of Grey Areas begins in September. Ticket details for Hot Mess are here.
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