Rhysently Random

Defining Kiwi moments hosted by Darby

Last year he was riding a juggernaut to Hollywood superstardom - making movies with Oscar winners and playing sidekick to Jim Carrey.

But next month, the Rhys Darby rocket returns to planet Earth and touches down in New Zealand as the comic hosts C4's second series of Rocked the Nation.

Rocked the Nation 2 begins screening on July 6 and will count down the country's top 100 pop culture stories, from Ahmed Zaoui to Xena.

Produced by the same team behind last year's hit series, which recalled the nation's defining bygone music moments, the six-part series promises to delve into both the obvious and obscure as it revisits the moments that put Aotearoa on the map - and some that were simply world famous in New Zealand.

Darby says he's stoked to host the series and give a little back to New Zealand.

"
It's important for me, seeing as how I have chosen to live here in New Zealand, that I'm seen as working here too. I don't want people to think that they've lost me to Hollywood or Britain."


So grab your jandals and run to the dairy to pick up some kai before the show. Then after, we'll slap on some Natural Glow, head to the Blue Light and do the Time Warp again.

Sound like a plan? Yeah right.

dontlookback wrote:

[size=100:gqbve0rt]So grab your jandals and run to the dairy to pick up some kai before the show. Then after, we'll slap on some Natural Glow, head to the Blue Light and do the Time Warp again.

[size=100:tx1p2v61]His unique twist on humour has landed Kiwi funny man Rhys Darby right up there on the big screen alongside Hollywood comedy greats like Jim Carrey.

But last night Darby was back on home turf, in Queenstown, competing for laughs against the cream of New Zealand comedy.

Darby was arguing the affirmative with TV3's Sunrise presenter Oliver Driver and Paul Ego against Te Radar, Dai Henwood and Queenstown broadcaster Emma Lange at the Queenstown Winter Festival Comedy Debate, with presenter Jeremy Corbett as MC.

Asked if it was a bit of a comedown returning home to feature alongside "
ordinary"
Kiwi comedians after starring in movies like Yes Man with Carrey and in Briton Richard Curtis' movie The Boat That Rocked, Darby put his tongue in his cheek, and flashed a grin at the others.

"
Well, I've always felt that way it's just proof of it now."


He said Carrey had been more laid-back than he expected.

"
You'd think he'd be crazy and wild ... but he's not.

"
He's always a good inspiration he and I would hang out in between scenes at the monitors and talk about Peter Sellers."


Darby said inspiration for his character Murray on Flight of the Conchords came from "
a whole lot of men I'd met through the years, managers I'd worked with, managers and bosses in the air training corps and the army"
.

He had moulded all these different personalities together and come up with a confident, suave character who had empathy.

However, Ego was unfazed by Darby's stardom.

Asked who his favourite comedian of all time was, Ego quipped: "
Ah, that guy from Flight of the Bumble Bee ... you know? Rhys Darfood?"


Te Radar awarded Corbett the "
most improved comedian"
award, "
because there was a time when it was elusive for Jeremy"
, while Driver said his main interest was "
getting the ratings up"
on Sunrise Darby would star this morning.

As for Queenstown's homegrown Lange, she was sure she was probably just the "
token local girl"
.

"
It's a tough gig only girl, only local I may as well grate my face over a grater,"
she said.

sargifster wrote:[size=150:g9b5zjwz]Float like a Conchord, sting like a bumble bee

[size=100:g9b5zjwz]His unique twist on humour has landed Kiwi funny man Rhys Darby right up there on the big screen alongside Hollywood comedy greats like Jim Carrey.

But last night Darby was back on home turf, in Queenstown, competing for laughs against the cream of New Zealand comedy.

Darby was arguing the affirmative with TV3's Sunrise presenter Oliver Driver and Paul Ego against Te Radar, Dai Henwood and Queenstown broadcaster Emma Lange at the Queenstown Winter Festival Comedy Debate, with presenter Jeremy Corbett as MC.

Asked if it was a bit of a comedown returning home to feature alongside "
ordinary"
Kiwi comedians after starring in movies like Yes Man with Carrey and in Briton Richard Curtis' movie The Boat That Rocked, Darby put his tongue in his cheek, and flashed a grin at the others.

"
Well, I've always felt that way it's just proof of it now."


He said Carrey had been more laid-back than he expected.

"
You'd think he'd be crazy and wild ... but he's not.

"
He's always a good inspiration he and I would hang out in between scenes at the monitors and talk about Peter Sellers."


Darby said inspiration for his character Murray on Flight of the Conchords came from "
a whole lot of men I'd met through the years, managers I'd worked with, managers and bosses in the air training corps and the army"
.

He had moulded all these different personalities together and come up with a confident, suave character who had empathy.

However, Ego was unfazed by Darby's stardom.

Asked who his favourite comedian of all time was, Ego quipped: "
Ah, that guy from Flight of the Bumble Bee ... you know? Rhys Darfood?"


Te Radar awarded Corbett the "
most improved comedian"
award, "
because there was a time when it was elusive for Jeremy"
, while Driver said his main interest was "
getting the ratings up"
on Sunrise Darby would star this morning.

As for Queenstown's homegrown Lange, she was sure she was probably just the "
token local girl"
.

"
It's a tough gig only girl, only local I may as well grate my face over a grater,"
she said.

[url=Source][/url]

dontlookback wrote:[align=center:9x62sw44]

Defining Kiwi moments hosted by Darby

Last year he was riding a juggernaut to Hollywood superstardom - making movies with Oscar winners and playing sidekick to Jim Carrey.

But next month, the Rhys Darby rocket returns to planet Earth and touches down in New Zealand as the comic hosts C4's second series of Rocked the Nation.

Rocked the Nation 2 begins screening on July 6 and will count down the country's top 100 pop culture stories, from Ahmed Zaoui to Xena.

Produced by the same team behind last year's hit series, which recalled the nation's defining bygone music moments, the six-part series promises to delve into both the obvious and obscure as it revisits the moments that put Aotearoa on the map - and some that were simply world famous in New Zealand.

Darby says he's stoked to host the series and give a little back to New Zealand.

"
It's important for me, seeing as how I have chosen to live here in New Zealand, that I'm seen as working here too. I don't want people to think that they've lost me to Hollywood or Britain."


So grab your jandals and run to the dairy to pick up some kai before the show. Then after, we'll slap on some Natural Glow, head to the Blue Light and do the Time Warp again.

Sound like a plan? Yeah right.

[/align:9x62sw44]

Amily wrote:

dontlookback wrote:[align=center:tc2sl27u][/align:tc2sl27u]

Amily wrote:

[size=133:7nnxt4yj]Audience ‘guinea pigs’ for Darby
By Lucy Ibbotson on Thu, 2 Jul 2009

[size=100:7nnxt4yj]Faulty GPS systems, the New Zealand police force, Big Wednesday lottery hype and Wanaka's weather were all fodder for internationally successful New Zealand comedian Rhys Darby during his show in Wanaka last Saturday night.

The show was part of a fundraising evening for the Wanaka Primary School Future Trust.

The News had an exclusive interview with Darby on the night, during which he revealed a third season of HBO's cult comedy show Flight of the Conchords, in which he stars as incompetent band manager Murray Hewitt, was still a possibility - despite earlier reports to the contrary.

‘‘I've got a feeling that we haven't seen the last of Murray,'' Darby said of his onscreen alter ego.

‘‘I don't know yet if we're going to do another season, but if we don't, we'll do something else.''

Darby holidayed in Wanaka for several days last week with his wife Rosie and three-yearold son Finn, sampling local attractions like the Wanaka Transport and Toy Museum, Puzzling World, Wanaka River Journeys and Cardrona Alpine Resort.

Despite having only skied once before ‘‘in the '80s'', Darby was pleased with his mastery.

‘‘I got a lesson and within half an hour I was pretty much Olympic level - the guy said he couldn't do anything more with me.''

Fame, fortune and physical prowess have not entirely gone to Darby's head, though.

From Hollywood films to Central Otago school fundraisers, he does not discriminate.

‘‘I'm not that guy, I'm not the big Hollywood guy who lives over in LA.

I live in New Zealand and I support New Zealand sensibilities and that's from small town to big town.''

He said a lot of encouragement to get behind the fundraiser had come from his wife Rosie, who fielded the initial request from the school's trust to perform a show in Wanaka.

She was from ‘‘small town'' Nelson and had promoted the view that small towns sometimes needed outside support.

Darby also claimed to have ‘‘small town envy'', which stemmed from living in Auckland, but having siblings who grew up on a farm in the Manawatu.

Saturday night's show was not the first time Darby had been to Wanaka.

He performed at Cinema Paradiso in 2000 with a group called The Brat Pack.

‘‘Our catchphrase was ‘Young, hip and hilarious'.''

Following his family holiday down south, which included appearing in the Great Comedy Debate as part of the American Express Queenstown Winter Festival, Darby planned to work on a new live show which he would be taking to Edinburgh, before coming back to tour New Zealand.

He also had another stand-up comedy DVD in the pipeline, following on from the success of his debut title Imagine That!.

While all other projects were ‘‘top secret'', Darby did tell The News the audience members at the Wanaka show were ‘‘guinea pigs'' for his freshest material yet, much of which even his wife had not heard.

The $200 ticket price for the evening included a meal and auction - for which Darby donated a mouth organ used in his act, which sold for $370.

Wanaka Primary School Future Trust secretary Heather Wellman confirmed about 260 of 300 available tickets to the evening had sold.

A final figure of what was raised from the evening had not yet been calculated.

[size=150:t84zc0rc]Comedian fronts mobile ads
4:00AM Saturday Jul 04, 2009
By Helen Twose


Rhys Darby, coming to a screen near you to promote 2degrees.

[size=100:t84zc0rc]Kiwi funnyman Rhys Darby is to become the face of an advertising campaign for new mobile company 2degrees.

Staff at the mobile company were privy to a preview screening of the television ad on Thursday night but the company's marketing manager Larrie Moore refused to be drawn on the content or confirm Darby's role.

He said the adverts, which will screen across all TV channels tomorrow evening, would focus on the "
personality and values"
of the 2degrees brand. "
Obviously more things will be revealed as we go towards launch in August,"
he said.

"
Expect the unexpected. We're not going to win any customers by doing what the competition do in any sense of the marketing mix."


Darby, famous for his role on the Flight of the Conchords television show as Murray the band's manager, has previously featured in a Nike ad playing tennis great Roger Federer.

2degrees this week announced a tie-up with major retail brands which will see its phones and SIM cards sold at supermarkets, petrol stations and electronics stores.

Moore said the company would have different methods of payment outside of the traditional contract model offered by Telecom and Vodafone.

"
The consumers have told us they have methods of payment they prefer and its not always the same for different people,"
said Moore.

He said the company had looked overseas to get an understanding of how other operators have cracked highly penetrated markets.

gezyka wrote:^^^ Here's a commercial:

[flash=350,287:gjn17b7z]https://www.youtube.com/v/QzCeeuwm6aA&hl=en&fs=1[/flash:gjn17b7z]

Oh, Rhys.

[size=100:v06jtp9a]BrettVincent: The real Rhys Darby now on Twitter [url=@rhysiedarby][/url] he's joined because of 2 other users pretending to be him. please RT x

gezyka wrote:

[size=100:4r9efi41]BrettVincent: The real Rhys Darby now on Twitter [url=@rhysiedarby][/url] he's joined because of 2 other users pretending to be him. please RT x

Source:

gezyka wrote:

[size=100:cr7oo8ww]BrettVincent: The real Rhys Darby now on Twitter [url=@rhysiedarby][/url] he's joined because of 2 other users pretending to be him. please RT x

Source:

FromTimes Online
July 26, 2009

[size=133:e4f2gli5]Rhys Darby returns to stand up
[size=100:e4f2gli5]Flight of the Conchords star who was New Zealand folk duo's hopeless manager heralds stand-ups from down under


(Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

Stephen Armstrong

[size=100:e4f2gli5]Whenwe started filming Flight of the Conchords, I thought people would basically hate Murray,” explains Rhys Darby, the stand-up comic who plays the New Zealand folk duo Bret and Jemaine’s hapless, helpless and hopeless manager. “You had these two cool guys, and every now and then they’d have a scene stuck in an office with a dick. Actually, the opposite turned out to be true. Everyone loves Murray. So now, when I go on tour, instead of 30 people in the audience — most of whom I know — there’s something like 400.” He shakes his head in awe. “That’s why I’m leaving New Zealand. I’m overexposed. The whole population has seen me.”

Darby is returning to the UK, where he spent six tough years at the start of the century eking out a career as a stand-up, to play a few London gigs and a full run at the Edinburgh Festival. “It’s going to be weird not losing £8,000 this time,” he muses. The new show deals a lot with the strangeness of Hollywood as seen from a Kiwi perspective;
since being “plucked from a damp gig at a Welsh arts centre”, Darby has bounced from Conchords glory to steal scenes from Jim Carrey in Yes Man and clown for Richard Curtis in The Boat That Rocked.

“I used to do really physical comedy, nothing like Murray at all, but this show is more grown-up. It’s about the culture shock and the weird things that happen out there, but it’s really not quite as weird to me as I make out,” he admits. “The way things are in the US — well, it’s kind of like Australia. The same sports, the same go-for-it attitude and the same patronising approach to the little island way across the water.” He grins. “That’s how the Yanks see you guys, isn’t it?”

To be fair to Darby, now that New Zealand comedy is reaching a global stage, it looks as if he has a point, in gag terms at least. Australian comics such as Brendon Burns, Jim Jeffries and Adam Hills have been brash, full-on, motor-mouthed or relentlessly upbeat. New Zealanders such as the Conchords are more downbeat, self-mocking and fatalistic. Like the Brits, in other words.

Here, for instance, are Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement telling me about their first trip to Hollywood. (You need to know that McKenzie played a non-speaking hobbit in The Lord of the Rings.)

BM: We’d run out of money — it was a complicated situation — so we had to stay at this girl’s house.

JC: She was like a superfan. She really loved Bret’s work in The Lord of the Rings. So Bret and I would go out every night and see bands, then we’d get back to her place and the first thing she wanted to do was watch the extended DVD of Lord of the Rings, which she’d just got.

BM: We’d say, what shall we do? And she’d say, “Do you want to watch a movie?” So we’d say, okay, and the three of us were sitting on the couch watching my deleted scenes. Which was pretty weird.

JC: She’d say things like, “Bret, there’s another 40 seconds of you in the ‘making of’.”

Compare this with Adam Hills talking about the founding of Australia: “White Australians were sent to Australia as convicts on great big boats. The scum of the earth, sent to the arsehole of the planet. On the way, they must have been going, ‘I can’t believe I’m being sent to this place. All I did was steal a loaf of bread, and now I’m being sent to this awful place. It’s gonna be horrible, I’m going to hate it.’ Then the convicts docked at Bondi Beach. They all looked up and went, ‘Oh yeahhh!’ And a nation was born.”

As with the Brits and the Yanks, the rivalry is fought in only one direction. Conchords lob regular grenades at Oz, both in their HBO sitcom and in casual conversation. You were voted among the sexiest men in the world by an Australian magazine, I point out to them. “But have you been to Australia?” Clement shoots back. Australian comics rarely even mention their neighbours. Over here, however, it’s only recently we’ve been able to separate the two in comedy terms. Right now, with a combined population of 25m, it’s possible that the two countries have more top-flight comics per capita than any other continent. A casual flick across the Edinburgh Festival guide, current comedy listings and American television schedules, for instance, shows Rhys Darby, the Conchords, Al Pitcher, Tim Minchin, Adam Hills, Brendon Burns, Pam Ann, Julia Morris, Jim Jeffries, Greg Fleet, Wilson Dixon and Celia Pacquola all “active”. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, we only had Lano and Woodley, the Doug Anthony All Stars, Pamela Stephenson and Paul Hogan.

“I suppose the launch of the Melbourne Comedy Festival in 1987 changed that,” says Tim Minchin, the Australian stand-up who mixes crashing chords on a grand piano with dark obser­vations on sex, death and God. “The Aus­tralian comedy circuit is kind of small, and big in the most inconvenient ways. There aren’t many venues, and the ones we have are hundreds of miles apart and separated by mountains. That’s probably why so many of us come to the UK.”

Minchin, who currently lives in London, is working on a new show, which he’s touring in September and October. He credits the Edinburgh Festival with creating his career. “I was planning to be a musician, but I had written all these comedy songs, so I decided to play them in a one-off gig, just to get them out of my system,” he explains.

Karen Koren, from the Gilded Balloon theatre, saw the gig and booked him for the festival in 2005, where he picked up the Perrier award for best newcomer. He now performs in the UK, Australia and America. His experience — moving to London, then making it big in the USA — mirrors that of his compatriot Jim Jeffries, who has an HBO show this autumn, and the Conchords.

“We spent years in Wellington, where a friend of mine was putting on a comedy gig at this bar, with audiences of between 10 and 20 people. Every week. Thursday night. The one comedy night,” McKenzie explains. “Most of our TV show is based on those years.”

For Darby, it’s the perfect way to develop great comedy. “I’ve talked to Irish comedians and it seems exactly the same. You’re part of a tiny circuit where you all know each other and all play on the same bills, then you head to London — which is the greatest comedy scene in the world. You can hone your craft and actually earn money doing stand-up in the UK, which is almost impossible anywhere else — including America.”

Then, of course, you head off to the States, to make big bucks and never come back again? He harrumphs for a second, then counters: “Ah, but now you’re seeing loads of American comics coming over to the UK, because they’ve realised what a brilliant scene it is, so that balances it out,” he argues. “Anyway, I am coming back. It’s just as if Split Enz were getting back together.”

3 August 2009

[size=133:t9emfg3g]GQ.COM interview: Rhys Darby

[size=100:t9emfg3g]Best known outside of his homeland as Murray Hewitt, the New Zealand deputy cultural attaché and incompetent band manager of Flight Of The Conchords, Rhys Darby has also been making a name for himself both on the comedy circuit and in Hollywood, starring alongside Jim Carrey in Yes Man and January Jones in Richard Curtis' The Boat That Rocked. The Kiwi funnyman talked exclusively to GQ.COM about season two of the Grammy Award-winning series and his postmodern stand-up show...

At the start of season two Murray has hit the big time with Crazy Dogggz. Has fame changed him?
In a little way - he's got flasher suits, he's in a bigger office. But certain things suit people and when something happens overnight all of a sudden that you're not used to, it usually goes horribly wrong. Of course it all comes crashing down. He feels much more comfortable when he's just basically down and out and shaving in his car. When he gets back to his old job, he hugs the desk. What's that famous quote? "
We all live in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars."
He's happy to look up at the stars. He doesn't want to necessarily be up there.

Similarly, the production values of series two are clearly a lot higher, thanks to the success of the first series. Did you get a bigger trailer?
The first season I didn't have a dressing room or anything - I had to get dressed on the steps of the guys' dressing room. In the second season I did have a dressing room, but when we're on the road on location we had a big truck and I shared it with Kristen [Schaal] who plays Mel and Arj [Barker] who plays Dave on season one. So on the second season they had a big trailer each with TV, couch, all that sort of hoo-ha and I had a cubby hole. But when we were on the set I did have my own dressing room. Although I noticed that quite often guest star roles would come in and share it. Without me being asked. So if we do a third season that's going to have to change. But then I still can't believe I'm even there, so I'm not going to complain.

More characters get to sing this time, including Murray...
Who doesn't want to see Murray sing? Or Mel sing? In particular her great number when she flies off into the sky on a pushbike ["
Like In My Dreams"
]. I got that song in the first season ["
Leggy Blonde"
] and I think I was the only secondary character so it shocked everyone but it was a pleasant surprise. And that was the door opening there for the second season. It comes down to the guys having fun writing for other people and getting other characters to sing. It takes a little bit of pressure off them too.

What's your favourite song of the second series?
I love "
Sugar Lumps"
and I also like "
Fashion Is Danger"
. [Sings] "
You think fashion's your friend, but fashion is danger..."


What kind of music are you into?
I like rock'n'roll, really, Sixties-based or -influenced, indie rock. But I'm partial to anything. I've got quite a broad range. I like well-written, great melodies as well: Coldplay stuff, Crowded House. I like anthems.

Have you ever bought a novelty record?
Yeah, totally. I bought Monty Python's The Final Rip-Off, which was a double CD. I once bought a CD which was the New Zealand Commonwealth Games theme tune. It's called "
This Is The Moment"
. [Sings and clicks fingers] "
This is the mo-ment, we are forever..."


You're playing London and the Edinburgh Festival. What's in the show?
It's a slight move away from my surreal storytelling with physicality and sound effects to the next level where I'm telling real stories about what's happened to the guy who was an alternative novelty comic who did sound effects who ended up in Hollywood. So it's some real stories about me in Hollywood and the small time boy from New Zealand who now has big management in America who are trying to make me a movie star, and me bumbling my way through that. But at the same time there are sound effects and a bit of physicality in there, because if I didn't have it people would be complaining. I do a great Transformer impression. [Does great Transformer impression.]

How does the London comedy circuit compare with New Zealand/America?
It doesn't. It's so big here and successful that you really have to come here if you want to take live stand-up comedy seriously you have to come over here and do what I like to call a "
tour of duty"
. In America there's a scene but there's no money in it unless you're a name, but over here you can earn quite good money just by working - you can get working comics. Of course in New Zealand got such a small population that there's only one fully established comedy club and you can only perform there twice a week max. And even then it's sometimes to the same people. But since myself and the Conchords have been so successful overseas people back home have thought, "
Who else have we got?"
So there's a new wave of young comedians who the media are looking at and saying, "
Okay, maybe these could be the next guys..."
If we hadn't have been so successful, then we would have continued the mentality back home which is, "
Oh, we're no good at it, we'll just watch the British."


You've also got a film coming up called Diagnosis: Death...
I haven't seen it! It's a friend of a friend of ours, Raybon Kan, who's a comedian back home, quite a big name nationally and also a great writer, and he's worked with a director that's actually worked with Jemaine before, so he called us in to be a part of it. We're only in a few scenes and I haven't seen a final cut but I hear it's a bit like Peter Jackson's earlier work, and we do have quite good effects back home, so I'm hoping it's going to be a zombie rom-com. Less on the "
rom"
, more on the "
com"
, with a bit of "
zom"
.

Are you rooting for England in the Ashes?
I don't follow cricket, and I only watch it now and again, but yes, definitely. They're playing Ozzie, right? If we're not playing Australia, we always root for the team that are.

Flight Of The Conchords series two is out on DVD on 3 August. Rhys will be at the Edinburgh Festival from 6 August. rhysdarby.com

Interview by Jamie Millar

[size=133:ynwm63wc]
What kind of music are you into?
I like rock'n'roll, really, [size=150:ynwm63wc]Sixties-based or -influenced, indie rock. But I'm partial to anything. I've got quite a broad range. I like well-written, great melodies as well: Coldplay stuff, Crowded House. I like anthems.

sheila wrote:

[size=133:nk59mf91]
What kind of music are you into?
I like rock'n'roll, really, [size=150:nk59mf91]Sixties-based or -influenced, indie rock. But I'm partial to anything. I've got quite a broad range. I like well-written, great melodies as well: Coldplay stuff, Crowded House. I like anthems.

[size=133:z6qnylmo]5 minutes with... Rhys Darby



[size=100:z6qnylmo]New Zealand actor Rhys Darby is best known for playing Murray in cult comedy Flight Of The Conchords.

Darby, 35, has also appeared in Jim Carrey film Yes Man and Brit comedy The Boat That Rocked, and is in the upcoming Diagnosis: Death with his FOTC co-stars.

He will perform his new stand-up show in Edinburgh from August 6-15, and the second series of FOTC is out on DVD now.

WHAT CAN WE EXPECT FROM YOUR STAND-UP SHOW?

It's called It's Rhys Darby Night, and I perform it at night. It's basically stand-up and new stories about my adventures in Hollywood. s

WILL PEOPLE WHO MAINLY KNOW YOU FROM FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS BE SURPRISED BY IT?

I don't think so, most people who know of Murray have checked me out online, or seen my first stand-up DVD. That's one of the reasons I wrote a new show, because I was so sick of people going 'That's funny, but I've seen it'. That's the trouble when you do a DVD - all stand-ups want to release one, and then as soon as you do, that's all your gear gone. I like the opportunity of being able to come back and do a whole new show and make it different, make it about how things have changed for me, from being a small novelty comic to acting in these big movies, and that transition is quite funny.

HAVE YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO ACT?

I was always doing little plays on the back lawn and mucking around pretending I was other people, but never taking it seriously as a vocation. I realised a little later in life that I was quite good at it, and maybe I should do it. I joined the army, and looking back I think what I really wanted to be was an actor playing a soldier. I finally worked out that I should just dress up, because then you could be anything.

DID YOU LEARN A LOT FROM MAKING YES MAN AND THE BOAT THAT ROCKED?

There's nothing like jumping in at the deep end. My first film was a big Hollywood blockbuster starring Jim Carrey, and I would have liked to have made a couple of short films first, but I just got that and thought, 'Okay, let's do it'. Then I did The Boat That Rocked which was another big film, so now I feel like I can take anything on. I'm looking at hopefully doing a massive action film - maybe Transformers 3 or Yet Another 48 Hours.

CAN YOU SEE YOURSELF LEAVING NEW ZEALAND TO LIVE IN HOLLYWOOD FULL-TIME?

I'm going to stay where I am, and then just shoot across. I look at myself as like a universal soldier, but replace soldier with actor, so I could have just said universal actor. If there's a job in America or Britain or South Africa - well, maybe not South Africa, but those other two - I'll just go to it.

WILL YOU ALWAYS PERFORM STAND-UP?

That's a mistake Steve Martin and Jim Carrey made - once they got into television and film, they just stopped the live work. I mean I'm saying that, but Jim's had a great career, and Steve's done some fantastic films, and now he's doing some pretty awful family films. I do think you have to keep your hand in at the live stuff, because you lose your comedy muscles. That's what you get onstage, the nervousness and the sheer excitement of dropping a gag in front of 400 people and hoping that it's going to land with an explosion of laughter.

AS YOU BECOME MORE HIGH-PROFILE, DOES PERFORMING LIVE BECOME MORE DAUNTING?

No, it just means I get better service in restaurants. You do get a few clowns coming up to you, wanting you to record something for their 21st birthday or what not, but my wife doesn't take any nonsense. Anyone that gets in the way, she's like, 'No, he's not doing that', because otherwise I'll say yes to everything. I'm enjoying it, but I'm not getting that much hassle. I've got quite a generic, white-guy look about me - I could be anyone.

WILL THERE BE ANOTHER SERIES OF FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS?

That's the 50,000-dollar question - if they give me 50,000 dollars then yes, we'll do another season. I don't know, we're thinking about it and it's up to [Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement]. It's their show, I'm just propping it up for them. It's a difficult one - we come from the British mentality of creating a comedy series and then ending it two series in. The Americans don't have that, they go, 'You've got to squeeze it out for another 15 years, man'.

DO YOU HAVE ANY AMBITIONS?

No, not really. Once I find out if we're doing another season with the Conchords, I'll continue with that, or if not I'll have my own TV show. I've got something waiting in the wings, so I'm just waiting to push that out, and front something myself, instead of all the pressure being on Bret and Jemaine. I've been on the cushy side too long, everyone just laughing at me, and me receiving it without any pressures, so it'll be nice to take it over and have my own thing and just see what happens from there. It's a bit scary though, so maybe I won't do it.