May 17, 2026 • 25 mins
Chelsie is a powerhouse of New Zealand stage and screen, carrying on a formidable creative lineage as the daughter of filmmaker Dame Gaylene Preston and musician Jonathan Crayford. Over her 20-year career, she has built a reputation for versatility, moving seamlessly between grit and grace.
Currently, Chelsie is entering an exciting new chapter as a filmmaker. This week marks the theatrical release of her debut feature film, Caterpillar (released May 14, 2026), which she wrote and directed.
Chelsie remains one of the most compelling and busy voices in the Australasian arts scene.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed B.
Follow this and our Wide Ranger podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Real Conversation, Real Connection. It's Real Life with John Cowen
on News Talk s EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Good A, Welcome to Real Life. I'm John Cown.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
My guest tonight is movie maker and actor Chelsea Preston Crayford.
Welcome Chelsea.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Thanks, Hi John. How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I'm good.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I'm good, and I know you're down in Queenstown at
the moment making another series of A Remarkable Place to Die.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
I am. We've just I've been here for the last
actually since November last year. We've been filming and I
have had a month off to release Catterpillow, which obviously
has been in the works for many years, and now
I've come back to finish the job.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Caterpillar your movie, the one that you've made by yourself
and released last weekend on Mother's Day?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
How appropriate is that?
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Yeah, I'll tell you, I certainly have not made it
by myself. I've made it with It's nice of you
to think I could do that, though, but I've made
it with the help of many talented individuals. But yeah,
we did. We released actually today the day. I'm not
sure when you're releasing this interview, but today is Thursday,
(01:45):
and today is when Caterpillar's officially gone into cinemas. But
this last week we've had Mother's Day previews. Would it
be okay for me to add one more thing in,
which is that there's something that I think a lot
of people don't know a lot of New Zealanders don't
know about when a New Zealand film hits the movie theaters,
(02:07):
and that is that the opening weekend numbers are really
what dictate whether you get to stay in the cinema
or not. We live in an age of streaming and
everybody thinks everything's available when they're ready for it. It's not
the case for these independent New Zealand films. So if
you're interested to see Caterpillar or Sergeant Hahna or The
(02:28):
Weed Eaters or any of the great New Zealand films
that are out at the moment, go to the movies
and watch them, because they won't hang around if we
don't go. And it's a privilege that we have all
of these screens showing our stories at the moment, and
we have to get out and support it.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Okay, and how did it go down? How are people responding?
Speaker 4 (02:47):
The response, quite honestly, has flawed me. It's been incredibly
well received and felt amongst people. It's a very emotional film.
It pays tribute to the woman who raised me and
(03:08):
all of us really, and people have been very vocal about,
you know, their their incinema experience, which has been really awesome.
It's got amazing reviews, and yeah, it's been better than
(03:29):
I could have hoped.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I guess that it's triggering those emotional responses. That's exactly
what an artist would want. It's not just entertaining, it's
doing something more and that's right.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I know.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
People distinguish between the terms inspired by and based on,
and your movie has been described as autobiographical, and I'm
just wondering how how how close to your own real
life it is. Is it just inspired by it or
is it really actually based on your experience of growing
up with a with your grandmother and mother.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
I describe the film, I think that the best description
is that it's a work of auto fiction, which is
a term that is used in literature a lot, and
to me, what that means is that it's grown out
of the world of my real life and my experiences
growing up and my relationships, my family relationships, but it
(04:30):
is fictionalized for the sake of a good story. You know,
the film is set in this time period where my grandmother,
who was really the domestic glue of our lives, was
starting to kind of lose her grasp on her mind,
(04:53):
and it was happening beknownst to all of us. I
think she knew deep down before we did. But basically,
we meet this family when the world as they know
it is going to change forever, and it's about them
learning how to hold the women that's held them through everything.
(05:18):
And so that did happen, but it didn't happen the
way it does in the story, because you know, I
have a nineteen minute narrative to service and I want
it to be a satisfying watch for people. So yeah,
it's the characters have grown away from it.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
I can imagine people would be emotionally connected to a
movie that deals with something like your parents, your grandparents
changing and perhaps deteriorating through dementia. What they might very
few people would resonate with. I guess is that this
is a family of artists, This is a family of
movie makers. And that is something, of course, which is
(05:58):
very very true for yourself. And that must have been
a very very interesting family.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
To grow up.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
And I mean it was the water you swam into.
Growing up with a father who's a famous musician and
a mother who's a famous movie maker. What an amazing upbringing.
It's amazing or does it just say normal to you?
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Well? Absolutely, yeah, that's what I know. But my grandmother
wasn't an artist. She was a depression era, a housewife
and had to leave school. You know, she lived through
two World wars and a great Depression, and she had
to leave school at age thirteen to help raise her siblings.
(06:42):
So I think what really interested me was the wildly
different context that these two women that raised me really
came from, even though they were obviously mother and daughter.
My mom is a trailblazing feminist filmmaker, and she came up,
you know, in the seventies where everything was changing, so
(07:06):
they couldn't really have been more different. And yet those
were those are the two women that I was the
closest to and were my biggest influences. And then you
add me a sort of at the time, sort of
slightly lost teenager. You know, either rampantly and secure or
(07:31):
wildly over confident, and nowhere in between. And it's this
sort of a recipe. And to me, what was absolutely
I mean, I think that's most teenagers, to be honest,
maybe not, but as certainly as the one in this film.
And I think, to me, what is so interesting about
(07:53):
this time period and when we meet these characters is
they're all at very pivotal life stages, all with very
very different needs that are colliding up against one another.
And the question is how do you be mother, a
daughter and also yourself and in the case of Maxine,
(08:14):
an artist as well. Right, Yeah, and also just to say,
you talked about my dad. He actually did the score
of the film, so his music runs throughout. The father
character isn't present in the film, but he Yeah, he's
composed the score and a beautiful score. It is too.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Jonathan Crayford, Now I believe he's releasing an LP on
vinyl or something fairly soon.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
You're going to honey, you've got your finger on the pulse,
he is, Yes, Yes, there's a release party on Karnahape
Road for a project he's got called Bigfoot, which is
a vinyl release.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Look, I have to pass the credit to our producer Sam,
who really knows everything to do with music, so I'll
give him credit for that insight.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Now, pregnancies can last long enough.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
But the movie at a very very long gestation, didn't it.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Yes, yes it did. I've been working from Caterpillar being
a germ of an idea to now, like literally today
at coming out in cinemas. It's been eight years a
labor of love. Of course, I've been doing other things
over that time as well, and these things really have
(09:33):
a life of their own. It took me, you know,
choosing to write a multi protagonist story for as my
first feature film that I've written was a really big undertaking.
It was pretty difficult and I didn't want to rush it,
and I'm really glad that I didn't because it took
(09:56):
a long time to get right.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Your mother, Dame Galen Preston, is a famous filmmaker in
her own right.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
She must have been involved with advice and ideas.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
But the interesting thing is that it was about her
as well to a certain extent. Now, I'm just wondering
relationships with mothers can be complex, loving and complex. Is
the sort of a normal relationship with mothers. Did your
portrayal of her in this film? Did this open up
anything in your relationship? Did this did Genoa? Is that
(10:31):
how you saw it at that sort of conversation.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
I was, of course, you know, we were in a
discussion about this project for all of those years that
I was making it. But I also need to be
really clear. The character is not her. The character these
characters have have. She was absolutely born out of her.
(10:58):
But I'm balancing a multi protagonist narrative, and so I
actually first and foremost need to serve the needs of
the story, and that means heightening things and pushing aspects
of the characters that are going to be the greatest
(11:19):
antagonists to each other, you know. And so and truthfully,
the thing that happened for me when I started writing
this film, I didn't understand why I was captivated by
this territory because I wasn't that interested personally in writing
and coming of age story. I didn't know why it was.
(11:41):
I didn't really want to write about myself as a
teenager particularly, and it wasn't until actually, she won't mind
me saying this, but when my mum had her head
injury very shortly after I started working on this territory,
(12:01):
and that took a lot of recovery, and suddenly I
was catapulted into being the other in the middle and
trying to figure out how to manage all of these
roles that I inhabit as a woman all the time,
that many women inhabit every day. And I realized, oh,
(12:22):
I'm Maxine, I'm the mother in the middle, And so
suddenly the film became about these rights of passage that
we sort of travel through in our lives. And so,
of course there's a lot of my mum and the
character of Maxine, there's also a lot of me and
a lot of other women that I have known and loved. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Right, So it's probably no wonder that people are resonating
with this film when it's grounded in such intimate reality
that people can say, yes, yes, that's what life is.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
If you've just joined us.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
My guest tonight is Chelsea Preston Crawford, a filmmaker and actor,
and not be talking to her more. After this break,
you're listening to real life on Newstalk.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
ZEDB Intelligent interviews with Interesting It's real life on news
talks at.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Be Grandma Hey. So the local loan, we'd murder Grandma.
He used to ache sometimes and swim Grandma.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Hey used to live the beat and tell her Welcome
back to real life.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
I'm John Cown and I've been chatting with Chelsea Preston
Crawford about her world and especially about a movie that
she just released this week called Caterpillar. And Chelsea, you
picked some music for us. What are we listening to here?
Speaker 4 (13:45):
This is a song called Grandma's Hands by Bill Withers.
I mean, obviously it's some theme all this film, a
tribute to my grandmother. But I have loved this song
from the first moment I heard it when I was
I think about twelve years old. I remember getting this album.
(14:05):
It was actually a compilation of best of Bill with
his album, and I couldn't believe it. And I just
listened to the song Grandma's Hands on repeat as I
fell asleep most nights. I just think it's such a
beautiful tribute. Obviously, and story in the it just kind
(14:31):
of captivates. Oh sorry, It just kind of encapsulates how
it feels to have a really beautiful grandmother. And Bill
Withathers is one of the great artists of my life. Really,
I just always one of those ones that you always
return to and just feels like home. Right.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
I was just listening to you on our program where
you picked a whole lot of music, and I was
just impressed about how you use music to, i don't know,
shape your world, to adjust your mood and things like that.
I was particularly addressed that you picked one song for
walking around Littleton.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Oh yeah, yes, yeah, that was when I was you're playing.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
A character, and so you listen to the type of
music that they would listen to.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Yeah, that can be a very useful way in it
does depend on the character. For me, but that character
in particular, she was pretty different to me. It was
a serial killer, and she was a she was a
naughty little brat, And so I would I made a
(15:43):
playlist and I would have a lot of downtime while
I was they were waiting, you know, to do the
lights or film another scene, and I would just sort
of stump around at night and really enjoy myself.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Enjoy being a naughty brat. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Well yeah, in my.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Head, that's the type of thing that I guess, what
what a what an amazing thing being an actor can
be when you can be these different people and you've
played all sorts of interesting characters. I mean, you won
a Logi Award for playing a nineteen thirties brothel owner
in Australia and all these characters, and so you can
(16:23):
do that, and yet there's also these movies where you
play yourself. I mean you did this in Falling Up,
which was a short movie that you made about co
parenting after a relationship breakup. When that was you, that
was your family, that was your home.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
I might take what you know to the extreme.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, right, but you know, let's just just do it completely.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
In fact, let's bring in everybody that was involved in
that time. That amazed me was that you got your
ex partner into film it for you.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Well, he actually asked if he could, and initially I
was resistant, but then I thought, well, the main thing
I wanted to do with that film was to capture
authentically the exchange the relationship between a parent and a
little little kid, and I felt I had the opportunity
(17:24):
to do that. And then, you know, I didn't have
any money to make that short film. It was completely
self funded and actually a budget of nothing, so I
basically I knew what I had access to, which was
my house and me and I knew what story I wanted,
(17:47):
which was based on an Alice Walker. The title of
an Alice Walker poem that is hard Times Require Furious Dancing. Yeah,
and I thought, what a great idea for a short film.
I mean, I love short films because you just need
one idea. A feature is very different to that. But
(18:09):
so I basically just used what I had access to,
and then obviously when he wanted to shoot it, I thought, well,
the big challenge here is going to be getting the
little kid to not be distracted by everybody that's around.
And so if it's your dad, then that's a really
good way of doing that.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Right, that's an idea, this idea of furious dancing. And yeah, yeah,
you know you've talked about music. Well we've talked about
music sort of shaping things in your head, but furious dancing.
I know that silly dancing was something that also found
quite quite cathartic in your life as well.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Yeah. I love to dance. I love to dance and
I love to not take it seriously.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Yeah, that's so for people taking notes on how to
be a creative person, I think that putting the body
into a different mode might be part of that as well.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Yeah, we don't need to look cool when we dance.
That's not about that.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
I think that's obligatory.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
In my case, I've don't managed to look very cool
at all.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
Well, that's very freeing. It's better that way.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Well, it must take a lot of courage to dance
like that, But also it must take a lot of
courage to be an actor, because when you see actors'
lives portrayed on the TV, we see them on red carpets,
we see them receiving awards. We don't see them reading
rejection emails or sitting waiting for a role to come
(19:43):
along and add things. And yet that I'm sure is
the life of an actor. To a large extent, that's
been part of your life.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
You've had Oh absolutely, Oh my god. I I sort
of wish in a statistic way that I'd kept track
of the number of rejections I perceived. And actually you
get very used to it, and yeah, I mean you
get to the point where the way I feel now
about auditions or anything like that, opportunities is it's a
(20:19):
ticket in a raffle, and most of the time you
don't win the ticket. In the raffles. But you know,
sometimes you might be lucky, but if you don't have
a ticket, you're definitely not going to win it.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
So okay, so you've got to be in and yeah,
but that must have been hard, especially at the start.
I guess I just wonder what you'd say to yourself
or you told me that this was raffle thing, but
coaching yourself to be able to say, hey, I'm putting
myself out there, but what people say about me and
(20:50):
think about me doesn't really.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I'm tougher than that.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
The gift of making making things and getting to be
on the other side of the of the process. You know,
I've been lucky to be on the other side of
casting processes, and it is so personal that it's not personal.
That's the thing that you realize is it's almost energetic.
(21:19):
I mean, it could come down to someone doesn't quite
fit right with somebody else. You know, it's a jigsaw puzzle.
And so I think because I've been lucky to be
on both sides of that, or have chosen to be
on both sides of that, I really really don't take
it personally. Now. It is what it is, and if
something isn't meant for you, it doesn't meant to.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
You, okay, So well that speaks of a lot of
character to be able to to weather that. And I
suppose you've been in this industry now for twenty years
or more. I don't know how long you've been, and
I think you it depends whether you count from starting
at age thirteen or starting at age age four in
(22:04):
a safety advert.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
It depends when you can out it from it's all
of my life.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Really, yeah, yeah, So I guess that's fair enough.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
So how do you decompress?
Speaker 4 (22:18):
John? Honestly, I wish I knew at the moment, but like,
it has been a really a really jam packed couple
of years, like very crazy in terms of schedule, and
of course then I had a baby in the middle
of all of it. And so we're actually coming up
(22:40):
to the end of what has been quite a relentless
run of work. But what have I done to decompress
in that time? Well, I spend time with my family.
We have a thing that we do every Sunday, We
watch Sunday Night Cinema and we choose a film that
we'd all like to watch, usually an older film. Really
(23:02):
look forward to that. I love a little bit of
reality Telly as well. I'm really looking forward to The Traitors.
I really like The Traders.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Yeah, I saw that it was the top rated guilty
pleasure that people haven't Britain.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Any about it. Yeah, reality TV? I mean, why are
we guilty? But I understand why we're guilty about reality
TV as a whole, But I don't think we should
be guilty about the Traders. I mean it comes at
certain point and you go, this is just my one
lovely life. This is my one life. Am I going
to spend it worrying what people think of me, feeling
(23:42):
guilty for the things that I like, I mean worrying
that I look for when I'm dancing. You've just you've
got to be free, men, You've got to free yourself
from all that.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
We're all good. Are you going?
Speaker 3 (23:53):
You're go and watch your movies, Go and watch your
your reality TV. Dance furiously and silly if required, and
thank you. Listen to your music and let's listen to
a bit more of your music. What have you picked
for us to go out on?
Speaker 4 (24:07):
This is Harry Neilson, think about your travels. It's from
an album and actually which was I don't know what
to call it a TV telling movie, I don't know.
I watched it as a kid. It's called The Point.
I don't know if any of your listeners would have
seen or watched it, but Harry Nelson's music is just brilliant,
going with it and I love this song. I love
(24:29):
songs when they have a narrative.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
This has been real life. I'm John Cown.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
I've been talking with Chelsea Preston Crowfed and thank you
so much for taking the time to share with us.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
Thank you so much, John, It's been a pleasure. Well.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Looking forward to being with you again next Sunday night.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
For more from news Talks at b listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
UH
You're listening to a podcast from News Talk sed B.
Follow this and our Wide Ranger podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
Real Conversation, Real Connection. It's Real Life with John Cowen
on News Talk s EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Good A, Welcome to Real Life. I'm John Cown.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
My guest tonight is movie maker and actor Chelsea Preston Crayford.
Welcome Chelsea.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Thanks, Hi John. How are you.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I'm good.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
I'm good, and I know you're down in Queenstown at
the moment making another series of A Remarkable Place to Die.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
I am. We've just I've been here for the last
actually since November last year. We've been filming and I
have had a month off to release Catterpillow, which obviously
has been in the works for many years, and now
I've come back to finish the job.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Caterpillar your movie, the one that you've made by yourself
and released last weekend on Mother's Day?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
How appropriate is that?
Speaker 4 (01:23):
Yeah, I'll tell you, I certainly have not made it
by myself. I've made it with It's nice of you
to think I could do that, though, but I've made
it with the help of many talented individuals. But yeah,
we did. We released actually today the day. I'm not
sure when you're releasing this interview, but today is Thursday,
(01:45):
and today is when Caterpillar's officially gone into cinemas. But
this last week we've had Mother's Day previews. Would it
be okay for me to add one more thing in,
which is that there's something that I think a lot
of people don't know a lot of New Zealanders don't
know about when a New Zealand film hits the movie theaters,
(02:07):
and that is that the opening weekend numbers are really
what dictate whether you get to stay in the cinema
or not. We live in an age of streaming and
everybody thinks everything's available when they're ready for it. It's not
the case for these independent New Zealand films. So if
you're interested to see Caterpillar or Sergeant Hahna or The
(02:28):
Weed Eaters or any of the great New Zealand films
that are out at the moment, go to the movies
and watch them, because they won't hang around if we
don't go. And it's a privilege that we have all
of these screens showing our stories at the moment, and
we have to get out and support it.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Okay, and how did it go down? How are people responding?
Speaker 4 (02:47):
The response, quite honestly, has flawed me. It's been incredibly
well received and felt amongst people. It's a very emotional film.
It pays tribute to the woman who raised me and
(03:08):
all of us really, and people have been very vocal about,
you know, their their incinema experience, which has been really awesome.
It's got amazing reviews, and yeah, it's been better than
(03:29):
I could have hoped.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I guess that it's triggering those emotional responses. That's exactly
what an artist would want. It's not just entertaining, it's
doing something more and that's right.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I know.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
People distinguish between the terms inspired by and based on,
and your movie has been described as autobiographical, and I'm
just wondering how how how close to your own real
life it is. Is it just inspired by it or
is it really actually based on your experience of growing
up with a with your grandmother and mother.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
I describe the film, I think that the best description
is that it's a work of auto fiction, which is
a term that is used in literature a lot, and
to me, what that means is that it's grown out
of the world of my real life and my experiences
growing up and my relationships, my family relationships, but it
(04:30):
is fictionalized for the sake of a good story. You know,
the film is set in this time period where my grandmother,
who was really the domestic glue of our lives, was
starting to kind of lose her grasp on her mind,
(04:53):
and it was happening beknownst to all of us. I
think she knew deep down before we did. But basically,
we meet this family when the world as they know
it is going to change forever, and it's about them
learning how to hold the women that's held them through everything.
(05:18):
And so that did happen, but it didn't happen the
way it does in the story, because you know, I
have a nineteen minute narrative to service and I want
it to be a satisfying watch for people. So yeah,
it's the characters have grown away from it.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
I can imagine people would be emotionally connected to a
movie that deals with something like your parents, your grandparents
changing and perhaps deteriorating through dementia. What they might very
few people would resonate with. I guess is that this
is a family of artists, This is a family of
movie makers. And that is something, of course, which is
(05:58):
very very true for yourself. And that must have been
a very very interesting family.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
To grow up.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
And I mean it was the water you swam into.
Growing up with a father who's a famous musician and
a mother who's a famous movie maker. What an amazing upbringing.
It's amazing or does it just say normal to you?
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Well? Absolutely, yeah, that's what I know. But my grandmother
wasn't an artist. She was a depression era, a housewife
and had to leave school. You know, she lived through
two World wars and a great Depression, and she had
to leave school at age thirteen to help raise her siblings.
(06:42):
So I think what really interested me was the wildly
different context that these two women that raised me really
came from, even though they were obviously mother and daughter.
My mom is a trailblazing feminist filmmaker, and she came up,
you know, in the seventies where everything was changing, so
(07:06):
they couldn't really have been more different. And yet those
were those are the two women that I was the
closest to and were my biggest influences. And then you
add me a sort of at the time, sort of
slightly lost teenager. You know, either rampantly and secure or
(07:31):
wildly over confident, and nowhere in between. And it's this
sort of a recipe. And to me, what was absolutely
I mean, I think that's most teenagers, to be honest,
maybe not, but as certainly as the one in this film.
And I think, to me, what is so interesting about
(07:53):
this time period and when we meet these characters is
they're all at very pivotal life stages, all with very
very different needs that are colliding up against one another.
And the question is how do you be mother, a
daughter and also yourself and in the case of Maxine,
(08:14):
an artist as well. Right, Yeah, and also just to say,
you talked about my dad. He actually did the score
of the film, so his music runs throughout. The father
character isn't present in the film, but he Yeah, he's
composed the score and a beautiful score. It is too.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
Jonathan Crayford, Now I believe he's releasing an LP on
vinyl or something fairly soon.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
You're going to honey, you've got your finger on the pulse,
he is, Yes, Yes, there's a release party on Karnahape
Road for a project he's got called Bigfoot, which is
a vinyl release.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Look, I have to pass the credit to our producer Sam,
who really knows everything to do with music, so I'll
give him credit for that insight.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Now, pregnancies can last long enough.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
But the movie at a very very long gestation, didn't it.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Yes, yes it did. I've been working from Caterpillar being
a germ of an idea to now, like literally today
at coming out in cinemas. It's been eight years a
labor of love. Of course, I've been doing other things
over that time as well, and these things really have
(09:33):
a life of their own. It took me, you know,
choosing to write a multi protagonist story for as my
first feature film that I've written was a really big undertaking.
It was pretty difficult and I didn't want to rush it,
and I'm really glad that I didn't because it took
(09:56):
a long time to get right.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
Your mother, Dame Galen Preston, is a famous filmmaker in
her own right.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
She must have been involved with advice and ideas.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
But the interesting thing is that it was about her
as well to a certain extent. Now, I'm just wondering
relationships with mothers can be complex, loving and complex. Is
the sort of a normal relationship with mothers. Did your
portrayal of her in this film? Did this open up
anything in your relationship? Did this did Genoa? Is that
(10:31):
how you saw it at that sort of conversation.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
I was, of course, you know, we were in a
discussion about this project for all of those years that
I was making it. But I also need to be
really clear. The character is not her. The character these
characters have have. She was absolutely born out of her.
(10:58):
But I'm balancing a multi protagonist narrative, and so I
actually first and foremost need to serve the needs of
the story, and that means heightening things and pushing aspects
of the characters that are going to be the greatest
(11:19):
antagonists to each other, you know. And so and truthfully,
the thing that happened for me when I started writing
this film, I didn't understand why I was captivated by
this territory because I wasn't that interested personally in writing
and coming of age story. I didn't know why it was.
(11:41):
I didn't really want to write about myself as a
teenager particularly, and it wasn't until actually, she won't mind
me saying this, but when my mum had her head
injury very shortly after I started working on this territory,
(12:01):
and that took a lot of recovery, and suddenly I
was catapulted into being the other in the middle and
trying to figure out how to manage all of these
roles that I inhabit as a woman all the time,
that many women inhabit every day. And I realized, oh,
(12:22):
I'm Maxine, I'm the mother in the middle, And so
suddenly the film became about these rights of passage that
we sort of travel through in our lives. And so,
of course there's a lot of my mum and the
character of Maxine, there's also a lot of me and
a lot of other women that I have known and loved. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:45):
Right, So it's probably no wonder that people are resonating
with this film when it's grounded in such intimate reality
that people can say, yes, yes, that's what life is.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
If you've just joined us.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
My guest tonight is Chelsea Preston Crawford, a filmmaker and actor,
and not be talking to her more. After this break,
you're listening to real life on Newstalk.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
ZEDB Intelligent interviews with Interesting It's real life on news
talks at.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
Be Grandma Hey. So the local loan, we'd murder Grandma.
He used to ache sometimes and swim Grandma.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Hey used to live the beat and tell her Welcome
back to real life.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
I'm John Cown and I've been chatting with Chelsea Preston
Crawford about her world and especially about a movie that
she just released this week called Caterpillar. And Chelsea, you
picked some music for us. What are we listening to here?
Speaker 4 (13:45):
This is a song called Grandma's Hands by Bill Withers.
I mean, obviously it's some theme all this film, a
tribute to my grandmother. But I have loved this song
from the first moment I heard it when I was
I think about twelve years old. I remember getting this album.
(14:05):
It was actually a compilation of best of Bill with
his album, and I couldn't believe it. And I just
listened to the song Grandma's Hands on repeat as I
fell asleep most nights. I just think it's such a
beautiful tribute. Obviously, and story in the it just kind
(14:31):
of captivates. Oh sorry, It just kind of encapsulates how
it feels to have a really beautiful grandmother. And Bill
Withathers is one of the great artists of my life. Really,
I just always one of those ones that you always
return to and just feels like home. Right.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
I was just listening to you on our program where
you picked a whole lot of music, and I was
just impressed about how you use music to, i don't know,
shape your world, to adjust your mood and things like that.
I was particularly addressed that you picked one song for
walking around Littleton.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
Oh yeah, yes, yeah, that was when I was you're playing.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
A character, and so you listen to the type of
music that they would listen to.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Yeah, that can be a very useful way in it
does depend on the character. For me, but that character
in particular, she was pretty different to me. It was
a serial killer, and she was a she was a
naughty little brat, And so I would I made a
(15:43):
playlist and I would have a lot of downtime while
I was they were waiting, you know, to do the
lights or film another scene, and I would just sort
of stump around at night and really enjoy myself.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Enjoy being a naughty brat. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Well yeah, in my.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Head, that's the type of thing that I guess, what
what a what an amazing thing being an actor can
be when you can be these different people and you've
played all sorts of interesting characters. I mean, you won
a Logi Award for playing a nineteen thirties brothel owner
in Australia and all these characters, and so you can
(16:23):
do that, and yet there's also these movies where you
play yourself. I mean you did this in Falling Up,
which was a short movie that you made about co
parenting after a relationship breakup. When that was you, that
was your family, that was your home.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
I might take what you know to the extreme.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, right, but you know, let's just just do it completely.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
In fact, let's bring in everybody that was involved in
that time. That amazed me was that you got your
ex partner into film it for you.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Well, he actually asked if he could, and initially I
was resistant, but then I thought, well, the main thing
I wanted to do with that film was to capture
authentically the exchange the relationship between a parent and a
little little kid, and I felt I had the opportunity
(17:24):
to do that. And then, you know, I didn't have
any money to make that short film. It was completely
self funded and actually a budget of nothing, so I
basically I knew what I had access to, which was
my house and me and I knew what story I wanted,
(17:47):
which was based on an Alice Walker. The title of
an Alice Walker poem that is hard Times Require Furious Dancing. Yeah,
and I thought, what a great idea for a short film.
I mean, I love short films because you just need
one idea. A feature is very different to that. But
(18:09):
so I basically just used what I had access to,
and then obviously when he wanted to shoot it, I thought, well,
the big challenge here is going to be getting the
little kid to not be distracted by everybody that's around.
And so if it's your dad, then that's a really
good way of doing that.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Right, that's an idea, this idea of furious dancing. And yeah, yeah,
you know you've talked about music. Well we've talked about
music sort of shaping things in your head, but furious dancing.
I know that silly dancing was something that also found
quite quite cathartic in your life as well.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
Yeah. I love to dance. I love to dance and
I love to not take it seriously.
Speaker 3 (18:54):
Yeah, that's so for people taking notes on how to
be a creative person, I think that putting the body
into a different mode might be part of that as well.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Yeah, we don't need to look cool when we dance.
That's not about that.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
I think that's obligatory.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
In my case, I've don't managed to look very cool
at all.
Speaker 4 (19:17):
Well, that's very freeing. It's better that way.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Well, it must take a lot of courage to dance
like that, But also it must take a lot of
courage to be an actor, because when you see actors'
lives portrayed on the TV, we see them on red carpets,
we see them receiving awards. We don't see them reading
rejection emails or sitting waiting for a role to come
(19:43):
along and add things. And yet that I'm sure is
the life of an actor. To a large extent, that's
been part of your life.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
You've had Oh absolutely, Oh my god. I I sort
of wish in a statistic way that I'd kept track
of the number of rejections I perceived. And actually you
get very used to it, and yeah, I mean you
get to the point where the way I feel now
about auditions or anything like that, opportunities is it's a
(20:19):
ticket in a raffle, and most of the time you
don't win the ticket. In the raffles. But you know,
sometimes you might be lucky, but if you don't have
a ticket, you're definitely not going to win it.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
So okay, so you've got to be in and yeah,
but that must have been hard, especially at the start.
I guess I just wonder what you'd say to yourself
or you told me that this was raffle thing, but
coaching yourself to be able to say, hey, I'm putting
myself out there, but what people say about me and
(20:50):
think about me doesn't really.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
I'm tougher than that.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
The gift of making making things and getting to be
on the other side of the of the process. You know,
I've been lucky to be on the other side of
casting processes, and it is so personal that it's not personal.
That's the thing that you realize is it's almost energetic.
(21:19):
I mean, it could come down to someone doesn't quite
fit right with somebody else. You know, it's a jigsaw puzzle.
And so I think because I've been lucky to be
on both sides of that, or have chosen to be
on both sides of that, I really really don't take
it personally. Now. It is what it is, and if
something isn't meant for you, it doesn't meant to.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
You, okay, So well that speaks of a lot of
character to be able to to weather that. And I
suppose you've been in this industry now for twenty years
or more. I don't know how long you've been, and
I think you it depends whether you count from starting
at age thirteen or starting at age age four in
(22:04):
a safety advert.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
It depends when you can out it from it's all
of my life.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
Really, yeah, yeah, So I guess that's fair enough.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
So how do you decompress?
Speaker 4 (22:18):
John? Honestly, I wish I knew at the moment, but like,
it has been a really a really jam packed couple
of years, like very crazy in terms of schedule, and
of course then I had a baby in the middle
of all of it. And so we're actually coming up
(22:40):
to the end of what has been quite a relentless
run of work. But what have I done to decompress
in that time? Well, I spend time with my family.
We have a thing that we do every Sunday, We
watch Sunday Night Cinema and we choose a film that
we'd all like to watch, usually an older film. Really
(23:02):
look forward to that. I love a little bit of
reality Telly as well. I'm really looking forward to The Traitors.
I really like The Traders.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Yeah, I saw that it was the top rated guilty
pleasure that people haven't Britain.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Any about it. Yeah, reality TV? I mean, why are
we guilty? But I understand why we're guilty about reality
TV as a whole, But I don't think we should
be guilty about the Traders. I mean it comes at
certain point and you go, this is just my one
lovely life. This is my one life. Am I going
to spend it worrying what people think of me, feeling
(23:42):
guilty for the things that I like, I mean worrying
that I look for when I'm dancing. You've just you've
got to be free, men, You've got to free yourself
from all that.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
We're all good. Are you going?
Speaker 3 (23:53):
You're go and watch your movies, Go and watch your
your reality TV. Dance furiously and silly if required, and
thank you. Listen to your music and let's listen to
a bit more of your music. What have you picked
for us to go out on?
Speaker 4 (24:07):
This is Harry Neilson, think about your travels. It's from
an album and actually which was I don't know what
to call it a TV telling movie, I don't know.
I watched it as a kid. It's called The Point.
I don't know if any of your listeners would have
seen or watched it, but Harry Nelson's music is just brilliant,
going with it and I love this song. I love
(24:29):
songs when they have a narrative.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
This has been real life. I'm John Cown.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
I've been talking with Chelsea Preston Crowfed and thank you
so much for taking the time to share with us.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
Thank you so much, John, It's been a pleasure. Well.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Looking forward to being with you again next Sunday night.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
For more from news Talks at b listen live on
air or online, and keep our shows with you wherever
you go with our podcasts on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
UH
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