Jemaine Clement is once again preparing to embrace what he calls his dreaded “writer’s body.”
Following a self-imposed writing hiatus, the New Zealand multi-hyphenate – who arguably rose to fame with Brett McKenzie as one half of the musical comedy duo – is still… Concorde flight — Ready to return to the shadows of the dark office and the worries of the blank page. He has a TV project – a sci-fi comedy series, “I’m not allowed to say anything about it”, which he will start writing “as soon as the deal is done”.
But before he puts pen to paper, Clement prepares to face the side effects. He admits that writing affects him. “For the writer-performer, there is your acting body, and there is your writing body,” he explains. “When I write, my skin turns grey, and I gain weight. It’s completely different. With acting, it’s just the first day that’s exhausting. Writing is exhausting all the time. I love it. But my writing body is a mess.”
Clement turned away from writing after a long period of television projects, including… Wellington Paranormal, What do we do in the shadows? (2014 small-screen vampire mockumentary with Taika Waititi), Apple TV Time bandits. “It was too much,” he admits. “I only wrote the first two seasons of What do we do in the shadows?But I did Wellington Paranormal At the same time. I will have 10 episodes, one of which to rewrite or revise, and six of the others. And none of the producers cared that I was already running another show.
After packaging Time banditsClement focused on “much less stressful” acting work. He recently played marine biologist Dr. Garvin in James Cameron’s film Avatar 2 and 3taking on the role of tech billionaire Alton Appleton in M3GAN 2.0 (“I’m often portrayed as a professor or scientist, or the guy who does the show,” he jokes) and flexes his dramatic chops in the upcoming Disney+ movie “Wrongcom.” Alice and Stevestarring a man in his fifties who falls into a relationship with his best friend’s younger daughter.
He’s also compiled a list of high-profile voice roles: reprising Tamatoa in the live-action Disney film Moanayou play as Owl Rex in Travis Knight’s stop-motion epic WildwoodThe purple elephant dates back to prehistoric times If there is a kerry and no go raa!the iconic adaptation of New Zealand’s beloved preschool series. Clement is at this year’s Annecy Animation Festival for the premiere of his film Kerry lo go raa! And for an extended peek at Knight Wildwood.
“The one thing I prefer, acting in animation rather than live action, is that in live action I often imagine the character looking different, and then when I watch it, I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s just me,’” he says. “But with animation, it’s as you imagine. I’m the purple elephant!”
Clement’s passion for children’s animation extends beyond his own projects, and he is quick to claim one of the biggest contemporary works in the genre for his fellow New Zealanders. “Good, bluish He is to make “In Australia,” he notes, “but the creators are also New Zealanders,” pointing to series director Rich Jeffery and animator Mark Patterson. “We’ve done festivals together[with[withKerry Lou and bluish]It was a shock to me that they were from New Zealand. That would be a real scandal in Australia. It’s their biggest industry!
Concorde flight Fans will also be pleased to know that Clement’s recent reunion with McKenzie – the duo played a short stint of concerts in the US and New Zealand earlier this year, their first performance in nearly a decade – was not a one-off. “We’ve started new songs, and we’re talking about touring again for the first time in eight years. We didn’t have time to finish the new songs for our last show because we had to re-learn the old ones,” Clement confirms.
And those rumors about A Concorde flight film? “I can’t promise anything, but the idea isn’t quite dead,” he says. “We talk about it often, but mostly we’re really a live act. We did the TV show, which was of course the biggest thing we’ve ever done, but we started playing bars, and that feels like what[[Concorde flight]It was designed to do.
