Brokenwood star Neill Rea moved back to central Auckland, from “out West”, with long-time partner and fellow actor Alison Bruce (One Lane Bridge, The Power Of The Dog), late in 2021.

NEILL REA: We moved in last November, we were out West previously. We’d become empty nesters, so we’ve downsized but paid more. It’s a 1920s bungalow number.

We’re not really gardeners, we’re quite good at killing things. Ali's becoming more of a gardener, so that’s quite nice. Maybe it’s one of those time of life things? Suddenly you start going, “ooh, yes, I quite like the odd flower”. We’re definitely that.

Whenever we’ve had other places I’ve planted a lot of bush, New Zealand natives. But when we got to this place it had olives right round and camellias out the front, so we’re just going with it. We quite like it.

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The only thing we’ve done to [the house] is un-jam a bunch of windows. We might do some work on it. I’m into things such as solar panels and actually making us more self-sufficient in some way. Maybe less cosmetic stuff, more practical stuff. We might cover in the deck at the back a little – maybe.

It does remind us of our very first place we had in Sandringham - although that was probably bigger. I think we like quite simple houses. It’s three bedrooms and one bathroom; it feels simple, and us – not too fussy, not to flash.

We’re fairly eclectic in our tastes – we have quite different tastes. We do have a Kiwiana thing that we’re quite into.

Ali’s a true op-shopper, so we’ll find lots of bargains. And we have a couple of very close friends who are mad op-shoppers who are often finding stuff for us. So I do like mid-century things, the red deco table and the side board, I love them. They’re beautiful.

We’re starting to get into collecting Temuka [pottery], actually. We used collect a lot of Crown Lynn, which we still have, but Temuka is the new Crown Lynn.

The light box in the living room is very special. It was painted on Perspex by the actor Carl Bland (Filthy Rich, I’ll Make You Happy). Ali bought it at a fundraiser for his theatre company, Nightsong. It’s a really personal piece, the woman with the large cat is his late partner.

Ali is quite close friends with him, so it has a bit of meaning for us.

I’ve started collecting Taranaki prints - you'll see there’s a Heaphy print in there, too - but we actually now have about five or six different Taranaki prints through the room.

The two kayakers are by Lucy Bucknall. She’s quite a cool sculptor, he stuff is on Waikiki, Hawaii, and on the North Shore, Hawaii.

The ceramic in the garden is by my mother. I was tormented by potters growing up, so I tell everybody I meet that I hate ceramics and ceramicists. It's not strictly true. I’m actually very proud of that piece and my mum, Bev Rea, is very clever.

I never got into it myself. I liked pugging the clay, mostly [pounding recycled clay to make it usable again], I made the odd ashtray. My eldest brother made pottery chess sets, which he made a lot of money from.

It seemed to always be my friends who were always more into the potting – I was just like, “Jeeze, let’s go play a game of cricket or something”.

Mum went through a period of making quite big pieces for the garden, and they’re all pretty cool, actually. She always worked full time, so it was a hobby, but she was flash. She was friends with Barry Brickell and those guys, but she never boasted about it.

Ali and I are doing Misery, which is based on the Stephen King novel. About six years ago someone turned it into a play.

It's about a very successful paperback writer who has a car accident in a very remote part of Colorado. He's saved and nursed back to health, but then he slowly comes to realise that he’s being kept hostage, and then he gets tortured for various reasons. And it turns very septic and peculiar.

It doesn’t sound like a cheery play, but it’s very funny. I wouldn’t call it funny to perform, for Ali and I, but there’s a gallows humour in there.

I deliberately haven’t gone back to the film. I watched it years ago.

The book, to be quite honest, I got halfway through this time, and it’s actually quite different from the play, so I put it down. But man he’s good, Stephen King.

I always thought of him in the same breath as Wilbur Smith, the popular guys. Now, I reckon people thought about Charles Dickens in the same way at the time, but you give it a bit of space, and you think, “actually, you’re a bloody good storyteller”.

It was pretty hard to put down, I was terribly riveted by it.

It’s a very challenging play to perform. The work I’ve observed Ali, and the other actor, Phil Anstis, doing is bloody great. So, I’m quietly confident it’s going to be something a little special.

Misery is playing at Centrepoint, Palmerston North, from May 28 to July 2. Tickets are available here.