Your lucky ole WIFT E-News Editor managed to get the lowdown on this delight of a show from local legend and fellow Wiftie Kate McDermott! You can binge Blue Murder Motel right now on TVNZ 1 and TVNZ+. Wiftie Tara Landry produces and there are of course a swathe of WIFT creatives working on and behind the camera.
Dive into our chat with Kate below..
Q&A WITH BLUE MURDER MOTEL CO-CREATOR AND WRITER KATE MCDERMOTT
Your writing credits are many and illustrious - with your "co-creator" credit adding to your writing one here - how does it feel to bring Blue Murder Motel through from idea all the way to the audience?
Blue Murder Motel is the second series I've been a creator on, the last one (Step Dave) was made ten years ago so it's been a loooong time between creations! That's not for lack of trying though - for every series pitch that makes it to the screen, most screenwriters have a pile more that were rejected - either straight away or after months or even years of development. Which is why it's always so thrilling when an idea actually makes it all the way to the audience. With Blue Murder Motel, it has been a particular delight due to the process being unusually fast. It started just over two years ago with co-creator Steven Zanoski and I sitting at a Grey Lynn pub with a glass of wine and a laptop, making up characters and cases. The pitch was quickly picked up and developed by Kathleen Anderson and Great Southern TV, with TVNZ and distributors APC coming on board and a greenlight happening just over a year after that initial glass of wine. We started writing in January 2025, shooting in August and we were on air by January 2026. What I'm happiest about is that due to the speed of development, we stayed really true to the original concept. Moments and scenes that we talked about while sitting at that pub, actually made it to the screen, exactly as we'd imagined them. In my experience that doesn't happen an awful lot.
What was the most challenging AND the most nourishing part of this process for you?
Whenever we start a new series, we want it to be different, to not look like our last work... so the most challenging part of the process for me was what it always is when making tv. Turning dreams into something shootable. The moment when the script crashes into the schedule and brutal cuts have to be made. There's never enough time. So, it's goodbye all those little scenes which gave characters breathing space, or established a new day in a different way, or let the music do the talking, or added another layer of something. But, I was lucky to work with incredible 1st ADs who understood the writer's pain, and always did their very best to achieve the impossible. Collaboration, give and take, respecting each other's jobs - working with great people to achieve a common goal makes even the challenging parts rewarding in their own way.
We all know how tough the past few years have been for the local screen industry - it must feel even more rewarding to see your creation released out to kiwi audiences?
It has definitely been a tough time in the screen industry with the landscape changing dramatically over the past few years. Like so many other screen practitioners, I have had long spells of not a lot going on! I always try to spend those quiet periods behaving like a full-time writer by making sure I'm at my desk 9-5 creating pitches and new ideas, meeting with other writers to collaborate, taking producers out for coffee to see what kind of projects they're looking for. Blue Murder Motel came out of one of those quiet times - it seemed there was no work on the horizon, so we made a big effort to try and create our own. That makes it feel very rewarding!
"Blue Murder Motel is basically Brokenwood on the beach" said The Spinoff in their review and absolutely loved the retro vibe and sunny feels saying it's just what NZ needs right now - where did your inspiration for the story, that vibe and the location come from?
Cozy crime shows like Brokenwood and My Life is Murder are incredibly popular; Steven and I were aware of a couple of local production companies looking for their own light murder mystery series, so we deliberately set out to write one. Like all writers, we were looking for a point of difference so we decided to mix murder mystery with romantic comedy, making our lead detectives a loved up married couple rather than a lone wolf detective with baggage. A sunny beachside setting felt like something fresh, and Steven and I had been wanting to write about a motel since we'd both stayed in a rather dodgy one in the middle of the Waikatō a few years back, for a friend's engagement party. That motel gave us food poisoning, ghosty vibes and a sign which read 'you may only use the spa pool between the hours of 10pm and 2am'. What the? We wanted Blue Motel to be the opposite of this - somewhere aesthetically pleasing, bright and breeze-blocky, somewhere people would want to stay. Basically Steven and I talked about the elements we'd like to see in a show like this - beautiful summery scenery, kiwi nostalgia, jandals and suntans, holiday vibes, a rock n roll soundtrack. Although we originally had the Coromandel Peninsula in our minds as the ideal location, ending up Ōrewa was a crazy happy coincidence - because the long, beachy childhood summers I was personally channeling actually took place in Ōrewa at my grandparents' old 1950s bach. And, my grandparents' bach was right next door to the Edgewater Motel, which we ended up using as our hero location. The grandparents are gone and the old bach has long since been replaced by a big concrete beachfront mansion with palms - which is sometimes visible in the background of our shots. Although Ōrewa has transformed and grown since my childhood summers in the 1980s, it still feels so familiar and welcoming, and the old motel next door hasn't changed that much. I'm not going to say it feels like coming home - waaaay too cheesy.
How did the Ōrewa locals respond to the production coming to town!?
The locals were very welcoming to our crew and it felt like they were generally happy to host us, and excited to spot their locations on screen. The motel owners Derek and Tania, the Ōrewa Holiday Park, the Surf Club and various passers by were super friendly and supportive - and sometimes curious. Shout out to the gentleman on a segway who came by the motel during a night shoot demanding to know what on earth was going on and refusing to move out of shot. And shout out to our 1st AD Jen Butcher who calmly offered him a cup of tea, showed him around the set (he remained on his segway the entire time!) and basically turned him from an irate local to a happy one. The next night, Segway Man glided past the motel again with a happy wave and friendly greeting.
Tell us how the two top notch Aussie leads came to inhabit the Blue Murder Motel?
Our executive producers suggested early on that having the two Australian protagonists would up the fish-out-of-water element of the story, at the same time as hopefully attracting international interest in the project. Kiwi born Michala Banas was always on our wishlist, and we were really happy that she agreed to be attached to the project after reading an early draft of the pilot script. Once we had a green light we were sent a tape of Brett Tucker's recent appearance in the Shonda Rimes show The Residence and thought he was all the things - charming, hilarious and endlessly watchable. Michala and Brett are best buddies in real life, which I think helped convince him to come and spend 12 cold winter weeks in New Zealand shooting a murder mystery series. Including Michala and Brett, Blue Murder Motel had a cast of 50 actors in total, including local veterans like Sara Wiseman, Miriama Smith and Angela Bloomfield, as well as a whole lot of new talent.
Sooo good to see such a strong local cast and crew which of course includes some very talented women and fellow-Wiftes, how was the experience on set and across the overall production?
Shooting a kiwi summer in the middle of winter was certainly challenging and the cast and crew worked really hard, but the experience was overwhelmingly positive. There was a general positivity and excitement to be building something from the ground up. Maybe it was the battle against the freezing wind; maybe it was wanting to welcome our Australian cast who were far from home, partners and pets, but Blue Motel weirdly felt like a really tight family. That's such a cliché but it really did feel that way and there were plenty of tears all round on our final shoot day.
WATCH BLUE MURDER MOTEL RIGHT HERE ON TVNZ+