Loss, new jobs and a hard return to New Zealand. Recently, TVNZ’s Daniel Faitaua has experienced a lot of big, sometime difficult, moments. As Bridget Jones discovers, each of them have reminded him of one thing: life is too short to worry.
Daniel Faitaua is apologising.
He’s five
minutes late. He would have been early, but he’s spent the past seven minutes cornered by a delighted older couple who insisted on telling him, with great enthusiasm, just how often he appears in their bedroom … on TV.
As he slides along the bench seat of our deli booth, he’s still tickled by the conversation. Apparently, it happens a lot.
This is the version of Faitaua most people know. Whether on Breakfast, Seven Sharp or a 1News bulletin at either end of the day, his face has been beamed into our homes so often his presence feels both oddly domestic and unmistakably public.
He is recognised everywhere – on the bus, on the sidelines of his kids’ sports games, in restaurant doorways – and, almost unfailingly, he stops and has a natter.
But it’s a fine line between being known and feeling like you belong.
When he returned to New Zealand in 2022, after three years in the UK as TVNZ’s Europe correspondent, he expected to slot back into his home and his life. Instead, he struggled to feel like he fit. Even now, many people assume he’s back for a holiday not for good.
“It wasn’t the New Zealand I remembered,” he says of those early post-Covid years back on home soil.
Daniel Faitaua on “Breakfast” with Hayley Holt and John Campbell. Photo / TVNZ
The moment that stays with him came early. He was at a bus stop with his sons, not long after arriving home, when a woman turned, looked at them, and said: “Go back to your f***ing country.”
For a second, he wanted to turn around and bite back. But his boys were beside him.
Instead, he bit his tongue, pointed something out across the street and kept walking. He grew up learning to be polite, not reactive.
“That’s how I was raised, you know, respect, having manners, the please and thank yous.”
The shock still lingers; he had never heard words like that, directed at him, before.
“It was a big eye-opener,” he says. “Not just that, but people weren’t as friendly. You’d say hi, and it just wasn’t there.”
Today he has a tight-knit group of friends he affectionately calls “the St Heliers Catholic Mafia”, but things can still feel off, despite being such a familiar presence – and a bit of an open book.
He takes the bus to work most mornings. He wears headphones, but not for long because often someone will sit beside him and start talking. As we sit in a busy restaurant, people’s eyes go wide with recognition. Some wave, one gently pats his shoulder as they walk past. He doesn’t seem to mind.
“I’m just Daniel,” he says. “I’m a people person.”
“It wasn’t the New Zealand I remembered.” Photo / Corey Fleming
There is a perception in some quarters that perhaps Faitaua is “too nice” for parts of his job. He wonders if his warmth is mistaken for softness.
“I think sometimes people can have that perception when you’re a journo,” he says.
“So there have been moments where people compare you to other reporters or other journalists … But you can be nice and still gain the respect and the answers from people … [Respect] goes a long way.”
There’s also a particular scrutiny that comes when you work on TV. Suddenly, every move you make – or don’t make – is speculated about. People have opinions, start Reddit threads, run polls on whether you are fit for a job you might not even want.
“It’s challenging when you … become public property. Like everyone has this right to talk about you, and talk about where you should be, where you shouldn’t be, where you should go, what you should do, what you should not.
“So you need a thick skin.”
He doesn’t read the comment sections, but his wife does.
The TVNZ Breakfast line up in 2016: Brodie Kane, Jack Tame, Hilary Barry, Sam Wallace and Daniel Faitaua.
Faitaua’s path into journalism wasn’t a straight one. By the time he went to study it, he was already in his late 20s. Before that he worked (in no particular order) as cabin crew, tried some university law papers, and earned a BA in American history and Japanese (he is fluent).
But Samoan was his first language, the only one spoken at home with his grandmother, who helped raise him. English came later, learned at school in Christchurch, where he was placed in English as a Second Language (ESL) classes, partly because he’d convinced his grandmother it would help him to translate Days of our Lives for her.
“I always have a quiet chuckle when I read the news,” he says. “Because I just think, who would have thought that kid who struggled with the English language …”
The sentence trails off, but the point remains. Faitaua’s is a voice that had to be learned.
His three boys – they are 19, 17 and 14 – speak Samoan with him now, even if sometimes, they forget who taught them.
“They think they’re quite cool being teenagers and use the swear words a lot. I always like to remind them there’s more to the language than just swear words, boys … And I can understand.”
It’s the sort of thing you notice more, perhaps, as your children get older; what sticks, what doesn’t and what you’re trying to pass on.
Faitaua has redefined the mark he wants to leave as he has gotten older, too.
Faitaua with one of his sons, on holiday on the Greek Island of Mykonos.
Milestone birthdays can feel loaded, as markers of success or maybe of endurance. But early last month, on the night of his 50th birthday, Faitaua was tucked up in bed by 10.45pm.
There was no blow out party. Instead, he spent the day wandering Melbourne’s art galleries and the Victoria State Library with his wife. They watched a musical (The Book of Mormon) and drank over-priced, delicious coffee. A few days earlier, Hilary Barry made him a banana cake (one of his favourites) which he devoured in the TVNZ newsroom.
“I think reaching 50 is a privilege,” he says. “My brother, he never reached it. And many other loved ones too.”
His brother Anthony died of cancer in 2020 aged 47, when Covid kept our borders tight and Faitaua was on the wrong side of them, living in London. He couldn’t get home.
A year ago this week, his father died after living with Parkinson’s disease for decades, and later suffering a stroke and pneumonia.
“I miss him,” he says, simply.
Daniel Faitaua and his brother Anthony. Photo / Instagram @danielfaitaua
That feeling hasn’t dulled in the way people keep telling him it will either.
“I don’t think the grieving process ever stops. And when you lose your two male role models in your life it’s hard,” Faitaua says, thumbing away tears.
“Life is really, really short. You just don’t know what’s around the corner.”
It’s the kind of sentence that could feel like a cliche. But can something be a cliche when you change your whole life because of it? Because Faitaua has.
Grief has stripped away the illusion that time is owed to any of us and hesitation feels like a risk now.
Which is sort of how he ended up becoming a game show host.
Daniel Faitaua is the new host of Tipping Point NZ.
When the email came through asking him to audition, his response was immediate.
“I was like, are you kidding me?” he says, grinning.
The show was Tipping Point, a format – three players, general knowledge questions and a giant slot machine – he had come to love while living in the UK. On screen, it offers a version of him viewers don’t often see.
“Everywhere I go people are like, oh it’s the news guy. But I’m more than a news reader. I think this is an opportunity just to show a bit more of what I can do. And it’s fun.”
He’s due a bit of lightness in his world. But is he fun? He says his wife probably thinks so.
“All my mates are just like, ‘how on earth did they get you reading the bloody news? We all know what you’re like’.
“I am quite funny, Bridget,” he says. It turns out Faitaua uses people’s names a lot when talking to them and it’s both unnerving and sincere.
He certainly looks the part for his new gig. On the telly his hair always looks slick, but in person – well in person, it’s an absolute work of art.
“I always moan about how thick my hair is,” he says. “But yeah, I’ve got a good mop.”
(For the record, it’s naturally curly, but Faitaua insists the routine is getting it thinned out once a week, then “just a hairdryer, running your fingers through it and that’s it”.)
There are nerves, of course. Tipping Point NZ starts with four celebrity specials, but Faitaua hopes for more. When the promos started to air, his sons had one desperate request.
“Please Dad, don’t be a dick,” he says, laughing. “Don’t embarrass us. Please don’t embarrass us.”
He probably will – he’s the dad of teenagers, after all, but for Faitaua, the difference these days is that he’s trying, and that is worth the uncertainty.
“I am a risk taker,” he says. “When opportunities come up, I just go for it. Sometimes you don’t get it, sometimes you do – but that’s life.”
Celebrity Tipping Point NZ screens Mondays, 7.30pm on TVNZ 1 and TVNZ+
Bridget Jones joined the New Zealand Herald in 2025. She has been a lifestyle and entertainment journalist and editor for more than 15 years.
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