Even Hirschfeld herself hadn\u2019t clocked the milestone but admits it \u201cfeels remarkable to still be working in the media\u201d when forced to do the maths. <\/p>\n
Of course, she\u2019s never been far from our TVs. And now she returns to the big screen \u2013 well, her voice does \u2013 as a narrator of sorts for musician Shayne Carter\u2019s biography-slash-documentary Life In One Chord. Based largely on his book, Dead People I Know, the film charts Carter\u2019s life from his childhood in Dunedin, his teenage bands Bored Games and the Doublehappys, to the heady days of trying to make it in the US \u2013 and the many dark days of band break-ups and losing friends, family and others close to him. <\/p>\n
Hirschfeld (happily) got roped in when, during a voiceover session, which was on camera, Carter got awkward and giggly reading his own words and casually suggested they bring in a professional\u2026 like Hirschfeld. The next thing the audience knows, she\u2019s there in the vocal booth reading the kind of rock \u2019n\u2019 roll stories we don\u2019t really associate with the prim and proper presenter. <\/p>\n
Shayne Carter in teenage band Bored Games.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love Shayne. And I was very chuffed \u2013 and shy \u2013 about him saying, \u2018hey, can Carol do the voiceover?\u2019 Of all the people. We are a very unusual mix,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was so different to anything I\u2019d done before \u2013 exhausting and tricky. Somebody else\u2019s voice is somebody else\u2019s voice.\u201d <\/p>\n
She was familiar with Carter\u2019s, though. They first crossed paths in the late 1980s when Hirschfeld was a young producer for Paul Holmes\u2019 show and got sent to do a story on Carter\u2019s band, Straightjacket Fits, who were on the verge of becoming the next big thing overseas. You don\u2019t imagine someone like Hirschfeld getting nervous too often, but this time she was. <\/p>\n
\u201cBecause they were kinda steely, punky, \u2018we\u2019re not into this bulls***\u2019 would-be rock stars,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n
It turns out, she didn\u2019t have much to worry about. Carter won her over quickly \u2013 and the pair have remained loosely in each other\u2019s orbits since. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe was, I\u2019ll say it \u2013 I can objectify him \u2013 he was tremendously good looking. He was deep in his head, which I kinda like,\u201d she remembers of that first encounter. <\/p>\n
\u201cI loved that at times their music was a complete scream and racket of the painful young person order, and at other times, deeply tender\u2026 and I love what Shayne has mellowed into as well, and it\u2019s because he has a wonderful intellect \u2013 and all great rock stars need that.\u201d <\/p>\n
Carol Hirschfeld and John Campbell on their last day presenting 3 News in 2005.<\/p>\n
For Hirschfeld, rock \u2019n\u2019 roll began with her older brother, Charl, who discovered the soundtrack to American Graffiti when he was 15 and she was 10. <\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things about my own personal musical history is that the men in my life \u2013 be it my brother, partners, live-ins, husbands, sons and now my daughter too \u2013 are the great music obsessives. I know what I like \u2013 I tend towards R&B soul, because it speaks to me \u2013 but I have the joy of being a part of their journeys.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t just the boys who influenced her. Hirschfeld remembers her mother, Ngawiki, as a \u201cnatural musician\u201d, one who taught herself how to read sheet music and play the piano and who ensured her children did the same \u2013 even if they didn\u2019t keep tinkling the ivories for long. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe was really, deeply musical. It does run in me,\u201d says Hirschfeld. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was producing or directing something, I nearly always had to start with a piece of music \u2026 It helps me shape the pictures, more than anything else. I think some people have a sort of cinematic memory, and I am one of them, therefore, a music track is always running with it. Whereas Finlay [Macdonald, her husband and fellow journalist] remembers in words.\u201d<\/p>\n
Remembering is at the heart of Life in One Chord and loss is a shared story for Hirschfeld and Carter. You don\u2019t name a book Dead People I Have Known without experiencing it once or twice. The film visits the musician in moments of great sadness, including the early loss of his bandmate\/best mate Wayne Elsey in a train accident, and those are often the passages Hirschfeld narrates on screen. <\/p>\n
In her own life, the sting of grief came early, when she lost her mother at age 10. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is why we are drawn to Shayne. Because no matter how staunch he looks on the outside, you know that there is this incredible sensitivity inside and it comes out in all sorts of ways. I reflected when I learnt more about his story, how he took those life experiences into his psyche and it made him a richer, more giving person. That is a sign of huge emotional IQ and I respect him immensely for it \u2013 and then to be creative with it, how wonderful,\u201d Hirschfeld says. <\/p>\n
Shayne Carter has a new documentary film, Life in One Chord.<\/p>\n
Life in One Chord also touches on Carter\u2019s relationship with his whakapapa. His father was adopted by a P\u0101keh\u0101 family and Carter has previously said that family situation \u201cmade me feel like someone who\u2019s straddled between two worlds\u201d. <\/p>\n
Hirschfeld \u201cabsolutely relates\u201d to Carter in that way. She has spoken before about the ways her father, a white Australian, helped foster his children\u2019s M\u0101ori identity after the death of Ngawiki. It\u2019s something Hirschfeld is still navigating alongside her own children.<\/p>\n
\u201cThough [Shayne and I] haven\u2019t talked about it, I think he\u2019s probably very similar to me, where we learn to be comfortable with that. Nobody can ever take away your whakapapa. People can judge you for whatever, but ultimately, it\u2019s about how you judge yourself, how you understand where you sit in the historical continuum of the peoples that you come from. It\u2019s also a journey that doesn\u2019t end. We resonate with each other in that way. <\/p>\n
\u201cBoth my kids are on their own journeys and we are understanding that we will just travel this together and see where we land. I have got an extraordinary wh\u0101nau \u2026 so I feel like my wh\u0101nau connections are incredibly strong, and that\u2019s the most important thing.\u201d <\/p>\n
Hirschfeld\u2019s professional life is largely off-screen these days. She is TVNZ\u2019s GM of production operations after stints at Whakaata M\u0101ori, Stuff and RNZ, and calls the return to the company \u2013 where she first met Carter \u2013 \u201cbeautiful\u201d after 25 years away. The challenges remain the same, although this time she\u2019s less intimidated by surly, beautiful rock stars and more interested in the power of local stories. <\/p>\n
\u201cAny of us who have been involved in storytelling, journalism in New Zealand, you come to understand that it is the unique aspect of what it is to come from this part of the world that makes us stand in the world. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I think about Shayne\u2019s story, it\u2019s so quintessentially \u2018Nu Zillund\u2019. Where he came from, the staunchness that is a combination of a whole lot of things \u2013 being from Dunedin, M\u0101ori \u2013 and then what he did with that. How people bend it into something expressive and all of their own. And what\u2019s not to like about that?\u201d<\/p>\n
Bridget Jones joined the New Zealand Herald in 2025. She has been a lifestyle and entertainment journalist and editor for more than 15 years. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even Hirschfeld herself hadn\u2019t clocked the milestone but admits it \u201cfeels remarkable to still be working in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[9331,78014,806,642,1863,13990,96093,2220,1068,156,1888,13800,16773,305,128331,185,263,13457,5978,14771,3025,65041,111,139,69,1118,90,10903,3227,1111,5419,65796,544,6182,427,4758,223,1961,2044,437,11548,3608],"class_list":["post-211109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-chance","tag-2025s","tag-as","tag-august","tag-back","tag-below","tag-carol","tag-carter","tag-catch","tag-entertainment","tag-first","tag-giving","tag-great","tag-have","tag-hirschfeld","tag-is","tag-lifestyle","tag-look","tag-might","tag-missed","tag-most","tag-musician","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-on","tag-popular","tag-published","tag-reading","tag-screen","tag-shayne","tag-some","tag-stories","tag-story","tag-taking","tag-the","tag-this","tag-time","tag-tv","tag-voice","tag-were"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}