She eventually gained the confidence to ask how their meal was going and told them she \u201cloved their work\u201d.<\/p>\n
Melissa O’Neil plays determined Sergeant Lucy Chen in The Rookie. Photo \/ Disney, Mike Taing<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of freaked out a little bit … they were the most lovely people I\u2019ve ever met,\u201d Hemara said.<\/p>\n
She said the pair were just like their on-screen characters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like seeing their characters in real life, it was real crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hemara said it was \u201cunexpected\u201d for them to be at the small cafe, especially with plenty of other food options around town. <\/p>\n
\u201cI guess we just stood out to them … It was so unreal.\u201d <\/p>\n
Cafe owner Jamiee Poole, whose son\u2019s favourite show is The Rookie, said her staff were buzzing after the visit.<\/p>\n
Poole said the pair were really friendly and \u201cjust like normal people\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey were real down to earth,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Poole was glad they chose her Waikato cafe to dine in. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey could have definitely gone anywhere, but we were happy to have them dine with us.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really cool that they came.\u201d <\/p>\n
O\u2019Neil has been on the show since season one and her character is now a sergeant, while Chavez joined the show in season five. <\/p>\n
O\u2019Neil is in New Zealand for the Armageddon Expo in Auckland this coming weekend. <\/p>\n
The Rookie season eight is on TVNZ, with earlier seasons streaming on multiple providers.<\/p>\n
Malisha Kumar is a multimedia journalist based in Hamilton. She joined the Waikato Herald in 2023 after working for Radio 1XX in Whakat\u0101ne.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She eventually gained the confidence to ask how their meal was going and told them she \u201cloved their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[6946,95,201756,1882,201755,71,201754,74216,111,139,69,190766,17891,1305,123030,213,2737,5436,88,223,86465,9863,1524],"class_list":{"0":"post-390003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-actors","9":"tag-and","10":"tag-bigtime","11":"tag-cafe","12":"tag-chavez","13":"tag-from","14":"tag-lisseth","15":"tag-melissa","16":"tag-new-zealand","17":"tag-newzealand","18":"tag-nz","19":"tag-oneil","20":"tag-rookie","21":"tag-show","22":"tag-smalltown","23":"tag-sports","24":"tag-star","25":"tag-stars","26":"tag-surprise","27":"tag-the","28":"tag-torohanga","29":"tag-visit","30":"tag-waikato"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390003","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=390003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}