Selwyn Toogood is still remembered as Mr It’s in the Bag, despite a broadcasting career which ran more than 50 years. Karyn Hay is known as Miss Radio with Pictures, despite being reborn as a DJ and award-winning novelist. And Russell Smith will be forever associated with milk-mad vampire Count Homogenized, despite a long career acting on stage and screen.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Smith talks about his career inside and outside of the count’s cape, including:

• How audiences greeted Count Homogenized with admiration, terror and profanities
• Mad Count encounters with cows, live on Telethon
• Count Homogenized’s birth at the hands of children’s TV producer Kim Gabara, on late 70s show A Haunting We Will Go
• Hanging upside down in a telephone box as the star of It is I Count Homogenized
• The unvarnished, unpasteurised truth over rumours the NZ Milk Board were the power behind the Homogenized throne
• Smith’s time on pioneering comedy series A Week of It
• Voicing truck-driving hippie Tussock on puppet tale Woolly Valley
• His delight at playing “arsehole cop” Bernie Gregory on police show Shark in the Park
• Directing children’s shows Mel’s Amazing Movies and The Nosey Parkers

This video is available on YouTube to embed and distribute via a Creative Commons licence.

NZ On Screen: Direction and Interview - Ian Pryor, Camera and Editing - Alex Backhouse