.
As well as finding the amount of cars and people overwhelming, he says his “quite cheeky” nature got him into some trouble at his South Auckland high school.
“It was scary at first, but then you adapt and stuff. You find some friends, and you try not to get beaten up.”
After graduating, Davis moved back home to Raetihi and spent a couple of years driving tractors, haybaling, working as a ‘glassie’ in bars and putting snow chains on cars at the Mount Ruapehu skifield.
He then tried a couple of years at acting school in Whangārei before moving back to Auckland, where he made short films and auditioned while working as a lighting rigger on film sets.
The Mixtape Tammy Davis REBOUNCE The Mixtape
Tammy Davis (Mookie) and Rawiri Paratene (Mulla) in the 1999 NZ film What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?
South Pacific Pictures
Davis was clocking 12-hour night shifts on the Peter Jackson film King Kong Lee Tamahori ‘s 1994 hit film Once Were Warriors.
Six months after dropping out of drama school, he was stoked to get the role of Mookie in Ian Mune’s What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? – a 1999 film, which, despite being good, he says, “didn’t really hit the same” as Once Were Warriors .
A few years on, Davis was in his late 20s when he was cast as Jared Mason in Outrageous Fortune – a raucous comedy drama centred around a West Auckland family called the Wests.
Tammy Davis says he and Antony Starr had a lot of fun together playing childhood friends Van West and Munter Mason.
South Pacific Pictures
After first observing how Antony Starr was playing Van West – “the dipshit little brother who couldn’t get his act together” – Davis helped to create the character of his childhood friend Munter in response.
“I watched [Starr], and I just went ‘Oh, there’s a bit of an avenue here for me where I can be the mate who gets stoned with him, and we drink and stuff like that, but I don’t want this character to fall away as a caricature of what white people perceive a young Māori boy to be.
“I reckon if I’d gone down the avenue of a caricature, I would have been written out. Yeah, I reckon they would have used me as a tool for something in Van’s life, and then they would have gotten rid of me and brought in someone else.”
After nixing someone’s idea that Munter should have a spiderweb tattoo on his hand – which seemed like something his “old cousins” in their 40s would have – Davis checked out the work of Māori tattoo artist Inia Taylor.
A tattoo he’d done of the word ‘Criminal’ on a young Asian guy looked “cool as”, Davis thought, and became the inspiration for the words Munter has tattooed across his arms.
“I went ‘That’s the shit, that’s it right there, bro’, and [Taylor] designed the ‘West Side Forever’ tattoo.”
Munter Mason’s signature ‘Westside Forever’ arm tattoos were designed by Inia Taylor.
South Pacific Pictures
Davis says he and Starr cemented their on-screen chemistry in the first scene they ever did together. A bit down the track, the Outrageous Fortune producers especially loved a scene where the pair chat about how the ‘Munter fish’ and the ‘Van fish’ will always find their way back to each other in the big ocean of life.
“I got called into the producer’s office, and she goes, ‘Shit, that scene’s so bloody good.’ … They just went, ‘We need to massage this bromance with these two and give them more to do’.
“The rest is history. We became two of the most loved characters on TV.”
In Outrageous Fortune, Jared Mason married Kasey West (Nicole Whippy) and became father to Hemi Chrysler Valiant Mason (Kruze Kelly).
South Pacific Pictures
In 2017, for his first stint on the local medical drama Shortland Street , Davis played a cult leader named Luke Whakapono who disappeared mysteriously at a waterfall.
A few years later, producer Oliver Driver invited him to return as a gang leader named Chomp in Shorty’s R-rated Retribution special.
Tammy Davis says he looked so believable performing as the Shortland Street gang leader Chomp that some real-life gang members approached.
TVNZ
Filming on the streets of West Auckland with Jayden Daniels and Pana Hema-Taylor, wearing some realistic-looking patches, Davis says the actors caught the eye of some real-life gang members.
“These two carloads of bloody Head Hunters turned up and came over to speak to us. “We were like, ‘Bro, it’s Shortland Street …’
“We were driving round in an Audi, which, you know, all the gangsters love the European cars…. they probably thought that it was like a documentary or something. It was so funny. Shorties was fun.”
Davis launched his directing career in 2011 with Ebony Society on the NZ Onscreen website .
Although Ebony Society went on to win Best Short Film and Best Screenplay at the Aotearoa Film and Television Awards, at first, Davis was told he didn’t have enough experience to direct it.
He credits the late Māori filmmaker Merata Mita – who told him to “Call them right now and tell them to give it back” – for the encouragement to do just that.
Tammy Davis co-hosted George FM’s Breakfast Show until October this year.
Courtesy of Johnson & Laird
Mita believed indigenous filmmakers need to make their own movies, Davis says.
“She basically said to me, ‘You’d watch that film and you’d, for the rest of your life, regret that you gave it away, because it’s not going to be your film anymore.”
Although Mita was right, he says, making Ebony Society and releasing it into the world was extremely hard. He didn’t like the finished film at all until one night after a Q&A screening at the Berlin Film Festival, a Mexican usher approached him to say, “I get it, bro. I get it”.
“I went, ‘Okay, I can enjoy this film now because there are people who need to see this and it’s not about me anymore. With that sort of stuff, you just have to let it go.
In 2015, Davis directed his first feature film, Born to Dance Māori hip-hop dancer (played by Tia Maipi) who “just needs a bit of a push in the right direction.”
The movie, which is streaming on TVNZ , stars acclaimed musician Stan Walker and features moves by Kiwi choreographer Parris Goebel , whose personal success story is so amazing that it deserves to be a film itself, Davis says.
“She’s a force of nature, that girl.”
Play video Pause video This video is hosted on Youtube.
Tammy Davis’s mixtape:
‘Red Red Wine’ by UB40:
After school, when he was around 10, Davis would head to the bar where his mum worked as a receptionist, make himself a lemonade and put this 1983 reggae hit on the jukebox.
“That was just the song that was always on.”
‘OPP’ by Naughty By Nature:
This Grammy Award-winning 1991 rap track is an “absolute banger”, Davis says.
“My older brother, Sonny, had two speakers on the side with the cassette player in the middle. I’d just listen to that all the time. I loved that tune.”
‘It Only Happens (When I Look At You)’ by Renée Geyer
This 1999 song by Australian artist Renée Geyer featured in What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? , Davis says.
“There’s a scene in the record shop where Sonny Heke grabs Nancy Brunning’s character Tania, and then she starts singing, and he goes ‘Turn it up’. It was just about him kind of encouraging her to find her voice, I think.”
‘Gutter Black’ by Hello Sailor:
This gold-selling 1977 song was the theme of Outrageous Fortune .
‘Runnin’ by David Dallas:
This local hit from 2013 features on the Born to Dance soundtrack.
‘One’ by Shapeshifter:
“Of all of the dance and electronic acts that have come out of New Zealand, Shapers is probably one of the biggest and best ones. They still continue to throw out bangers, and man, they’re consistent.”
