I nearly passed out!' ROBYN'S BAFTA BOMBSHELL

Our celebrated star could have the after-party of her dreams come award time

- Elisabeth Easther

When Robyn Malcolm learned that her powerful drama After the Party had been nominated for a BAFTA award for Best International Series, the talented actor nearly fainted.

“I was in Liverpool having lunch at a café with Peter when I heard we'd been shortlisted,” Robyn tells the Weekly.

Robyn, who had just turned 60, was in the Merseyside city with her partner, award-winning Scottish actor Peter Mullan, who was starring in a play at Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre, and when the news reached them, Robyn was rendered speechless. Albeit briefly.

“I knew we were on the long list,” says Robyn. “We also knew the shortlist was being announced that day at 1pm, so we went out for lunch to distract me.

“It was 12.45pm. I was eating my eggs, trying not to overthink, when Peter said, ‘I don’t think you've got it or you'd have had a call by now,’” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘Oh, well, it was fun to imagine,’ and I hadn’t brought a frock over. Then he refreshed the BAFTA page, scrolling and scrolling, when his face changed colour. He went silent, then he said, ‘Oh, my God, you’re on the list.’ Then I went quiet, I got a bit teary and I nearly passed out!”

Within moments, Robyn’s phone lit up with messages of support from around the world. “Text after text, DMs, WhatsApps... Then an email came from BAFTA saying congratulations, this is the hotel you can stay at, here’s the invitation to the nominees’ cocktail party, and it became very real very quickly,” continues Robyn, clearly still gobsmacked that the six-part series where she plays Penny, a teacher who accuses her ex-husband (played by Peter) of a sex crime, is up for such a prestigious award.

Back in Aotearoa, Robyn’s creative collaborator and scriptwriter, Gisborne-based Dianne Taylor, was similarly ecstatic.

Explains Robyn, “Di had set her alarm for 2am to check if we'd been shortlisted, and she called from her bed and we screamed at each other.”