THE GONE STAR'S - PERFECT PROPOSAL

Newly engaged Kiwi actress Acushla-Tara Kupe and her fiancé Paul have their honeymoon planned, but the wedding still needs some work

- Fleur Guthrie

Everyone close to Kiwi actress Acushla-Tara Kupe knew that if her long-time partner Paul Waggott ever proposed to her without prior discussion, it’d be a “hard no”. In fact, if it hadn’t been for a forced six-month separation due to the pandemic – she spent lockdown in New Zealand, while Paul, also an actor, stayed at their former home in East London – it’d probably still be a no.

“He’d been pitching the idea of marriage for a while,” recalls the star of TVNZ show Th e Gone. “I was like, ‘Hmm, I dunno.’ Not that I didn’t love him, but because I didn’t know if I wanted to get married full stop. Th en after six months apart, one of the first things I said was, ‘Yes, I want to marry you now please!’”

As the gorgeous couple welcomes Woman’s Day into their apartment on Auckland’s city fringe, 32 year-old Acushla-Tara shows off her beautifully designed engagement ring, featuring a peach-coloured morganite gem with a koru on the side.

“We were staying near this beautiful inlet in Camborne, north of Wellington,” says UK-born Paul, 34, retelling their romantic proposal story. “Because Acushla was about to embark on her full-immersion [te reo] journey with Te Wānanga Takiura, I’d enlisted the help of a playwright friend, Hone Kouka, who generously agreed to help translate my proposal into Māori. When we stopped to sit on the waterfront, I asked her to marry me in te reo.”