Elisabeth’s killer Shorty comeback ‘I’M HAUNTED BY CARLA!’
‘Any actor that has scenes with me can be very worried for their contract!’
After filming her final scene as villainous nurse Carla Crozier on Shortland Street in 1996, actress Elisabeth Easther shaved off her character’s signature “orange helmet” of hair, got a job in radio and moved by herself into a small shack in Northland’s remote Taupo Bay.
“It was so cathartic getting rid of Carla,” enthuses the Hamilton-born star, now also a journalist, documentary maker and award-winning playwright.
“I had one of the show’s make-up artists give me a number two and when I was walking home from having my mop chopped, it rained on my actual scalp. I felt liberated and just super-excited for the future. Within months, I’d completely left Carla behind.”
But fans of the TVNZ 2 soap couldn’t move, Elisabeth is regularly stopped by people who recognise her as the woman who beat her husband Bernie Leach to death with a candlestick during an earthquake.
