Sonia Gray is a familiar face on the telly. The long-time Lotto presenter’s credit roll is impressive – Shortland Street, Wheel of Fortune, Sione’s Wedding, Kai Safari, and most recently Netflix romcom The Royal Treatment and Dancing With the Stars.
The recent role she is most passionate about is as presenter and executive producer of documentary Kids Wired Differently which screened recently on TVNZ 1 and offered an insight into the lives of families with neurodivergent children.
Since the documentary aired on TVNZ 1 in October, Gray has received thousands of emails from parents who are struggling. While she’d hoped the show would start conversations, she was not expecting it to have the impact that it’s had.
“I’m quite blown away and a bit overwhelmed by it all. It’s so great the doco made such an impact, but it’s made me realise how much work we’ve still got to do. I’ve received so many messages and I want to reply to them all because I’ve been in that position of feeling so isolated. It’s easy to feel like you’re the only family in the world that’s going through this, but you’re not, and hopefully the documentary helped to show that.
“Last week I was approached by a man who said, ‘My wife and I are really struggling to help our son who is autistic. We watched your documentary and at the end of the show I turned to my wife and said, ‘Thank God we are not alone’. He was crying, I was crying, our stories are different, but the struggle is the same.”
Of course, Gray and the show’s producers could not cover off this weighty topic in one commercial hour of television and because of the huge response she independently set up a Facebook support
