Flight of the Conchords' Rhys Darby

Sunday Star Times

Rhys Darby's support role in Flight of the Conchords has won him a cult following. He talks to Grant Smithies.

California has just improvised a brilliant visual gag and comedian Rhys Darby is laughing like a loon. "God, that's crazy!" he says once the chortling dies down. "What do you call those things? You know, with two wheels and a handle". A bike? A scooter? "No, no. You stand up on them." A Segway? "Right. I've just seen 20 of them go past in a row. It's like a Segway bikie gang, hooning up the coast."

Today is Darby's day off. The transplanted New Zealander is strolling down LA's Venice Beach with his wife Rosie Carnahan and their son, Finn, who's nearly two. "You can rest assured, I'm not wearing Speedos. I'm fully clothed. Jeans. Shirt. You know."

Darby sounds exactly like Murray Hewitt, the "deputy NZ cultural attache" and ineffectual band manager he plays in hit HBO series, Flight of the Conchords. I always assumed he was hamming up his New Zealand accent for effect on that show, but no. He really does sound like a backblocks farm kid with a clothes peg on his nose, although he tells me he actually grew up in Auckland.

To many American viewers, Darby is the best thing about Flight of the Conchords. US blog sites abound with rants about the comedic genius of "Murray the manager", with many opining that Darby overshadows the show's lead actors, Jemaine Clement and Brett McKenzie.

"Well, I think that's mostly just because people see a lot of themselves in Murray," says Darby. "He's not a talented, struggling musician; he's just a bloke with a normal job, but he has visions of hanging out with the `in' group, and he's finally found out a way to do it, by associating himself with people who are talented.

"He has absolutely no idea how to manage a band, but he's in with people that are cooler than he is, so it's the happiest part of his life when those two turn up in his office and he can run his little band meetings. Really, Murray's extremely endearing. He's highly strung and incompetent, but he's got a big heart. He's not a prick. Some similar characters like, say, David Brent in The Office don't give much of toss about those around them, but Murray really does."

Murray Hewitt has made Darby something of a minor-league celebrity. He's no longer just another anonymous struggling actor wandering California's sun-bleached boulevards. People recognise him now.

"They come up in the street and get me to sign things, or to have their pictures taken with me, which is all very odd. There's even been a weird phenomenon where a lot of Americans dressed up as Murray for Halloween. People have even sent pictures of themselves dressed as Murray, which has been strange."

The role has also opened doors in Hollywood; Darby is now shooting a film called Yes Man with one of his comedy heroes, Jim Carrey.

"I got the role on the strength of Murray, and they wanted me to play someone similar. I get to use my own accent, and I play someone's boss, so he's like Murray in that sense, but I look very different and the character's more of a nerd, fascinated with gadgets and so on. It's my first film, so there's a lot of pressure, but I think I've been getting through it OK."

Now 33, Darby has always loved to make people laugh. He was something of a class clown at school, he remembers, although comedy didn't cross his mind as a viable career. Unsure what to do with himself when he left school in 1991, he joined the New Zealand Army. He left in 1994 to study art at Canterbury University, formed a successful comedy duo with his friend, Grant Lobban, and later moved back to Auckland to gain more solo stand-up experience.

Darby gradually developed a unique and fairly punishing blend of mimicry, slapstick, mime and storytelling, writing and touring energetic one-man shows in which he sang the theme tune, generated all the sound effects and played a raft of different characters, animals and machinery. He presented his first solo show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2002. The following year he and his wife moved to London where he worked the comedy circuit around Europe for four years, hooking up with Clement and McKenzie when they moved to the UK in 2004.

Darby played the duo's manager (then called Bryan Nesbitt) in their 2004 BBC Radio series, and was so perfect in the role that he got the call to relocate to the United States for the Conchords' TV series.

And now it's a cult hit. This is amazing, when you think about it, because the series is littered with the kinds of in-jokes that only make total sense if you grew up in New Zealand.

"That's true," agrees Darby, "but you see, the Americans laugh at different things to us. For a start, they find hilarity in the mere fact that we're starring in an American TV show yet we're not American. They laugh at our voices, and they laugh at the fact that most of them have no idea about New Zealand on any level. America's so big, it becomes the entire universe for people who live there. They're blissfully ignorant of what's going on everywhere else."

So much so, in fact, that some Americans are prepared to dispute the fact that New Zealand even exists.

"That's right. Some people over here are convinced that our nationality is completely made-up. They really believe New Zealand is a fictitious country. I've had quite a few emails from people asking me where I'm really from, and complimenting us on inventing such a funny accent. They say it's great that you've made up this paradise place. It's bizarre! Perhaps we should refuse to believe in California as payback."

Darby, of course, knows full well that New Zealand really exists, and he's itching to get back here.

"Our plan, really, is to get a place in New Zealand once things calm down a bit, preferably out in the bush around Titirangi. We really want to bring the boy up back there, and then travel away occasionally to wherever the work is. At the moment it's in LA, but who knows what will happen next? Life is such a rollercoaster at the moment, I have no idea what's around the next corner."

Flight of the Conchords, Prime, Monday, 10pm.