Francis and Kiaora Tipene on harsh times, the cure for anger, the joy of tamariki, Paris, Tonga and their new series of The Casketeers which premieres Wednesday.
The Tipenes were in Paris, just the two of them, on a romantic trip with no work, no camera crew, not one of their seven children present. But by day three, Francis Tipene wanted to leave.
“It had been a 36-hour flight to get there,” says his wife, Kaiora. “We hadn’t even been there two nights and he started to pine for our daughter. He said, ‘let’s go back to our kids’. And so after a couple more days, they did.
Francis agrees it was a long way to go, just to turn around. But after seven sons (he has one from a previous relationship, six with Kaiora), “I finally got the daughter and man, that changed me.”
Now almost two, Ngawaiata has just started Kōhanga reo. “She was counting at 11 months,” says Francis. “Tahi, rua… And English too. All these things just make all my problems go away.”
Ah yep, problems. Since before Ngawaiata was born, the Tipenes have been dealing with big, dreadful, public problems.
First stop is Tonga in the new series launching Wednesday, June 11. (Source: TVNZ)
To recap: Last month their long-term employee at Tipene Funerals, Fiona Bakulich, was sent to prison for interfering with human remains and obtaining money by deception. The victims, all grieving families, were subjected to experiences ranging from the distressing (lifting the lid of a loved one’s coffin to discover the metal lining they’d paid for was absent), to the financially gutting (Bakulich took a total of more than $16,000 from families, charging them for various bogus fees and fines as well as products, such as the metal liners, they didn’t receive.)
The revelations of the trial were heavy, the coverage thorough and not always accurate (there were no bodies placed in rubbish bags). And while the Tipenes grappled with a sense of betrayal from someone they’d considered a sister and a tuakana, they were also subjected to harsh scrutiny and public judgement themselves. Why hadn’t they seen what was going on, checked for it, acted sooner? The media asked the questions and social media scrambled to provide the answers.
The comments got ugly, says Kai. “In a way it’s a good thing. It’s teaching me that I don’t have to please everybody. If you see the show, my husband and I are all about people pleasing.”
For a business and a TV brand built on light humour, deep respect and te ao Māori, the case was a lot to come back from.
“When it came to the process side of things, we knew how to deal with it,” says Kaiora. “But when it came to the emotional side of it? Nah.
As a couple, “it certainly tested us,” she says. “I hope at some point we look back and go yeah well that was one ugly phase…”
“When your business has been misconstrued in the public eye, you are judged and you start not liking yourself and it’s easy to get lost,” she says.
“You start losing control of everything. How can I give to my staff and my tamariki if I’m not right? I could feel myself crumbling and going to the person who I lean on and he was crumbling… I thought, man one of us has got to keep it together or we’re both going to fall.”
Kaiora is driving and talking to 1News on the phone. Later we also talked to Francis, who was no less frank.
The experience was his first real insight into depression, he says. “I never thought I’d be one of those people, in bed, close the curtains, ‘don’t talk to me’. But when your face is plastered in the Herald for one week straight, it’s like wow…
“I’m grateful that my wife is such a strong lady. I look back and I’m like, why wasn’t I the one keeping us going? I failed. I was like, close the curtains, turn the light off. The traditional male role is to keep the family together – I know times are changing and I don’t want to get into that argument – but the public shaming, the way it was reported, it was devastating.”
Along with friends and whanau, it was the Tipene Funerals staff who saved Francis. “My staff were like, ‘why do you always go missing every time something [negative is written] about you? Forget it! You were the one who put yourself on TV.
“The staff were cruel but it was what I needed. Obviously, my wife was saying the same thing, but sometimes it takes someone else.”
The power of a suit
One day, after a month of lying around in shorts and a T-shirt, Francis felt the urge to put on a suit. “Because I felt like a nothing. Then I also put my shoes on and thought, ‘bugger it I’ll drive to work’. At the funeral home there was a grieving family and Frances was asked to do a prayer. It made him feel human again. “Because I’d been feeling like the devil, stuck at home in bed.”
So their work as funeral directors continued, but what about the show? Would there be another season of the internationally successful Casketeers?
There would. The seventh season launches on Wednesday and takes a fresh form with the Casketeers travelling around the world, learning how other cultures deal with death. For the emotionally struggling Tipenes, it was a tonic.
“The production company were so understanding,” says Kaiora. “They’d say ‘today’s newspapers are tomorrow’s fish ‘n’ chip papers!’.”
Canada, India, Vanuatu, Japan and – most meaningfully for Francis – Tonga. He’d never been there but his grandparents on his dad’s side were both Tongan. And although he says the flavour of his upbringing leaned more Māori, the island of his ancestors felt familiar.
“It was eerily similar to the way I was brought up, up North, making do with what we had out in the yard. My kids don’t do that, everyone is on the blimmin wi-fi…I had a nostalgic feeling watching the children making fun out of branches and bits of plastic. Everyone is so happy among all this… I wouldn’t actually call it poverty, it looks poor to us, but they are happy and content, that’s how I was as a kid. It felt like home.”
‘The anger comes in my quiet times’
Each time the Tipenes were about to head off with the TV crew for another three-week trip, leaving their six boys with trusted whanau and taking Ngawaiata with them, Francis would worry. “You’re always thinking, what is the point of this when all of this other stuff is going down? This mistake by one person has ruined us. But the minute we stepped onto the plane we forgot about it. You fly off and it’s an adventure.”
Then you fly home, and hell awaits? “Oh yes,” says Francis. “I’d hear ‘prepare the cabin for landing’, and I’d think, oh gosh, here we go.”
Even now, he wrestles with uncomfortable emotions. The depression has gone but bouts of anger have taken its place.
“When you’re made out to be someone you’re not and you have to wait until it’s all over for the truth to come out. The anger comes in my quiet times. I’m sitting there eating lunch and, oh, I’m angry again.”
The cure, he says, is deep breaths and taking a walk. “You think what the heck is a walk going to do? It does a lot.”
And then there are the kids. “They don’t care, they’ve got basketball, rugby… that’s helped us move forward.”
Ngawaiata has been a beautiful distraction through most of the ordeal – she was born five weeks early in 2023, the evening her parents returned from a painful meeting with one of the families affected by Bakulich’s crimes.
“When she arrived things had broken out and we knew what was going on,” says Francis. “She was the light for us and she still is to this day.”
The Casketeers: Life and Death Around the Globe, premieres 7.30pm, Wednesday, June 11, TVNZ 1 and TVNZ+.
