After making her film debut as Chardonnay in Kiwi blockbuster Boy, Rickylee Russell-Waipuka got used to getting bombarded with spontaneous moonwalks and requests for selfies. But for the then-teenager, the hardest shift wasn’t public recognition – it was feeling the distance grow between herself and classmates at her all-girls school in Auckland.
“It was basically the whole tall-poppy situation, but you don’t know that when you’re only 13!” says Ricky, now 30, whose character was famously unimpressed by lead actor James Rolleston’s Michael Jackson moves.
