List of original Shortland Street characters

The following is a list of the 16 original regular characters from the long-running TVNZ soap opera Shortland Street. Envisioned by the show's creator Caterina De Nave alongside Jason Daniel, Ken Catran, amongst others, the characters were meant to demonstrate workers in a busy domesticated city, working in a private medical clinic. They utilized the characters to not only portray a large range of nationalities, but also reach out to several different age and gender demographics.

As part of creating the soap that was to become Shortland Street, Caterina De Nave had numerous goals she wished to achieve. These included the development of several characters that would expand the soaps demographic and relate to viewers. After viewing Australian soaps, Neighbours and Home and Away, De Nave noticed that the cast had very little ethnic diversity and decided to implement several nationalities into Shortland Street's cast so as to truly represent New Zealand's culture. This led to the development of two Māori characters and a Samoan. At the time in New Zealand, there was only one Pacific Islander working as a paramedic, as such the Samoan character of Sam Aleni, was placed as an experienced and hard-working ambulance worker. De Nave also noticed how the role of woman in soap operas often saw them portrayed as much weaker and more vulnerable than their male equivalents and as such, decided to write several female characters as strong and powerful matriarchs.

The show's key demographic was female teenagers and as such, De Nave decided to incorporate several young teen's into the programme. The producers hoped that the inclusion of warm, relatable teenagers who were involved in the community would provide relatability to viewers and provide adequate role models. To entice young females, two teenage "heart throbs" were created, being that of Stuart Neilson and Nick Harrison. Stuart was created as an articulate homosexual whilst Nick was a drug taking rebel.Martin Henderson and Karl Burnett won the roles, however Burnett's portrayal of Nick proved to be a lot more comedic and goofy than was initially imagined and the network started to worry that this would leave a gay male as the only remaining heart throb. To explain the scripts which saw Stuart rebuff the advances of a female, producers rewrote Stuart to be heavily religious instead of gay. Family units were also a key aspect of luring demographics and the characters of Nick and Stuart were built around a family unit, with the mothers of both children - Marj Neilson and Jenny Harrison, representing different ends of typical family life - Marj being a mother of a large steady family whilst Jenny was a single mother of one. Both characters were utilized to represent the strong matriarch De Nave envisioned. Other people working on the show were also credited for creating several characters, Jason Daniel primarily created the role of teenager Kirsty Knight, Ken Catran created Hone Ropata and De Nave herself created Meredith Fleming. Humour was also a large part in deciding the cast, with several characters having comedic elements to their stories, whilst others such as Marj and later Nick, were primarily comic relief.

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