Who plays Janice in A Remarkable Place to Die? The name, and where you've seen the actor before

But somewhere in the "Hard to Swallow" episode, between the mining museum and the freshly deceased, a museum volunteer named Janice strolled in, casually solved half the case with security footage and gold rush gossip, and left every viewer squinting at the screen going: wait, I know her.

You do know her

Janice is played by Rima Te Wiata, and calling her "a guest star" is technically accurate the way calling Queenstown "a town with some hills" is technically accurate. She's New Zealand screen royalty: a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, daughter of opera legend Inia Te Wiata, and a woman whose acting career has been running for over five decades. When she shows up in your murder show for one episode, that's not a bit part. That's a visit from the queen.

She's fully aware of her status, by the way, and delightfully unbothered by it. As she put it in an interview with PopEntertainment:

"In New Zealand, that's who I am. I'm just Auntie Bella."

Where you've seen her before

Auntie Bella, of course, being the answer to the "where do I know her from" itch. Odds are extremely high it's one of these:

• Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) — she's Bella, the warm, chaotic foster aunt in Taika Waititi's runaway hit, the role that made an entire generation of Kiwis yell at her in the street.
• Housebound (2014) — the horror-comedy where she plays the heroine's mum, a performance that won her a Fangoria award in LA.
• The Wheel of Time — season two of the Amazon fantasy, where she turned up as Sheriam.
• The deep cuts — The Breaker Upperers, We Were Dangerous (as the terrifying Matron), Madam, and the comfort-crime institution that is The Brokenwood Mysteries.

Who plays Jarrod in A Remarkable Place to Die? You may know him from Sweet Tooth — or, further back, from Power Rangers

The Janice of it all

Here's the part that broke my brain a little. This is not Rima Te Wiata's first Janice. It's her third.

She spent 204 episodes of the Australian soap Sons and Daughters playing Janice Reid — arguably her most famous role across the Tasman. Then in 2018 she played a Janice in the film This Town. And now: Janice of Queenstown, keeper of the museum keys. At this point I refuse to believe casting directors aren't doing it on purpose. Somewhere there's a folder labeled "needs a Janice" with exactly one headshot in it.

The good news for everyone who wanted more than one episode of her: the show itself is thriving. A Remarkable Place to Die is back for an expanded second season of six feature-length episodes, so the odds of more national treasures wandering through Anais Mallory's crime scenes are looking excellent. Janice, the door is open.

Previously we wrote: Who killed Anais's sister in A Remarkable Place to Die?