The time I spent get­ting to know the very woman who brought the saga of West­wood Park and the comedic dra­ma that un­fold­ed on The Reef to life was not just en­light­en­ing – I re­alised that Danielle Di­ef­fen­thaller is quite the com­ic, but she har­bours the soul of a sage. When asked her age, she un­hesi­tat­ing­ly de­clared, "Ah ole, spelled with an O-L-E and that's all you need to know," and broke in­to up­roar­i­ous laugh­ter. She re­called the di­rec­tor's bug bit­ing her from child­hood, which was spent play­ing with a card­board tele­vi­sion frame and di­rect­ing her "shows" like Aun­ty Hazel of Twelve and Un­der and Teen Tal­ent fame. As she en­tered Hap­py Vale Montes­sori, the card­board TV re­mained home while her ed­u­ca­tion be­gan at St Joseph's Girls RC. "Then I went to school in Bar­ba­dos for a year at Ur­su­line Con­vent, then St Joseph's Con­vent in Port of Spain. Fol­low­ing that, I went to school in Kenya for my O's and A's at Loret­to Con­vent in Nairo­bi. Yep, I was a pil­lar to post kind of gal," Di­ef­fen­thaller said with a grin. Her range of ex­pe­ri­ences (which amounts to more than 20-plus years) criss­crossed ge­o­graph­i­cal bor­ders. Af­ter leav­ing Uni­ver­si­ty, she lit­er­al­ly hopped on a plane to Lon­don where she lived for two years and worked as a re­searcher and as­sis­tant di­rec­tor with broad­cast­er Dar­cus Howe. "That was my bap­tism by fire... I came in on Mon­day to work and he said, 'On Sat­ur­day you're go­ing to Zim­bab­we.' And my bam-bam was on a plane to Zim­bab­we where I spent three weeks. I was en­joy­ing the job and every­thing, but one day I was walk­ing through Lon­don and think­ing, 'This is my road. This is my an­ces­tors' road; their blood, sweat and tears. Why am I here when I could be telling our sto­ries? Who is telling our sto­ries?' and boom, I was back in T&T on hol­i­day. Tim­ing is a hell of a thing, be­cause just then, that huge re­ces­sion of 1990 hit Lon­don and I thought 'should I go back to that?' know­ing to my­self that I can­not live on an is­land and not move (around) any­where."

Luck­i­ly, a phone call from Al­fred Augi­ton would start a new op­por­tu­ni­ty for Di­ef­fen­thaller; he asked her to work as a pro­duc­er/ad agency rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Am­ple with a cou­ple oth­er per­sons in Guyana for Banyan. This would prove to be the cat­a­lyst for the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Earth TV which start­ed with Geor­gia Pop­plewell, Wal­ter Lovelace and Di­ef­fen­thaller in 1991, from which came the ground­break­ing se­ries Eco Watch. "You can catch the old episodes on Gayelle TV to­day," she said proud­ly. "I love tele­vi­sion with a pas­sion. You know, 50 years of In­de­pen­dence and I re­alise that hey, why not just re­colonise our­selves one time? Do we know who we are af­ter 50 years? Is this the price of progress? This is why I have to rem­i­nisce about the good old days like back at Trinidad and To­ba­go Tele­vi­sion where I worked dur­ing the late 80s. I ac­tu­al­ly used to 'stalk' Ho­race James (dec.), he was one of my men­tors as well. I used to go by Ho­race and read piles of scripts wait­ing to be turned in­to shows. One of them I re­mem­ber well was the orig­i­nal ba­sis for the com­e­dy Desmond's. I read that by Ho­race and next thing you know Nor­man Beat­on had come down, saw the script and next thing you know, there's a Desmond's TV show. I was like, 'Ho­race, how you could do that? How you could let it go?' But the thing is we had our pro­grammes. TTT had a pro­duc­tion de­part­ment, and they pro­duced shows. That was the com­mit­ment ex­pressed by the late Dr. Er­ic Williams. I am not a lover of pol­i­tics, but I will al­ways re­mem­ber Ho­race telling me that Williams sent him to school so there could be a na­tion­al pres­ence on tele­vi­sion. This was man­dat­ed by him; a na­tion­al tele­vi­sion sta­tion with pro­grammes re­flect­ing US. When I went to TTT to work, I just want­ed to be in the dra­ma de­part­ment 'cause I'll al­ways re­mem­ber com­ing home from uni­ver­si­ty dur­ing the sum­mer breaks and see­ing these spe­cials on TTT and they were talk­ing just like me. It was so cool! I was so ex­cit­ed! I was like, 'Oh! This is what I have to do!"

So said, so done. Even­tu­al­ly she would get her feet, hands and fore­head wet pro­duc­ing her very first seg­ment of TTT's morn­ing show Com­mu­ni­ty Date­line, host­ed by the late Allyson Hen­nessey. She al­so co di­rect­ed a se­ries of mu­sic videos sent to 80s hits with TTT col­league Lin­coln Sean Karim (now at the As­so­ci­at­ed Press in New York). Her in­ner ac­tress al­so came to the fore dur­ing the 90s as a mem­ber of the Im­mortelle The­atre Com­pa­ny, where, un­der the tute­lage of Di­rec­tor Rhoma Spencer, she un­der­stood the com­plex­i­ties of the craft. She re­mem­bered Rhoma ask­ing her to por­tray a drunk, mid­dle aged, South­ern Amer­i­can woman. "I thought I had it down, 'cause I was re­al­ly good with ac­cents, but I wasn't mid­dle aged, wasn't Amer­i­can and had nev­er been drunk," Di­ef­fen­thaller ex­plained. But I did it. I thought I did it well, but Rhoma ran in­to me and was like, 'That's not good enough.' As you learn these things, you re­alise you had to be in a cer­tain frame of mind to be a drunk, mid­dle aged woman, and a lot of life's lessons had to have brought you to that point. So yeah, I re­al­ly learned and un­der­stood, so much so that it ir­ri­tates me now when I see su­per­fi­cial per­for­mances. Even then, I'm sure I didn't get it, but af­ter that, I knew where I had to be in or­der to GET it. So when I hear some­one come up with just one as­pect of a char­ac­ter it just ir­ri­tates me. You have to be mul­ti­fac­eted. Peo­ple are mul­ti­di­men­sion­al." It was this very mul­ti­di­men­sion­al­i­ty that would be the gen­e­sis for the cre­ation of West­wood Park, which Di­ef­fen­thaller says took a while to hap­pen. "We had just tak­en a tour of Bar­ba­dos with the Im­mortelle The­atre Com­pa­ny. Bernard Hazell, Deb­o­rah Mail­lard and my­self were all talk­ing one night on this high from our per­for­mances and we were think­ing... so now what? So we thought about do­ing a soap opera and Bernard, who is Venezue­lan, said he knew a lot about soap op­eras and wrote a pi­lot named Ra­mona, which we even­tu­al­ly changed com­plete­ly be­cause it was very Venezue­lan and I said, 'That's not us.' So we changed it to suit and thus be­gan the saga of West­wood Park, which every sin­gle sea­son was a bac­cha­nal to get the mon­ey to make it. It's frus­trat­ing be­cause, like oth­er film­mak­ers, I want to tell our sto­ries, but at this rate, no­body else is go­ing to tell our sto­ries."

Much as her pas­sion lies in telling our sto­ries, it has been a dif­fi­cult and lone­ly road, made all the hard­er due to our con­sump­tion of (cheap­er) Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion fare. Her sec­ond show, The Reef, is still in need of in­vest­ments so the sec­ond sea­son can be filmed. "There are points when it's re­al­ly frus­trat­ing. Imag­ine, I called some­one for an in­vest­ment in­to The Reef. They said, "Oh we gave to char­i­ty al­ready.' I was mor­ti­fied. Film­mak­ing isn't char­i­ty. It is hard work. I work. My crew works 16 to 18 hours a day. No­body asks for over­time or va­ca­tion. It is ded­i­ca­tion. It is a labour of love on most of our parts." But Di­ef­fen­thaller is still hope­ful, es­pe­cial­ly when she looks in­to the faces of her soon to be eight-year-old daugh­ter Xi­ca and her 3 ? year old son Max­imil­lian. She wants to do chil­dren's shows and be­lieves that we have the tal­ent and ca­pa­bil­i­ties to com­pete with the Nick­elodeons and Dis­neys out there. Her com­pa­ny Dif­fer­ent Style Films is still ac­tive and she is even pe­rus­ing ma­te­ri­als, in­clud­ing a script from Va­lerie Bel­grave. "It's a Caribbean love sto­ry with a twist, and I would love to do this," she en­thused. "For a coun­try with so much mon­ey, it's re­al­ly a pity that we are not see­ing the ne­ces­si­ty of in­vest­ing in us buy­ing in­to our­selves. Peo­ple of the Caribbean need to see us and for­get the bot­tom line with the Amer­i­can stuff. There is a lot to share, so many sto­ries. This was like a gang­ster com­ing and telling one of my crew mem­bers years ago, 'Yuh know, they shut down the block last night!' I'm think­ing, 'Oh Lord, with what? A gun?' He said, 'No, girl, every­body leave the block to go and see West­wook Park!' No joke, and that proves it. Peo­ple are des­per­ate to see them­selves. Why not re­vamp what was there be­fore? When last did you see a lo­cal show ded­i­cat­ed to teenagers, like Teen Tal­ent? What about Mas­tana Ba­har? If you want to re­tool Scout­ing For Tal­ent, we could do it as Trinidad's Got Tal­ent! We need to feel val­i­dat­ed and we need to feel pride and if we don't see it on the most pow­er­ful medi­um we have, which is tele­vi­sion and stream­ing on the in­ter­net, then what are we sell­ing? When all you see is death on the front page or Ian Al­leyne, then we are in trou­ble. We have so much more to give." All in all, Di­ef­fen­thaller has had a very colour­ful and ex­cit­ing life. "One thing I would love to tell young peo­ple about this busi­ness is to trust their in­stincts. We have a lot of peo­ple in this in­dus­try that come in­to it and they don't re­al­ly un­der­stand how it works. As I say to most peo­ple com­ing in, dot your i's and cross your t's and re­al­ly trust your gut. Some­times you have to take a lot of hard knocks in the ear­lies with peo­ple not pay­ing you and all that, but 20 years down the line, I am not tak­ing that. I didn't. And it was very

in­ter­est­ing."