Felicity Newman
Felicity Newman (2021-present)
Jacqui Purvis
Episodes: 7631-present
Date of Birth: 1996/1997
Parents: Anthony & Jennifer Newman (both deceased)
Sibling: Cash Newman
Foster Parents: Gary & Katherine (deceased) Morrow
Marital Status: Tane Parata (2023, separated)
Occupation: Bartender; Restaurant co-owner
The sister of local police officer Cash Newman, the irresponsible and volatile Felicity shared a rental with him but managed to get them served an eviction notice with her loud music and arguments with the neighbours. She met Tane at the club where she worked and spent the night with him, with him not learning of her connection to Cash until they ran into each other the next morning. She then met Cash’s girlfriend Jasmine by gatecrashing their lunch date. She and Cash arrived home to find their belongings dumped outside so Cash arranged for them to stay at the caravan park. Felicity was soon attracting complaints again, happily looking on as two guys fought over her outside the caravan. She told Jasmine that their father was murdered and Cash found the body but this was a viewpoint only she held: Cash and everyone else believed he had committed suicide.
Felicity ran into Tane again at Salt and they shared a drink. Although Tane initially gave her the brush off, when his ex Ziggy came in, he kissed Felicity in front of her and slept with her again. After calling an end to things, he then turned up at her caravan for another session and was still there when Cash and Jasmine turned up outside. Tane explained to her about his brother being killed by the police and Felicity decoyed Cash so he could sneak away, although Cash later revealed he’d seen him. Felicity tried to engineer meetings with Tane on the beach and at the gym but he shut her down. She was confused when he accused her of sending him roses and notes, with things becoming increasingly aggressive between them as he accused her of stalking him.
Jasmine confessed that she and Cash hadn’t slept together yet, prompting Felicity to give her brother a push, although Jasmine derailed his plans by getting wasted when she and Felicity went to Salt together. Felicity saw Mackenzie hanging out with Tane and told her he was trouble, openly spying on the pair in Salt until Mackenzie threw her out. She ended up in a shouting match with Tane which was broken up by Alf, and received support from Roo and Martha. She was working in the club when Ryder’s 21st birthday party was held there and reacted badly when Tane came to pick Ryder up. She told him not to come to her workplace but Mackenzie stepped in to defend him and it escalated into an argument.
Felicity went to stay with her work mate Anne Sherman until Cash and Jasmine returned from a trip away. Cash took out an AVO against Tane on her behalf but next morning she learned that there had been a gas attack at the surf club with Tane as the target. Since she was alone in her caravan at the time, Felicity asked Anne to give her an alibi. She learned Jasmine had found a receipt for organophosphate, the chemical used, in her caravan, but convinced Cash she was innocent, prompting him to burn the receipt. Felicity’s caravan was vandalised after Nikau stirred people up against her online, then Anne failed to back up her alibi and a search of her van found the chemicals used to drug Tane. She spent a night at the police station with Cash staying away and called Anne to pick her up. When a social media post referenced the burnt receipt, Felicity realised Anne, who had overheard her and Jasmine talking about it, was not only responsible for that but also for stalking Tane and for the chemical attack. She told Cash but then disappeared, just as the police were looking to arrest her.
In fact, she had been kidnapped by Anne, who kept her tied up in an outbuilding and brought Tane to join her, bitter that Tane had picked up every girl from the club except her. She planned to gas them both with organophosphate and tried to get Felicity to write a suicide note. Felicity stabbed her in the leg with the pen so Anne sent a text from her phone to Cash. This led to him and Ari tracking their siblings down and rescuing them, with Anne being arrested. Felicity was upset that Cash hadn’t believed her so relied on Tane for support instead. However, she did admit to Jasmine that Cash had helped her out when she’d had a breakdown.
Although Tane pulled away when she first kissed him, they ended up going on a date to Salt, although Felicity had to deal with Mackenzie’s disapproval. Cash made his annual attempt to convince her to join him at a memorial for their father and she explained to Tane that she didn’t want to be surrounded by people who thought he’d committed suicide. She told Cash she’d go if he investigated their father’s death but he considered it pointless, although they parted on good terms. During his absence, she tried partying with Jasmine, who dumped her on Tane at the gym. She ended up getting drunk with a pair of random surfers, with Jasmine having to step in, then spent the night slumped by the Paratas’ pool.
She stayed in town to meet Cash on his return only for him to show her their father’s autopsy report, proving he had indeed committed suicide. She convinced Tane to go away with her and confided in him, after which he convinced her to go back and talk it over with Cash. She was somewhat confused when Tane distanced himself from her after Ari was charged with murder and ended up with a job at Salt after Mackenzie was short of people to keep an eye on it. She encouraged Cash to arrange a birthday surprise for Jasmine and attempted to share a belated birthday celebration with them, only for them to disappear off to the city without her.
She was delighted when Tane invited her to Ari’s wedding as his date and told Cash not to use her as an excuse not to move in with Jasmine. She learned from Bella that Ari had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and supported Tane after Ari’s death. However, when he said he saw her in his future, she panicked that things were getting serious, unloading on Irene in the absence of any alternatives. She eventually admitted to Tane she wasn’t sure if she’d ever settle down and Tane decided he was happy to live for now. She inadvertently told Jasmine some home truths about her father abandoning her, then found herself made redundant by Mackenzie. She refused to accept it however and learned Mackenzie had financial difficulties. She suggested an illegal poker night to raise money and Mackenzie eventually agreed, with Felicity inviting Tane along. When Mackenzie and Ryder wanted another event, she advised against holding one too soon but eventually gave in. However, she pulled out of helping in order to support Tane, then ended up going along with him anyway. Afterwards, she took Tane for a romantic picnic on the rocks and admitted she loved him.
She was concerned when Mackenzie insisted on bringing in a new player, PK King, without running any sort of checks on him. With Ryder having left town, Felicity was concerned when PK banned her from a private poker night he had convinced Mackenzie to put on. She unsuccessfully tried to get Cash to look into him, then was prevented from attending the night by PK’s associate Nathan Silva, who kept her at the Parata house until the night was over. They soon learned why: PK had tricked Mackenzie into thinking she was in debt to him. She enlisted Rose’s help to research PK and Nathan, then saw Tane stabbed by two thugs who were vandalising Salt. She was horrified when Dean and Mackenzie refused to call an ambulance, even though Tane agreed with them, forcing them to rely on Logan to patch him up with makeshift surgery. She found herself questioned by Cash and Rose when PK was found dead and told Logan about Mackenzie nearly sleeping with him to pay off her debt. She was arrested by Cash for her part in the illegal gambling but Mackenzie took the blame, saying Felicity thought they had a license.
She was amused to realise Rose had spent the night in her car with someone, until she saw it was Cash. He assured her nothing had happened but told her to keep it from Jasmine anyway. She had been staying with Tane while he recovered from his stabbing and prepared to move back to the caravan park but instead he asked her to move in with him. When Mackenzie left notes saying Felicity was in charge if she went to jail, Felicity panicked at the idea of running Salt and was simultaneously relieved and annoyed at being put on the spot when Mackenzie escaped jail. She resolved to help save Salt from ruin and went to the city with Mackenzie to look for investors. However, Mackenzie didn’t want someone else taking over so Felicity offered to buy half of the business with her inheritance from her father. After initial reluctance, Mackenzie agreed.
Shortly after Felicity returned to town from sorting out the details, she received a visit from her friends Eden Fowler, Kirby Aramoana, Remi Carter and Bob Forsyth – aka the band Lyrik – and invited them to spend the night at hers. She suggested having Lyrik play at Salt for a relaunch and managed to talk Mackenzie into it, although it look longer for the rest of the band to get Bob to agree and Felicity was a bundle of nerves, fearing something else would go wrong, until the event began. Her mood wasn’t improved when she discovered Eden had once slept with Cash, who had harboured feelings for her for some time.
The event was enough of a success that Mackenzie asked her to arrange a regular gig. She put Mackenzie’s proposal to the band and organised their first regular gig but was left on tenterhooks as, with Bob having quit, the rest of the band had to rope in Theo as a last minute replacement. She was puzzled when Tane lied about there being break-ins in the area and Nikau told her not to leave the house. Tane admitted the family were being threatened by a gang of bikers that Ari had once stolen from and Felicity threw one of the group, Tex Wheeler, out of Salt. Cash arrested her for flimsy reasons, leaving her in a cell, and she and Dean realised he was keeping her away from something. She was let out to learn Cash had been shot when the police arrested the biker gang and took her concern out on Rose. When Cash came round, she had to break the news to him that he had killed gang leader Marty. With Cash worrying he was having a breakdown, Felicity pressured Rose into smuggling the case file out to give him answers but Cash remained subdued and Felicity worried about being strong enough to support him. She let Cash move in with her and learned he had been planning to propose to Jasmine before she left town. She refused to let Cash move out even though his being there risked attracting the attention of the bikers.
When Mackenzie cancelled Salt’s gigs, Felicity felt obliged to support her despite disagreeing. She was furious to find Eden in bed with Cash, accusing her of using him. Tane proposed to her by the lighthouse in front of their friends and family. After initially running away in shock, she accepted but told Cash she only did it because she was put on the spot. Mackenzie picked up on her concerns and told her that nothing had changed and they didn’t have to get married for ages. She delayed setting a date, leaving Tane wondering if she actually wanted to get married. However, she agreed to his suggestion to get married in eight weeks, on the anniversary of them getting together properly.
In a turnaround, Felicity ended up in favour of Cash and Eden getting together, making them both members of her bridal party in the hope it would lead to them spending time together. She was involved in Mackenzie’s attempt to increase the staff’s first aid awareness after a customer, David, died of a stroke he had in Salt, with Felicity revealing she already had a first aid certificate. She reluctantly let Bob stay the night when he turned up looking to see Kirby. Cash tried to talk to her about inviting their foster father Gary Morrow to the wedding but she shut him down. She was therefore furious when Cash turned up at the house with Gary a few days later. She confided in Tane that she felt guilty that Gary tried his best to be a parent to her but she never let him in and ultimately forced Cash to leave Gary’s place with her. She initially planned to just go through the motions of meeting with Gary for Cash’s sake but eventually they talked and bonded. She was somewhat overwhelmed when the wedding invitations were delivered but received reassurance from Gary and presented him with one of the invites as he left.
After she refused to go to any more dress shops, Eden turned up at the house with a series of wedding dresses for her to try on. She decided to learn her wedding vows in Te Reo Maori in order to support Tane and roped Eden into helping her write something for Nikau to translate. Still determined to get Cash and Eden together, she tricked Nikau into telling her where the bucks night was going to be, then cancelled the karaoke bus Eden had arranged and dragged her hen part off to the same club. She initially thought she’d succeeded when Cash took Eden home but Cash blasted her for forcing them into an uncomfortable situation. She was overwhelmed to be presented with her father’s old ute as a wedding vehicle and had a wobble before the wedding, wanting to call it off, but Eden talked her round and she was in good spirits as they drove off.
En route, however, the brakes failed and they crashed. Felicity was mostly unharmed but left trapped in the vehicle. Ignoring the advice of fire crews, she tried to force her way out and ignited the petrol around the car. Tane managed to pull her out of the vehicle and she ended up in hospital with smoke inhalation and superficial burns.
She was soon discharged, but with Eden still in a coma, she blamed herself for them being in a hurry and started drinking heavily. She was stunned when Justin told her the brakes had been cut. Although the bikers responsible were soon arrested, Felicity started taking booze from work to drink at home and ignored Tane’s suggestion of setting a new wedding date, instead throwing a party. When Tane pushed the point, she snapped that she might not want to get married, before admitting she kept having flashbacks to the accident. Cash, Tane and Nikau confronted her about the fact she’d been hiding alcohol around the house and she responded by moving out to a caravan. She tried to go back to work but was annoyed to find Mackenzie’s new boyfriend Gabe Miller helping to run things and he refused to let her serve alcohol while she was drunk. She stormed out, unplugging Lyrik’s sound system in the process, and started partying at the caravan park. She received complaints from Alf, and when Tane visited, she threw the engagement ring at him and told him they were over. She refused to acknowledged Gabe’s authority at Salt, ordering him out, then proceeded to party and get orders wrong before cutting her hand, prompting Cash to take her back to her caravan. She told Tane she’d never wanted to get married and told Cash they were cursed.
She threw Cash and Tane out of Salt, prompting Tane to tell her she had until the next day to pick up her things. Felicity set off there first thing but panicked when she saw Cash carrying out car inspections ahead and turned around. Cash and Rose pulled her over and she was found to be just over the limit from the previous night, getting a fine and a three month ban. She later apologised to Cash and struggled to stay off the booze, finding herself in the store room at Salt fighting temptation. She told Eden she felt she didn’t deserve to be happy and hitch-hiked out of town. She ended up at Gary’s, where she visited her parents’ grave for the first time and decided to try and be happy. She called Tane, who came to meet her, and convinced him to stay and talk things through.
They returned to town reconciled and Felicity moved back into the house. She proposed to Tane and co-opted Cash and Eden to arrange a new wedding for them as soon as possible. When they heard nothing after a few days, Felicity announced they were getting married the next day and told Cash and Eden to come as witnesses. Tane ended up arranging a Maori ceremony where she finally got to deliver her Maori vows. After returning from the honeymoon and meeting Tane’s family, she was left with a feeling of anti-climax but buoyed by the realisation nothing needed to change. Not long after, they were visited by Tane’s cousin Kahu. Felicity tried to be welcoming of him but was frustrated when Tane kept turning a blind eye to Kahu scamming money off him. She declined an offer to accompany Tane in escorting Kahu back to New Zealand to explain everything to his mother amd agreed to give Remi’s friend Mercedes Da Silva a place to stay, unaware of tension between her and Eden.
She attended the Battle of the Bands contest Lyrik had entered but had her drink spiked and passed out in a corridor. She woke up to find herself dishevelled and realised she had been raped. She was taken to hospital for an examination and, after initially trying to keep it from Cash, told him and reported it to the police. She tried to return to normal but ended up introducing a new rule at Salt that no-one could buy a drink for anyone else or leave it unattended. Her attempts to seduce Tane made him uncomfortable and she accused him of finding her repulsive. Tane warned her about self-destructing again and she agreed to see a counsellor. She was left disappointed by her first session, however, since she’d hoped she’d get help to remember her attacker. Eden told her Cash was looking at social media footage of the event and she insisted on viewing it herself but soon realised the futility of doing so. She began to find a way to move on and found herself in the position of helping Tane come to terms with things, with them renewing intimacy.
Just as Felicity was getting her head around things, she received a message from her attacker threatening to post a video of the rape online unless she paid him $1000. She insisted on keeping it from Cash and paid the money, only for him to come back wanting $10,000. Felicity’s hopes were briefly raised when Cash told her they had a suspect but he had an alibi. She tried to get Justin and Remi to hold the launch party for Lyrik’s album at Salt, then convinced Cash to give her the money by claiming she was in financial difficulty. The blackmailer promptly asked for $20,000. Felicity took a bag full of paper to the drop point then lay in wait nearby. When the culprit, Jeremy Holding, turned up, Felicity was tempted to run him over but settled for photographing him and getting his number plate, handing the evidence over to Cash and resulting in his arrest. She was bewildered when Cash insisted she needed to help him stop sexual assaults but eventually agreed: She organised code words for people to use at Salt and tried to promote self-defence classes Tane was organising. When they had no interest, she loudly told everyone about her own assault in public. She was left mortified when she realised what she’d done but Tane let her know it had convinced people to sign up.
The first self-defence class had mixed results when Eden accidentally hit Felicity. When she heard that Tane’s sister-in-law Gemma had been in a car accident in New Zealand, she encouraged him to go and see her, hiding the fact Jeremy had asked to meet with her. She confided in Cash and Eden about the restorative justice proposal and also spoke to Cash’s social worker friend Harper Matheson about it. Eager to know what had happened, she asked Cash to let her see the footage of her assault but couldn’t go through with watching it and decided on the meeting instead. Jeremy proved to be more interested in giving speeches that he hoped would help with his sentencing than answering her questions, prompting Felicity to tell him he wasn’t important and walk out. She ran into a newly returned Tane, upset that she hadn’t spoke to him, but managed to convince him she’d needed to concentrate on the decision.
Shortly after getting her license back, she panicked that Tane wanted children and ran off to the summer house where Remi and Eden were staying to avoid talking to him. Tane revealed he actually wanted to move to New Zealand and she agreed with his plan to buy a block of land and build a house there. However, he then did tell her he wanted a baby and she made it clear it wasn’t something she was interested in and he had to be prepared for the possibility she’d never change her mind. However, after he admitted he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to accept that, she announced she’d changed her mind and did want a baby. In fact, she secretly kept taking the pill. Mackenzie found out and Felicity insisted it was just temporary until she got her head around it but refused to tell Tane. Tane picked up on the tension between them and Felicity tried to bluff him by offering to empty out her bag, only for Tane to make her go through with it and find the pills. He promptly packed his bags and moved out. She tried to put the blame on Mackenzie for making him suspicious and, after seeing Tane at a Lyrik gig and promptly leaving, was further annoyed to find Mackenzie had offered him a room. She tried to give everyone at Salt free meals, then disappeared with the day’s takings and decided to check herself into a room for space, leaving Tane’s wedding ring with Mackenzie.
On her return, she tried to see Tane in the middle of the night but Mackenzie wouldn’t let her in. She later learned Tane had actually been out with another woman and argued with Mackenzie, accusing her of enabling him, only for Mackenzie to collapse from a heart attack. Felicity followed her to hospital where she ended up arguing with Tane before Mackenzie told her to go. She received the cold shoulder from Xander when she returned to work although he eventually acknowledged Mackenzie had a torn artery and the heart attack wasn’t Felicity’s fault. She was upset when Tane gave up the lease on the house since she’d been hoping he’d come back there. She boxed up some reminders of their wedding and gave them to Tane but was upset to see him casualty showing them to Harper, who she ended up trying to tell to stay away from him. When Cash found out, he told her to apologise. After initially complaining to Eden, she cleared the air with both Harper and Mackenzie and broke the ice with Tane by asking for a wedding photo back. She rushed to the hospital after hearing Mackenzie had been readmitted needing further surgery and kept things friendly with Tane as they got Mackenzie’s things together. She felt hopeful after Tane gave her a comforting hug but he told her he still loved her but they couldn’t be together. She convinced Cash to go away with Eden instead of sticking around to keep an eye on her.