- I've done some film and TV in my career, but most of my career has been devoted to stage work.
- Discussing 'The Freak' and Maggie Kirkpatrick's legacy to the character: I would have to honour her creation, but also not be a betrayal to this enormous following that Kirkpatrick had. It was a bit touch-and-go whether people were going to go with it.
- About Wentworth: These are strong stories for strong women.
- They gave me such constant gifts. You could almost hear the writers room quivering with glee as they come up with some of those things.
- The nature of villainy is that it is complex. And I was relishing the opportunity to be unleashed on The Freak.
- [Jokingly] Am I happy where they left my character? No, I'm not, appalling behaviour.
- It was difficult in my era too, but the complications are different now. I was a teenager in the 1970s, a terrifying time in terms of terrorism, disasters, abductions, underground activism and race wars. A lot happened and yet I didn't feel overly anxious.
- I'd worked with a lot of the actresses from the original Prisoner series, so I knew the hype.
- I have such admiration for the producers, directors and actors. Particularly the writers for crafting with such care. And delivering narratives that place women front and centre - women of all shapes and sizes and moralities.
- The reality of seeing the response internationally, fans coming up to you all over the world, the letters you get, blows my mind.
- [on Wentworth]; It's a once-in-a-lifetime job. I know that - I think we all knew that.
- It is a wonderful carrot to dabble in front of a camera.
- I think it is a great privilege to be considered an icon of Australian television drama. There's a special little tribe of those female baddies that are very special.
- I love as a female to be given an opportunity like this because we are used to seeing most of our villains monopolised by males and traditionally women are supposed to be nicer and a lot of them aren't, so it is nice to be able to be the biggest baddie of them all and take that on.
- Nobody knows what box to put you in so you actually have more freedom to earn people's respect or hatred or anything. It is what you do that counts.
- I am much more interested in evoking those kind of responses in an audience than having them just want to like you, or charm you, or love you, or sleep with you. I'd rather it be a much fuller, more dangerous relationship.
- It was called an open wound, an open sewer of a play.
- It being a prison show, we don't get out much. We're always at the workspace where the set has been built. The production offices are there, the art department is there, the writers are there, the producers are there, the editing suite is there. You're getting changed into your costume and you can hear them cutting up the day's footage.
- When a thing is starting to congeal and galvanise, suddenly the little moments that you need to attend to become really apparent. You learn a lot about the story you're telling collectively, and the audience is helping you tell that story.
- I'm never one to sit around and wait for the phones to ring. I love working in the theatre, and I work a lot in the theatre.
- We certainly felt it from the first preview. We got to that scene and a sudden quiet would descend. It's shock, really. Ibsen is so prescient in many ways about issues of the individual and the state. Ibsen himself said that there will always be a Pastor Manders, and every Pastor Manders will create his Mrs Alving. And Mrs Alving, being a woman, will run with it. We're locked in this constant battle of opposing forces.
- Well, rather uncomfortably, I would've thought! But the wonderful thing is that she does have this big secret now and the question is: how does she live with that, who knows about it, how do they find out and what's it going to mean for their survival rate?
- I mean, they take great care obviously in the props department and the art department [so] that you're not going to do yourself any damage, but it has to be real enough that you've got some resistance, that you have something to play with. I have to say, filming that sequence was a mingling of [where] I couldn't see very well, you didn't know where you were going, it was a dark room, but at the same time I was very excited all the time, thinking, 'Oh I wonder what shots they've got? Am I giving them what they need?' And so it's both terrifying and exhilarating.
- [on Ferguson's memory coming back]; Yes, we leave her having recovered her memories and accepting who everybody has been telling her that she is, and the question now is: who else is going to know about that?
- That literally is the question: for Joan, what does this mean? What's this power that all those aspects have finally, you know, congealed inside her and now she has to live the reality of all of those memories existing now, all of it clear? Now that she knows it, who else is going to know and, if so, how do they find out and what does it mean - for all her friends and enemies?
- Well, I guess that's what Part 2 is going to be all about, isn't it? What does it mean? What does it mean for her? What does it mean for the people around her? It was an extraordinary sequence to film, both terrifying but kind of exciting because, as always with Wentworth, you have so many skilled people at the top of their game, working incredibly quickly on minimal budgets, but we're always aiming for the stars, really wanting to achieve something special. And it was quite exciting to pull that off, with Darrell Martin, our DOP [director of photography], and Kevin Carlin directing.
- I think that's one of the strengths of all of the Wentworth stories - if you're lucky, you get a glimpse into more detail about what makes the complexity of the characters - so yes, of course, it's always a privilege, these little glimpses through the seasons of what makes Joan tick or what she's grappling with in terms of her own history.
- The first thing that appealed to me was just the opportunity to work with who I consider the most wonderful work family I've ever had the pleasure and privilege to collaborate with. I just wanted to make sure that the reasons for her return were grounded in something that could be credible for an audience and that's tricky when she's required to handle some of the more gothic, melodramatic aspects of the storylines.
- I think probably the same way that Joan would if she was trying to pull the wool over people's eyes! But that's actually the dilemma for her, really, isn't it? The little girl who cried wolf. If you've been a master at playing people and playing games, how do you convince people that you're not? [However] even with memory loss, she's still the same person and she has the same intelligence and knowledge of the world in a way - she just doesn't remember aspects of her own behaviour. She understands that she is not to be believed in a dangerous place where the alliances that you make and the things that you do really affect your survival rate. It's a real dilemma but, as I say, a delicious one to tackle.
- Having said that, it was just then a really great challenge to be able to tackle: who is she if she's not the person that she and the audience remembers? It ended up becoming very rewarding, learning about the aspects of this character that we'd all created, how they would manifest, you know, without some of the obvious things like the black gloves and the glint in her eye.
- No, if you read something and it doesn't click - very often I'll accept or reject a role because I know I can do it. There's something in it, somewhere, that presses a button, makes me think that's interesting, I'm drawn to that, I want to understand that better, or I want to understand what's at the core of that feeling, see how it can play out. If it's not there, I just won't accept it. Someone else would do it better than me.
- I think those two things are the same. It has to be there in the first place, but it's something about you receive and interpret the story as you read it (or as somebody describes it to you) that you relate to on some level. It can be a completely emotional response rather than a rational or logical or intellectual response.
- Not really. You don't know whether audiences will embrace the whole notion of the series or not. They had their fingers crossed, Prisoner was such a much-loved series, particularly with its international fanbase, but it could've gone either way. We were very lucky that they jumped on a reimagining of the series that they loved so much. I'd worked with a lot of the actresses from the original series, so I was aware of the responses they got from audiences at the time. And I'd worked with Maggie Kirkpatrick twice on stage and I could see the adoration they had for her creation Joan Ferguson. But I in no way presumed that would translate as this was going to be a completely different series, but people seem to enjoy it.
- Really! It is, yeah. The givens are pretty extraordinary, the heightened stakes and circumstances. I had the gift of the original creation that Maggie Kirkpatrick brought to life as my starting point, so I've got a head start in a way. When I was offered the role, I knew the character would be up to no good. I really felt that the writers would ask her to do extraordinary things, but I'd have to keep one foot based in a kind of psychological reality. That's the challenge, understanding what we're doing and not taking it too far. It was my responsibility, to make sure I was creating a psychologically complex character who might be capable of those things.
- Yes, subsequent to being offered the role - it hadn't gone to air yet. But I certainly knew about it, I had several friends who'd been involved in the season who said this was a good one. People were excited, the buzz was strong and the industry knew what it was. When the phone call came a couple months later, I was delighted.
- I don't know, and it's a little presumptuous of me to even say that. I'm sure there are people who can't draw a line - I may even have a bit of that problem. But I honestly think the writers and creators put a great deal of work into trying to keep one foot grounded in a pretty confronting reality. I also stay off social media so I let that conversation happen. Who knows what people think, but I'd like to think they accept that they have feelings for the characters but most people can separate between what a character is doing and what an actor is doing.
- This one was offered to me, I was pretty excited about it though I have a slightly ambivalent feeling towards August Strindberg so you know, late 19th century Swedish playwright known for the darkness and a well-known misogynist. So, it's a troubled and dark world that you know you're going to have to plunge into. But Judy Davis was directing and seeing the other cast members, I thought I have to go back in there, I have to go back into the dark.
- There's a special little tribe of those female baddies that are very special.
- The first person who taught me, I remember him saying I was quite good but far too tall to be an actor. It is actually a great gift to not be born conventionally pretty, in that you are allowed a greater range, a greater spectrum of impressions that you can leave on people really.
- Our custody of it has come to an end but it someone was to pick up your wonderful idea (we had suggested a Joan Ferguson prequel) - that would be another iteration! That's the wonderful thing about Wentworth - each generation can reinvent and rexplore than environment. There are still fascinating stories to be told.
- And to watch the set be dismantled, it suddenly came home that it was really happening. We have been custodians of that story and trusted by Fremantle and Foxtel and handed a legacy by Prisoner Cell Block H - it feels like a glorious gift. Very rarely does such quality TV in Australia last so long and maintain a level of quality. It wasn't easy but we're so proud of it.
- It's a difficult world (during the depression, between the wars) and one of the main themes in the play is how hard it is to protect fragile things in that brutal world.
- All I can tell you is that I felt incredibly sad, we all did. Particularly in the way we had to film the final season under COVID restrictions. All we wanted to do was hug everybody and we couldn't. We just couldn't.
- There was some questions from fans, how in the world could they bring The Freak back from the nadir, the bottom of the barrel.
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