‘Lots of blurred lines’: Claudia Karvan on Love My Way, Bump and the most controversial role of her career

She portrayed a teacher who had an affair with a student in the 90s movie, The Heartbreak Kid. Here, Claudia Karvan discusses what she really thinks about the problematic film.

She portrayed a teacher who had an affair with a student in the 90s movie, The Heartbreak Kid.

Now, Australian actor Claudia Karvan has reflected on the role she once dubbed “the unhappiest job of my career” – and the real reason she has never watched it again.

In the film, released in 1993, Karvan portrayed a teacher who became romantically involved with her student, played by Alex Dimitriades.

Speaking to the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About, Karvan confessed: “I haven’t watched it again”.

“I had a great conversation with someone recently where they’re like, the sex didn’t bother me, and the fact that you were not Greek didn’t bother me,” she said, of the role – in which she played a woman of Greek-Australian heritage.

Listen to Claudia Karvan on the Stellar podcast Something To Talk About below:

Picture: John Platt

“It was the fact that that boy was pretty much stalking you. [They] thought it’s sort of dated, which I thought was really interesting. No one had brought that up.

“But I think, yes, some people say, we [are] overapologising for things that are done in the past. And I just think we can’t overcompensate. You know, there’s a lot of conversations that should be had and need to be had,” Karvan told Something To Talk About.

“As for the storyline? Now that I am a producer, I feel like, you know, I was hired to play a role. I didn’t write it. I didn’t direct it. I didn’t produce it.

“So that storyline, I don’t take responsibility for. I was a 19 year old girl. And it was a tough job. I felt like I was an adult, and I was playing a very adult role.

Picture: John Platt

Claudia Karvan as Angie Davis in the fifth and final series of Bump. Picture: Nike Wilson for Stan

At the premiere of Bump’s latest season in Sydney earlier this month. Picture: Getty Images

“But I was only 19 and away from home. And the content – there was quite a lot of intimacy and nudity. I probably wasn’t that equipped to do it. I got through and I did it, but it wasn’t my favourite job.”

Speaking to Stellar, Karvan – who currently stars in the Stan series, Bump – opened up about how her role as Frankie in the beloved Australian series Love My Way, which ran from 2004-2007, took inspiration from her own life.

‘There were lots of blurred lines!’ Claudia Karvan as Frankie in a scene from Love My Way. Picture: Supplied

‘Frankie is words on a page!’ With co-star Ben Mendelsohn on the set of Love My Way.

“That did come from my lived experience because I was with Jez [Jeremy Sparks, her ex-partner from whom she split in 2017] and my stepdaughter was my best friend’s daughter.

“I was the godmother. So there was lots of blurred lines there.

“And it was very different to my own childhood, which was far more fractious – custody battles and courts and a lot more toxicity.

“So I really could see how extraordinary it was, the way [we] … were raising a family.

“And that the inspiration behind Love My Way. That’s what I brought into the room.

You can’t fake that authenticity that comes from lived experience.”

Listen to Claudia Karvan on the Stellar podcast Something To Talk About below:

Though Karvan admits she doesn’t think about where her Love My Way character Frankie would be today, saying once she finishes portraying characters they “vaporise into a puff of smoke”.

“I suppose it might sound a bit disappointing, but for me, Frankie is words on a page. Alex Christensen [the character Karvan played in The Secret Life Of Us] is [Secret Life co-creators] Judy Mccrossan and Amanda Higgs in a room, whipping up ideas.

“So they exist for other people, but they don’t exist for me. I mean, they are very much facets of my personality. There’s a part of me in every one of those characters.

“But they don’t live beyond the camera when the cameras stopped rolling. They don’t exist. They just vaporise into puff of smoke.”

See Claudia Karvan in the final season of Bump on Stan. Listen to her full episode of the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About, out now.

For more from Stellar and Something To Talk About, click here.

Originally published as ‘Lots of blurred lines’: Claudia Karvan on Love My Way, Bump and the most controversial role of her career