Wentworth final season sees Kate Box play toughest scenes of her career

Kate Box has revealed how the final season of Wentworth has taken its toll on her, as she filmed the toughest scenes of her life.

It’s not often that Kate Box wishes she was a little more Lou Kelly – the former top dog of Wentworth and the character she plays in Foxtel’s high-rating drama about the fictional correctional facility.

But when the Adelaide-born-and-bred actor, now based in Sydney with her partner Jada Alberts and their three children, drew her 5km radius and realised the beach was just on the other side of her permitted lockdown exercise circle, she had to repress her desire to draw on her on-screen alter ego’s flippant disregard for authority and rules.

Box was filming the final season of Wentworth in Melbourne when the city went into its harsh 112-day lockdown last year. So it’s groundhog day when we chat and she’s in the seventh-week of Sydney’s seemingly never-ending lockdown.

The kids are climbing the walls. There’s loads of rounds of Junior Monopoly and craft. Box jokes her skills for art outweigh her patience.

Kate Box with her AACTA award for Best Lead Actress in a Television Drama. Picture: Joel Carrett

“Some days I’m quite inventive, other days I can’t bring myself to do it,” Box confesses.

“I see the clean up before I see the finished artistry and so I get deterred quite easily.

“I’ve given up on my standards of perfection this time. Domestic life does look pretty scrappy now. It’s just a big blowout of streamers, paint and chalk. We’re all right.”

After serving eight years of hard drama, Wentworth will slam shut its bars one last time.

The last season – aptly titled The Final Sentence – has started on Foxtel and in its typical no-holds-barred fashion it smashed viewers’ hearts against the floor last week, with the retribution killing of Box’s on screen true love transgender man Reb Keane, played by Zoe Terakes.

Shooting those first two episodes and then exploring the depths of Lou’s grief took its toll on Box.

The retribution killing of Reb Keane (Zoe Terakes) has devastated Lou Kelly (Kate Box) in Wentworth: The Final Sentence. Picture: Sarah Enticknap

It wasn’t as simple as slipping out of the inmates’ teal tracksuits and into her civvies.

“That love story was so in-built as to who this character was, having to reshape their entire view of the world and having to do it within their grief and loss was a little hard to shake off this time,” she shares.

“I think the depth that you have to go to portray that grief, you also have to understand it and feel it. Your body doesn’t know what is fact or fiction and it takes a while to unwind – which is where family comes in handy. Coming home to three beautiful kids and partner and a life which is very different to Wentworth Correctional Facility.

“The great thing about the cast and crew is that they are all so incredibly respectful and create a space in which you can honour the massive emotion you have to go through.

“There’s a lot of love on set after those scenes.”

Kate Box as former Wentworth top dog Lou Kelly. Picture: Ben King

Strict Covid protocols meant there were no actual hugs though. There was no wrap party either – which was especially sad given they were farewelling not just one season, but the end of the entire nine-series juggernaut that was Wentworth.

Did she steal, er take, any mementos? One of those ubiquitous, and super comfy teal trackies, perhaps?

“I was gifted a few trackies,” Box says.

“I haven’t quite pulled them out yet. I probably won’t wear mine out in public. It sends a slightly different message – maybe of someone who can’t quite let go.

“But if this lockdown thing continues and I never work again, then maybe in a few years I might want to duck to the shop in one. You know, just kind of a bit like ‘Hey guys, remember I was in this thing once’.”

Box is going to miss the cast, but she’ll also just miss playing Lou.

“I’ve always been really keen to play characters who move through the world in a way that thrills and surprises and challenges me and are different to the way I move through the world,” she explains.

Lance (Damon Herriman) and Marg (Kate Box) in ABC’s telemovie Riot. Picture: Supplied

“I’m really drawn to characters who have a really whack sense of humour.

“I think what a person finds funny tells a lot about them. I think if you can plug into what makes them laugh, it’s a pretty good insight into who they are.”

It’s certainly an interesting insight to learn Box herself loves a laugh at people’s misfortunes and has a “sick addiction” to watching videos of people falling over.

This deep appreciation of real-life slapstick has only heightened since she’s become a mother.

“I’ve learnt at home, when my kids fall over, to look away first. Just for a split second because I know I’m going to laugh and then I’ll come straight back in with compassion and empathy,” she shares.

This tendency to find inappropriate lightness in a dark time has constantly got her into trouble. From primary school right through to studying at Australia’s prestigious acting school NIDA, she’s been thrown out of class for laughing.

“I think it’s also that pressure of being in a place where you shouldn’t be laughing – the old giggle-in-church scenario,” she explains.

Nicole (Kate Box) and Senator Cleaver (Richard Roxburgh) in the final series of Rake. Picture: ABC

In the past couple of years, Box’s popped up all over the place, and always, it seems, playing larger-than-life characters.

After her AACTA-winning role in the 2018 telemovie Riot, about Australia’s gay and lesbian rights movement in the early 1970s, she’s found roles coming to her.

“Not so much this year,” she adds with a laugh, referencing the toll the pandemic continues to take on artists’ work.

At the end of the month she’ll be seen in ABC’s epic six-part anthology series Fires.

Inspired by the 2019 devastating bushfires which swept Australia, it was filmed in Melbourne and regional Victoria earlier this year.

There’s a wry laugh from Box as I comment that it’s ironic that most Australians thought that would be the worst part about 2020.

“I know, I know – it’s the year that just keeps on giving.”

Like most in the devastated arts industry, she’s lost work. But also had to turn down some opportunities, given her kids are two, four and five years old.

“There is a lot of stuff happening interstate but with a young family, committing to taking a job is very difficult when there is no opportunity to return on the weekends,” Box explains.

For now, she’s relished learning how to enjoy slowing down.

“I wasn’t able to do that very well early on in lockdown,” Box says.

“I felt I had to keep up a certain pace to the day that was productive. But we (the household) actually does better when we slow down, having that level of acceptance that we are doing our best thing by staying still and safe and being patient. And being protective of our community – that’s a pretty good job.”

Wentworth, Tuesday, 8.30pm, Foxtel

Originally published as Wentworth final season sees Kate Box play toughest scenes of her career