Asher Keddie challenges herself in role as single mum in The Cry
To many people Asher Keddie will always be the quirky but loveable Nina Proudman who bumbled through life on Offspring. But it won’t be the only thing she’s remembered for after taking on a role in a psychological thriller about an abducted baby.
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To many people Asher Keddie will always be the quirky but loveable Nina Proudman who bumbled through life on the award-winning show, Offspring.
But if the 44-year-old has anything to do with it, it won’t be the only thing she’s remembered for.
In an attempt to expand her repertoire, she has signed on to play single mum Alexandra in the joint BBC/ABC production The Cry, a four-part series due to drop in its bingeworthy entirety onto ABC’s iView on February 3.
It was watched by about six million people when it aired on BBC One in September.
“I hadn’t explored emotional territory like that before and I was up for something a little different and a little more intense,” Keddie tells BW Magazine from Western Australia after finishing filming Rams with Michael Caton and Sam Neill.
“I just felt like challenging myself I guess. I didn’t feel a need to break away (from the role of Nina) as such, just as an actor you feel the need to explore different characters — that’s one of the stimulating parts of the job, that you get to play lots of different characters.”
The Cry is one of those dramas that is uncomfortable to watch because of its intensity.
It follows the story of English woman Joanna and her Australian husband Alistair (played by Jenna Coleman, who starred in Victoria, and Safe Harbour’s Ewen Leslie) whose newborn baby is abducted.
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It has overtones of the Madeleine McCann case that gripped world headlines when the little girl was taken from a Portuguese resort in 2007 and suspicion fell on her parents.
Keddie plays the ex-wife of Alistair who is caught up in a custody battle over their teenage daughter.
“I was really struck by the honesty of the story of the two mothers and I thought what an incredibly brutal, honest look at motherhood and the myths of it and the reality of it and how incredibly vulnerable it is when you become a parent, particularly that first year,” Keddie says.
“I was able to really relate to that, not the level of intensity poor Joanna experiences, but certainly the ferocious protection you feel for a child. I hadn’t experienced that until I had my child and I was really moved by that.”
The fact Australian audiences will get to indulge in all four episodes in one go is not lost on Keddie, who claims it’s the new and exciting nature of modern TV to devour entire series in a single sitting.
“I think across the board in life we want and expect an immediacy, that’s what’s happening to us and it’s no different to our TV consumption,” she says.
“Because the streamers have allowed us to binge watch, it’s just so tempting to do that, we just want it now. But there’s still that old-fashioned part of me that kind of likes waiting for the next episode the following week.”
The hard working actor hasn’t had much of a break since filming closed on Offspring mid-2017, diving straight into the 1970s film spoof Swinging Safari alongside an Aussie ensemble including Guy Pearce, Kylie Minogue and Julian McMahon.
After The Cry finished filming in Australia and Glasgow in 2018, she started work on Rams, an Aussie film directed by Jeremy Simms about two feuding brothers (Caton and Neill) who are forced to come together when a crisis hits their Western Australian sheep farming community.
After a short break over Christmas and the holiday season, the mother of two plans to dive back into work — with many exciting projects up her sleeve.
“I’ve optioned a book myself and have gone into development with that,” Keddie says, revealing only that it is a story about sisters written about a decade ago by a New York author.
“It’s been a long process but I feel like the ball is rolling. I will be focusing on that for the first half of the year.
“But there are also a couple of acting gigs that are looking pretty fancy.”
* The Cry, iView, February 3, 8.30pm
Originally published as Asher Keddie challenges herself in role as single mum in The Cry
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