‘Afraid that it took my love of it away’: Christie Whelan Browne on toll of Craig McLachlan trials
After a challenging few years, and six months off from performing, Christie Whelan Browne is back – and ready to step back onto the stage.
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Christie Whelan Browne jokes that the accent and the hair extensions “do most of the work”. She is preparing to slip back into her Britney Spears alter ego for Britney Spears The Cabaret, her acclaimed one-woman show, which returns to Brisbane this month for the first time in a decade.
But any concerns of cobwebs are quickly dusted off when the familiar blonde hairpieces clip into place and a southern twang emerges from muscle memory.
Star of Australian stage and screen, Whelan Browne, 41, has toured the cabaret around Australia and to London in the past 10 years.
It’s a witty, sympathetic, satirical take on the Mississippi-born pop princess’s life story and the perils of fame. While Spears’ best-selling memoir, The Woman in Me (2023), has recently brought new awareness to her story, Whelan Browne’s softness towards the singer’s struggles has always been the motivation behind the cabaret, and that hasn’t changed.
“I’ve always approached the show the same way; I’ve had real empathy and love for her,” she says.
“What has changed in all the years we’ve done it is the audience’s reaction. I love that because it shows growth in audiences and in the issues we talk about. I love the way the audience goes with me with the storytelling of what happened and what fame looked like for Britney. I’m sure people think of a Britney Spears cabaret as a bit of fluff, but it’s telling an important story, so it’s important to me to have people come on that journey, it means a lot.”
Returning to the cabaret in 2024 was a deliberate choice for Whelan Browne.
She was a born performer, delighting audiences in school musicals in Melbourne before being scouted by a talent manager and propelled into the professional industry.
On the silver screen she is known for roles in Neighbours, Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell and Kinne Tonight. On stage she has dazzled in Muriel’s Wedding the Musical, Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest. She has three enduring one-woman shows, including Britney Spears The Cabaret.
She performed alongside her then-boyfriend Rohan Browne in The Drowsy Chaperone in 2010 and the pair married in 2012 before sharing the stage again in The Production Company’s The Producers.
But in the middle of 2023, she decided to hit pause on her performing career entirely for six months to focus on her family – Browne and their toddler Duke, who turns three in March.
The joy she always felt on stage went missing after a challenging few years, during which her public profile began to overshadow her career.
“I would never dare to compare myself to the level of scrutiny that (Spears) faces, but I’ve had many private meltdowns over the last few years and luckily there was no camera in my face and people weren’t picking me apart or scrutinising my every move. I just can’t imagine how she’s coped,” Whelan Browne says.
“You have to be innately ambitious (in the entertainment industry) to keep surviving and picking yourself up and somewhere in the middle of last year my sense of ambition took a little holiday, and so I just went with that. I think it’s coming back now in 2024, but it definitely took a break last year.”
In 2018, Whelan Browne and two other female cast members brought forward allegations of indecent assault against Craig McLachlan, the star of their 2014 production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. McLachlan denied the allegations.
He was found not guilty in a high-profile criminal trial in 2020 and brought a defamation case against Whelan Browne, the ABC and Nine, the following year. He dropped the suit in 2022.
The spotlight was immense, and while there were undoubtedly professional repercussions, it wasn’t loss of work that concerned her, but the loss of joy for something that had always been profoundly joyous.
“I have directors I’ve worked with for years and years who have continued to support me and offered me work, so I wasn’t afraid in that way,” she says.
“I maybe felt afraid that it took my love of it away. And so, I think that’s why I keep coming back to Britney because it’s something I love and it makes me feel good and the audiences that come, we’re on the same page. I think maybe it’s a little safety blanket for me, and that’s very special.”
Whelan Browne suffered a broken rib after appearing on Dancing With The Stars in early 2023, when Duke was almost two.
“They said don’t lift anything and I thought, well, that’s a shame, because I have a 12kg little fireball that needs to be lifted,” she recalls.
Her husband, Rohan, was cast as Lumiere in the massive production of Beauty and the Beast, touring Sydney, and Whelan Browne decided to move the young family north from Melbourne.
“This was a big moment for Rohan, and I really wanted him to have that, so I took six months off and have been with Duke – just 24/7 mumming, which I haven’t done since he was three months old,” she says.
“It was so good for all of us. It was a huge adjustment. We’re so grateful Duke handled it well. I have to say, though,” she adds with a laugh, “parenting 24/7 is much harder than working.”
Duke has woken from his midday nap when we chat in late January, during their final few days in Sydney, and Whelan Browne is walking him in his stroller along a familiar route. “He’s got more energy than anyone I’ve ever known. He gets that from his dad, not from me.”
They’ve been swimming most days at Sydney’s idyllic beaches.
“Just that feeling of being warm all year round,” she says of the change from the cooler Melbourne winters.
As the six months crept along, Whelan Browne felt herself come back to life. With Beauty and the Beast moving to Brisbane this month, bringing Rohan with it, it was the perfect opportunity for her to reprise Britney Spears The Cabaret at the city’s Powerhouse.
“I think coming back this year I’ll feel like a new woman,” she says.
While the show, written by Dean Bryant, was ahead of its time in telling Spears’ story a decade ago, Whelan Browne has made some touch-ups after reading the memoir last year.
“I used to make a joke that she shaved her head because her kids kept vomiting in it and now I changed it to, ‘I was sick of trying to be pretty for people’,” she explains.
“That’s what she said in the book, and it reminds me of Barbie the movie as well, Weird Barbie. There’s a Weird Barbie in all of us and I feel like that was Britney’s Weird Barbie moment.”
After the performances, she’ll return home to Melbourne, where Duke is due to start kindergarten, while Browne completes the Brisbane season of Beauty and the Beast.
The new chapter in her career will look a little different, surrounding herself, as she did in Sydney, with people who get it.
“Just my own work and working with people who encourage and inspire me, that’s my new aim,” she says.
“It’s everything, and I only want to work with people who make me feel good.
“Especially in a rough time you can become pessimistic and see things through that sort of lens, but the truth is there are a lot of amazing people out there and you’ve just got to find them.”
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