Former McLeod’s Daughters star Rachael Carpani on fame, Hollywood – and her return to acting

After finding fame on McLeod’s Daughters, Rachael Carpani moved to Hollywood. Now 43, the actor reveals the ‘baptism of fire’ she received – and the new role that brought her home.

Most people go to Hollywood in search of fame. Rachael Carpani went there to escape it.

After filming a string of small roles in shows including All Saints and Home And Away, Carpani hit the big time when she was cast as teenager Jodi Fountain McLeod on TV drama McLeod’s Daughters.

It may have started out as a supporting role, but Carpani’s knack for comedic timing coupled with her natural talents as a dramatic actor made her one

of the series’ most popular stars when it launched in 2001. By 2007, she had scored a Gold Logie nomination.

Overwhelmed by all the attention, Carpani recalls going to her agent and threatening to quit if she wasn’t sent to the “acting equivalent of Siberia. I said: ‘I don’t want to be famous! Earning a living would be nice. I adore ‘action’ to ‘cut’, but everything else – the networking, the hobnobbing, the dealing with sleazy directors – I just don’t want any of it,’” Carpani tells Stellar.

Rachael Carpani is joining Home And Away in a guest role. Picture: Daniel Nadel for Stellar

“Without missing a beat, she looked at me and said, ‘I’m sending you to Hollywood, love. No-one knows who you are there, and they’ll never care.’”

Carpani was undaunted by the proposition. She had been just out of her teens when she left her family home in Sydney’s northwestern suburbs to shoot McLeod’s Daughters in Kingsford, South Australia. There she honed her craft watching more experienced co-stars such as Sonia Todd and John Jarratt, and learnt the value of hard work – even amid trying personal circumstances.

“In 2001, you didn’t announce to a crew of 80 men, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve got endometriosis. I feel like I’m being stabbed in the stomach. I’ll need five minutes,’” Carpani explains.

So she found ways to secretly manage her condition.

She would discreetly tuck ice packs under her belt buckle, and hid her stitches from the wardrobe department after admitting herself to hospital for a laparoscopy – a surgical procedure that examines abdominal organs. On top of that, she points out, “Getting on and off a horse and riding while you’ve got full-blown endometriosis is terrible. Unbelievably and indescribably painful.”

Despite having navigated all of that on her own, life in Los Angeles would prove harder than she could have imagined.

“Talk about a baptism of fire; I had one after another after another,” she says.

“Just when I’d got a handle on an Australian set, I went straight to the US into pilot season with these big stars. I remember 20-foot trailers, these big directors and $5 million being spent on a pilot. I was wide-eyed. And every time I thought I knew something, I became wide-eyed again.”

Picture: Daniel Nadel for Stellar

Like so many vulnerable young actors, especially women, Carpani often found herself in uncomfortable situations that she would have to “giggle my way out of. Because the first thing you’re taught is: ‘Don’t embarrass [powerful men], because embarrassment is dangerous.’”

Worse still, Carpani didn’t feel that she could share what was going on with her family back home. “We do not swear in our household,” she explains. “We would say ‘Oh my gosh’, not ‘Oh my God’. So how would I call my parents and say, ‘Oh, the director of this show that apparently is launching my US career made a pass at me tonight and I don’t know who to tell

or what to do – and I have to work with him for 16 hours tomorrow’?”

Carpani hastens to add that what she encountered is not exclusive to Hollywood, and that the industry here could be just as fraught. “I was [so young], working with men in their 30s, and it was a dodge ball game every day,” she says with a shrug.

“It was like, just don’t get caught alone. [In both Australia and the US] we would leave Post-it notes for each other on certain sets of which men to not be left alone with. Or we’d write in lipstick on the mirrors things like ‘Blah Blah is on the prowl today’ or ‘Avoid Blah Blah’.”

Carpani believes she was able to navigate the “unsafe parts of the industry” with support from other women.

“I always believed that women supported women, surrounded myself with women-owned agencies, and have been an advocate for supporting young women and making sure we look out for each other before I even understood why,” she says.

Cult role! With co-star Luke Ford, left, in scene from McLeod's Daughters.

‘This is going to be fun!’ Rachael Carpani on the Logies red carpet in her McLeod’s Daughters era. Picture: News Corp Australia

Now 43 and working in an industry that has been reshaped by the #MeToo movement, Carpani feels more confident than ever to speak up for herself and the issues she’s passionate about. “The Rachael that speaks now was always in there, she just couldn’t come out,” she explains.

“If I had back then, I probably would have been blackballed and not worked again.”

The actor is eager to share the wisdom of her experience with her young co-stars on Home And Away, where she has been filming a guest role. Not that they need much coaching. “They’re more empowered,” she marvels. “They have more information at their fingertips. The entire culture changed. The young men I work with now have so much respect for women.”

As for herself, Carpani has found that things get better with age. “I’m not saying that to hit back at societal norms that tell us that everything that’s of value – youth, beauty and our ability to procreate – dissipates with age,” she tells Stellar.

“It’s actually true. You stop worrying so much about what people think. In the past, I’ve truly cared way too much about the optics about how I was perceived.”

Carpani believes the nurturing environment on the Home And Away set is helping the next generation of actors find that same sense of security far earlier.

“The entire energy of that place is let’s shoot it [and] do a good job,” she enthuses.

“Let’s give the audience some fun, juicy storylines. It’s far less about bikinis and lip gloss on the beach.”

See the full shoot with Rachael Carpani inside the latest issue of Stellar.

On the long-running soap Carpani plays Claudia – a newcomer to Summer Bay who makes waves in the Morgan household. The role struck a chord with Carpani straight away because “Louise Bowes [previously a scriptwriter on McLeod’s Daughters] was at the helm of designing and creating Claudia, and she makes it far more real. I know we’re talking about a fun soap here where people get kidnapped and people blow things up and crazy things happen, but there was a realness to this character.”

Finding herself one of the older cast members has forced further reflection on how far she has come.

“The difference between walking onto my first day on the McLeod’s set, where the thought in my head was, ‘Be good, do what you’re told, don’t get fired’, compared to my first day on Home And Away where I was thinking, ‘This is going to be fun. I hope I can keep up with the young ones’, is enormous.”

Home And Away airs at 7pm, Monday to Thursday, on the Seven Network. Rachael Carpani appears from August 29. See the full shoot with her inside the latest issue of Stellar. For more from Stellar, click here.

Originally published as Former McLeod’s Daughters star Rachael Carpani on fame, Hollywood – and her return to acting