Tammin Sursok: ‘I didn’t know I was part of the cult’

As she reveals her ‘brutal’ entry to Hollywood, Australian actor Tammin Sursok explains how she found her place – and why she no longer ‘fakes it’.

Despite moving to the US 19 years ago – first to Los Angeles and then to Nashville, where she currently resides with her film producer husband and two daughters – Tammin Sursok still calls Australia home.

And while the 41-year-old has a lot of love for her the US, she would like to spend more time here in the near future.

“We live in both countries. I think we’ll always live in both countries, but I think I would like to make it more 50/50,” the actor told the Stellar podcast Something To Talk About.

“It’s really just the kids’ schooling that we’re navigating, trying to figure that out. I think we’ve got one of the kids sorted, it’s just the second we have to do.

“It’s not an easy feat. But my career and my husband’s career – we have a foot in both places. We love both things.”

Listen to the full interview with Tammin Sursok on Something To Talk About:

‘I didn’t know I was part of the cult until I became part of it!’ Tammin Sursok has found huge success in the US in Hallmark movies. Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

“It took me a long time to be like: I’m allowed to say I love being an Aussie. And there’s so much of America that I love too, and it’s also given me a lot – like my husband!

“So it’s OK to say that I love both and there are different things in both that are just phenomenal, and I’m really blessed and lucky to get to experience both.”

One of the more American ‘traditions’ that Sursok has embraced is Hallmark Christmas movies. But instead of just watching them, she appeared in her first, Trivia At St. Nick’s, last November. Yet even she couldn’t escape the fascination Americans have with the genre.

“I’ve probably done some 1,500 episodes of television in some way, either with Pretty Little Liars or Home And Away or The Young And The Restless.

“I was on a few different shows, like Hannah Montana, out here. But Hallmark movies are what people live and die by here. It’s like a cult. I didn’t know I was part of the cult until I became part of it,” she said, laughing.

Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

“I think especially the nature of what’s going on in politics – you turn on the news and it’s just so much fear and division and anger. And sometimes people just really need that lukewarm water bath to get into and just be like, it’s not too hot, it’s not too cold, but it gives me comfort. And I think why these movies do so well is because there’s just no drama.”

Sursok told Something To Talk About that she filmed the Christmas movie in the American summer, so it was basically an Australian Christmas weather-wise.

“Honestly, it was so hot. I had Fanta and Sprite cans down my butt because I was dripping in sweat and I had on a beanie and jacket and scarf,” she said. “It is not glamorous. The whole time I’m like: ‘Just move your feet so you don’t pass out.’”

Despite this, the actor is thrilled to be working. When she first moved to Hollywood almost two decades ago, she “auditioned furiously” for six months and “didn’t get a job at all”. Her parents supported her by paying for hotels, and hair and nail appointments.

Listen to the full interview with Tammin Sursok on Something To Talk About:

“And then at some point they said: ‘We love you, but you’re on your own.’ I remember going … what am I going to do?” she said.

“I believe that there’s a god. I believe that there’s something greater, because how can there be so much magic without there being something greater? But I wouldn’t say I’m deeply religious, I don’t go to church … On that day, though, I did go to a church, funnily enough, and I fell to the floor. It was like, ‘Lord and Saviour, if you are there, if you are real, please, I need a job.’ I was super desperate.

“And within the next week, I got three gigs. One of them was The Young And The Restless, one was the movie I met my husband on [Albino Farm], and one was a show called Rules Of Engagement. Whether it was divine intervention, manifestation, God or luck, it is the reason I ended up getting a green card, and I was able to stay in the States.”

Despite her success with her acting roles as well as podcast The Sh!t Show, Sursok doesn’t think she’s “made it” – yet.

“I don’t even think I’m close to what I know I could do and what I want to do, and what I think is on the horizon to do. I’m very grateful and lucky to have got the opportunities that I have, but I also feel like I’ve had a lot of near misses of some really big projects that would be completely life-changing,” she said.

“Sometimes I can sit in my own mind and hear thoughts of people that might or might not be true. Like, ‘She hasn’t made it’ or ‘She has.’ Or, ‘She could have been bigger.’ As I get older, there’s a quiet confidence of: there is no choice for me but to continue.

“I also have that little thing of proving people wrong. I think in the future there’s going to be some good stuff happening.”

The new episode of the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About, featuring Tammin Sursok is out now, wherever you get your podcasts.

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