Bonnie Sveen and Paul Hogan: Home And Away bubs are twin pin-ups, taxpayers fund Hoges telemovie
TV INSIDER: Bonnie Sveen cuddles up with her cute new co-stars and Channel 7 wins funding green light for its Paul Hogan telemovie.
MOVE over the Stenmark twins — Sebastian and Xavier Sloan are set to steal your thunder when it comes to the title of television’s cutest double act.
Taking a starring role in Presto’s new Home And Away telemovie, An Eye For An Eye (8.30pm, Wed), the babies who play Casey Braxton have made an impressive start to their showbiz careers at the tender age of one.
Cuddling up to their TV mum Bonnie Sveen, the identical pairing is the latest in a long list of infants who have appeared as the offspring of Ricky Sharpe (Sveen) and her former bad boy love, Daryl ‘Brax’ Braxton (Stephen Peacocke) — with a staggering 16 other babies substituted between scenes this year on Seven’s award-winning soap.
The drama’s executive producer Lucy Addario figures eagle-eyed fans may have spotted the difference this year, as each of the babies started growing into their own.
“Bonnie’s character would go from one set, say her home, to another like the diner and she’d have two babies on the go. When we’d go to edit, we’d be like ‘oh my gosh, that baby suddenly has brown hair’. That’s why Casey was always wearing little hats.”
While the affable Tasmanian-born actor counts herself a dab hand when it comes to handling bubs (babysitting her way through high school and playing mum to her younger cousins), working with all 16 babies under the age of eight months was “a really weird, jarring experience”.
“It’s hard enough because you can’t control them, having to then get to know a baby’s personality immediately and then try to work the scene to them, it’s really difficult,” Sveen said.
Still, Sveen loves the energy and spontaneity the bundles of joy can bring to the serious business of filming.
“It just brings real life to set. It can either make people tense or more relaxed in their performance,” she said.
“When you’re working with 16 different kids, you’re trying to settle them and treating them like your own ... then they will giggle, or snuffle or instinctively grab your boob thinking I’m their real mother and I just crack up. I can see the camera crew laughing and you’re like, ‘all right guys!’
Heaping praise on her young co-stars, Sveen described the Sloan brothers as “so placid and calm and comfortable and inquisitive”.
The fuss-free, pint-sized stars are central to the Presto spin-off’s storyline, with Sveen taking the lead among the adult cast, which includes the return of former regulars Peacocke, Dan Ewing and Lisa Gormley.
“It was like an actor’s dream to have a story focused around your character’s drama. In the world of Home And Away, which has to switch between storylines, it was massive for me to just drive this. I felt a little bit like the CEO of a business or something,” she said.
That’s not a telemovie, THIS is a Paul Hogan telemovie
HE may have had his troubles with the local tax man, but the government coffers have opened again for Paul Hogan — with a telemovie about the life of the film and TV icon given the funding green light by Screen Australia and Screen Queensland.
The FremantleMedia production for Channel 7 will begin filming early next year, with “casting for the much-coveted lead role underway and highly-contested,” a FMA spokesman said.
Given the working title of the Paul Hogan Project, the script has been written by Keith Thompson (The Sapphires) and Marieke Hardy (Packed To The Rafters, The Family Law); while Kevin Carlin, whose credits include Foxtel’s internationally-acclaimed prison drama Wentworth and Seven’s much-anticipated miniseries Molly (about music guru Molly Meldrum), will direct.
The network’s head of drama, Julie McGauran said the Hoges biopic “will be a celebration of a beloved icon; an Aussie battler with a larrikin heart who experienced an unexpected, unprecedented rise to international stardom [in Crocodile Dundee]”.
His is the ultimate rags-to-riches tale — beginning his working life as a labourer on the Sydney Harbour Bridge before becoming a household name and TV star in comedy hour, The Paul Hogan Show.
FMA’s director of drama and executive producer Jo Porter predicted their biopic would “explore this complex, smart man who helped define Australia’s identity. It is going to be a revealing, heartwarming story that will really get audiences talking”.
Neither Hogan nor his long-term production partner John Cornell are attached to the Seven production — perhaps out of loyalty to Nine, where they both appeared for most of their early TV years.
It has also been previously reported Nine was also planning a rival Hoges telemovie, along with another production about superstar Olivia Newton John.
Setting up an interesting race between the two channels, Seven is also believed to have teamed with FMA for an ONJ story — in a battle of “ who airs first wins”.
The funding for FMA’s Olivia biopic was not part of the most recent approvals (with the screen bodies assessing applications on a quarterly basis).
One to Watch: James jets in for CNN
SOME guys get all the luck, like former Melbourne model and Monash law grad James Williams who ditched his catwalk and courtroom careers for the life of a CNN reporter. After spending five years in London as a producer for the network, he’s just been promoted to host his own travel show, In 24 Hours — scouring the globe for luxe holiday experiences like his launch episode in New York where he choppers around the Big Apple.
TV Gossip: Ten had us in stitches
WITH the ratings year at an end, the TV networks have been kicking up their heels at company Christmas parties. Nine celebrated with a Weddings theme on Friday night (inspired by their reality series, Married At First Sight); but it was the publicity team at Ten which had us in stitches — enthusiastically embracing the Hollywood theme of their festive free-for-all by dressing up as plastic surgery patients, naughty nurses and the odd Doctor.
Don’t Miss: Crowe flies high in film
AS the centenary year of the Gallipoli landing also draws to a close, it seems the perfect time to celebrate one of the movie marvels created by Russell Crowe to honour the occasion. The Water Diviner (8.30pm, Saturday, Foxtel Movies Masterpiece) is a credit to the Oscar-winner who directed and stars in this heartwarming story about a father’s love and his mission to bring home his three soldier sons.
Email: holly.byrnes@news.com.au
Twitter: @byrnesh
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