‘I wanted to be in fights’: Ex-Home and Away star in new role
Philippa Northeast has been training hard and learning a raft of outback skills so she can play a ringer in new Aussie TV show Territory.
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Philippa Northeast can add a raft of new skills to her resume thanks to her latest acting gig.
The former Home and Away star honed her horse riding skills, brushed up on her fitness and learnt to fight ahead of taking on the role of Susie in new Aussie TV show, Territory.
“I wanted to learn all of the skills that Susie needed to have and wanted to be on location in the outback filming, I wanted to be on the horses, I wanted to be in the cars, I wanted to be in the fights,” Northeast told The Daily Telegraph.
“I really went hell for leather when I booked the job. I did lots of horse riding. I learnt how to drive a manual ute, I did a butchery class so that I would be able to prepare meat because that was one of the scenes that was originally in the script. I did personal training because I wanted a rural level of fitness. I wanted a really strong handshake or to be able to jump a fence, to open a gate really quickly or to sit on a horse with strength like you’d been doing it for your life.”
Territory will premiere on Netflix tomorrow (Thursday), telling the story of the Lawson family cattle empire based on fictional Marianne Station.
Northeast and her fellow cast lived on Tipperary Station in the Northern Territory for four weeks during filming, followed by two weeks at Kakadu National Park and the final shoot period in South Australia.
“I wanted to as much as I could live as the ringers (stock workers) live and luckily because it was so immersive living there, because the lines were blurred between what was set and what was reality, it means that you could wake up each day and be right there in the scene from the minute you woke up,” Northeast said of playing Susie Lawson.
“It was pretty heavy at times because it goes into some pretty heavy territory but it meant I could be Susie up there for a period of time and I could just isolate myself to that.”
Territory also stars Anna Torv, Michael Dorman, Robert Taylor, Sam Corlett, Jake Ryan and Sara Wiseman.
Northeast describes Territory as a “look into a multimillion-dollar industry that underpins Australia that we’ve not really seen on screen”.
“At the heart of the show it is a family drama,” she said.
“And to me it is very much about generational clashes within a family and trying to find your own identity and your own standing while also dealing with the history of your family.”
Northeast, 30, cut her teeth as an actor playing Evelyn MacGuire on TV soap Home and Away from 2013 to 2017.
Her other acting credits include The Newsreader and Paper Dolls.
“Home and Away for me felt like an apprenticeship. Whereas friends were going to university and studying acting, I got this incredible paid for apprenticeship where I got to be on the tools learning.”
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