Dead Lucky star Rachel Griffiths’ new show is trying to change Australian TV’s great racial diversity shame
HER new TV drama cast are “drop dead gorgeous and unbelievably talented” and Asian. But Rachel Griffiths was stunned by the reaction of onlookers when they went out to dinner together.
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SYDNEY’S eastern suburbs are a happy hunting ground for star spotters.
But, by her own admission, on a recent night out Rachel Griffiths says she was “looking pretty shit so no one recognised me.”
Her “gorgeous” young co-stars in SBS’s new thrilling crime drama, Dead Lucky, and also at the cast dinner, were a different story.
It’s worth noting at this point, the four-part series is remarkable and rare in 2018 for its racial diversity – with Griffiths sharing top billing with Yoson An (whose previous credits include HBO Asia series, Grace); the current Heath Ledger Scholarship winner, Mojean Aria; and The Letdown’s Xana Tang.
“This woman came up to the table and said, ‘can I just ask what you guys are? My friend and I are having a bet,’” Griffiths recalls.
“And I said, ‘what do you think?’ and she responded, ‘are you here on a tech conference?’ and then the second thing she said was she thinks it’s an English-as-a-second-language group.”
When the Oscar-nominated actor and veteran of stage and screen explained “no, we’re the cast of a show called Dead Lucky,” the woman apparently reeled back and said, ‘wow … you’re all in it?’
“The last thing this woman expected was that this (racial diversity) could be our TV,” Griffiths says, “despite the fact they are all drop dead gorgeous and unbelievably talented.”
For the 49-year-old whose career has taken her around the world, where productions better reflect their rich, multicultural audiences, the encounter left her feeling disheartened about the local TV experience.
“I think it’s just such a lost opportunity. The texture and the stories, the different funnies that come from different cultural backgrounds, it’s just so important to include and appropriate. American culture is realising that audiences were getting really bored with white Marvel movies, but throw in a girl (as producers did with Gal Gadot in Wonder Woman) or an African-American hero (in Black Panther) and it’s a hit,” she says.
Hazem Shammas, the winner of the most outstanding supporting actor prize, at last month’s Logie awards, used his acceptance speech to acknowledge the role SBS and his nominated drama, Safe Harbour, for tackling issues of race and xenophobia.
The Palestinian-born Australian said: “what SBS does … is to challenge some of the norms we think we can get away with on the other networks.
“Life is too fleeting to deal with xenophobia and the racism and the hatred that we really don’t want to talk about,” he said.
“It’s because of SBS and (producers) Matchbox and their courage to create this drama and these kinds of characters is why I’m here and why I’m so proud to be a part of this. This is surreal.”
Miranda Tapsell echoed the sentiment in her 2015 winner’s speech, pleading with executives to “put more beautiful people of colour on TV and connect viewers in ways that transcend race and unite us.”
Griffiths believes the local industry is slowing “waking up to the business side of it” – that audiences will seek out shows which reflect their own lives, while not perpetuating narrow, negative stereotypes.
The Screen Diversity and Inclusion Network - a new industry body backed by Foxtel, Free TV Australia and networks ABC, SBS and Ten - was established in response to a Screen Australia report last year, which found a strong bias against cultural diversity in local TV drama.
PWC projections for the industry by 2020 also argued the lack of diversity in Australian media was “dragging down growth.”
Griffiths says the commercial rewards for inclusion and attracting broader demographics would be a key to change.
“In the end, the bottom line is the dollar and they have to sell these shows in other markets to make it a worthwhile enterprise,” she says.
Dead Lucky was made with investment from Screen Australia and Create NSW, with expectations the global and topical crime story will find international distribution.
In Dead Lucky, she plays embattled police detective Grace Gibbs who is introduced to viewers in an anger management session.
“We meet our character at a cross road where she’s almost being managed out. The career she thought she was going to have … and I won’t say it’s a midlife crisis … but her path to progress hits a hurdle because of an incident where a junior police officer, who was her policing partner was killed, in a moment where she could be considered responsible.”
Yoson An plays Charlie Fung, her new trainee who blames Grace for the death of his best friend.
Griffiths - who lived in the US while filming five seasons of drama Six Feet Under and four years on Brothers & Sisters - admits she’s been on her own journey with racism.
“I remember I was at a dinner party maybe three years ago. I spoke to this person, who lived in New York with an Iranian background and I talked about how wonderful America was and how I felt that it was a much less racist country than another country I was talking about,” she says.
“And this person just laughed in my face. I remember going home and thinking, ‘that was a bit of an over-reaction.’ Then I went, ‘who am I, as a white, middle-class Australian to just comfortably announce at this dinner party that there is not institutional racism in America.”
Social and political movements, including Black Lives Matter, had proved “compelling and interesting,” she says, “in holding a mirror up to my own oblivion to my own privilege to which I viewed many things, in terms of my time when I lived there. I feel this is the same opportunity across all areas.”
* Dead Lucky, 9.30pm, Wednesday July 25 on SBS.