’I couldn’t resist’: Asher Keddie on why she returned to Offspring after two-year mummy break
REJUVENATED after a two-year hiatus from television to focus on motherhood, Asher Keddie is excited about revisiting her Offspring alter-ego.
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AS CELEBRITY interviews go, this one gets off to a terrible start.
Sitting down with Asher Keddie, the returning star of Australia’s much-loved dramedy Offspring, our conversation comes to a screeching halt even before it’s really begun.
In one of those heart-stopping moments every journalist dreads, the flickering light of my dictaphone stops dead, minutes into our scheduled hour-long chat where we’re to discuss Keddie’s new life, new motherhood and a new season reviving her role as the lovably neurotic Nina Proudman on the acclaimed Network Ten series.
Looking across the QT Bondi hotel couch to the 41-year-old, completely at ease in a black Bassike T-shirt and leather pants, she meets my panic-stricken gaze with a reassuring smile and a shrug of her shoulders.
“It’s one of those days,” she says with a sigh.
“Valentino [her infant son] just put my phone in the toilet. It’s been a comedy of errors this morning.”
If anyone needs reminding that Keddie is completely unlike her TV character, her nonchalance in this moment (which surely would have sent Nina spiralling all the way to her therapist’s office) is surely it.
There’s a visible serenity to her now, which even she concedes wasn’t always apparent.
Two years away from television has undoubtedly shifted something in Keddie; it’s been a time of great personal change that has allowed her to “rest back into myself”.
This new chapter comes off the back of a relentless period of professional success for Keddie (who was named after British actress Jane Asher by her school-teacher parents, Robi and James).
A one-time Australian Ballet Company aspirant, she made her prime-time acting debut in the popular Foxtel drama Love My Way (2004–07), which paved the way for acclaimed performances in telemovies Hawke (as Blanche d’Alpuget), Underbelly: Tale Of Two Cities, and Paper Giants: The Birth Of Cleo (as Ita Buttrose).
In 2010, it was her role as Offspring’s unlucky-in-love Dr Nina Proudman which would earn her a devoted following and seven Logies (including Gold in 2013).
By mid-2014, however, the show’s future came under a cloud. As it reached the end of its fifth season and stopped qualifying for lucrative government tax concessions, both the network and production company, now trading as Endemol Shine, struggled to come to financial terms.
Offspring fans set to mourning the show’s loss. Its final scenes featuring first-time single mum Nina settling down with new man Leo (Patrick Brammall) after losing her great love and baby Zoe’s father, Patrick (Matthew Le Nevez), seemed to satisfy all those looking for a happy ending, while keeping the door ajar for more drama should it come to that.
Meanwhile, Keddie dealt with the vagaries of television by throwing herself into new political drama Party Tricks, another Network Ten series.
“Because I went straight into another show, I skipped that part of mourning,” she says.
“I probably didn’t allow myself to think about [Offspring ending] because I didn’t want to close the door, just in case. Now, as we know, it was probably a good idea I didn’t shut it all down.”
For one, Party Tricks failed to find a solid audience (a rare ratings misfire for the actor).
But it was another unexpected plot twist in her real life that would lead Keddie to her greatest role yet: becoming a mum.
Away from the cameras, Keddie had wed Melbourne-based artist Vincent Fantauzzo in a secret Fijian ceremony in April 2014, alongside his four-year-old son Luca, after two years together (Keddie was previously married to fellow actor Jay Bowen for five years).
In the four-time winner of the People’s Choice Award at the Archibald Prize, Keddie found a life partner, creative soulmate and a yin to her yang.
“We felt like we knew each other really quickly. There was that sense of safety and support and acceptance early on, which I think is a really tricky thing to search for in a lot of relationships,” she reflects.
“Probably for the first time in my life, if I’m truthful about it, I felt like I could be myself with him. I didn’t feel like I needed to be a certain way.”
“I told myself, ‘I’m going to give this time to myself and my family, and enjoy my pregnancy.’”
With a personal safety net like never before, Keddie could let go and fall happily in love, and accept the next phase of her life. Just as Party Tricks was axed after its debut season, she fell pregnant and decided to step away from acting.
“I’m sure it looks perfectly planned from the outside. Perfectly planned and all tied up in a bow,” she says.
“But this amazing surprise occurred and that’s when I made a particular choice to have a break, a proper [two-year] break. I told myself, ‘I’m going to give this time to myself and my family, and enjoy my pregnancy.’”
The pair had discussed starting their own family (“As most couples do,” says Keddie), but the actor had also been a compassionate voice for women in their late thirties who felt their life’s work was enough reward without the trophy of having a baby as well.
Over the years it seemed to develop into a sore point for Keddie, who was determined to bat away questions about her own maternal intentions when her TV alter-ego, Nina, fell pregnant.
At that time, I remind her, she would physically bristle when the topic of playing a mum (and whether she contemplated being one in real life) was raised.
Defiantly, she would answer such personal probing with her own question: “Why are we only considered successful if we can juggle family with a demanding career?”
Keddie admits she was previously “scratchy about it”, but like every woman, reserves the right to have changed her mind.
“Circumstances change. You meet someone and think, ‘I’d really like to have a child with you and I feel differently, and isn’t that wonderful?’ You start thinking, ‘Perhaps it is something I’d like to do.’”
Settling on a place to nest was the couple’s next step, but that didn’t go by the guide book either.
“We were living in the country [on her farm in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges], then when we got pregnant we thought, ‘Oh, we’d better get a place in town.’ We agreed, ‘Let’s just lease somewhere and see how that works.’”
“I can’t really remember much before I had [Valentino] in my arms, but it was hands-down the most beautiful moment of my life.”
With Fantauzzo’s son Luca due to start kindergarten last year, a city pad would be perfect to accommodate his schooling and growing social life, as much as the demands of this young, working family.
“We started realising, ‘Oh, [Luca] needs to go to footy on a Saturday morning with his mates, and he’s got play dates and parties’, and all of that started,” explains Keddie.
“So we were back and forth, back and forth – it’s just the way we are.
“Then, to continue the madness – heighten it, really – soon after I gave birth we decided to buy a [city] house. It turned out to be amazing because we love it; it was a great move.”
Against the backdrop of all this change, Keddie says Valentino’s birth, in March 2015, was the most “extraordinary” experience of her life.
“When I was in it with Vincent, we were so together and it was lovely. I can’t really remember much before I had [Valentino] in my arms, but it was hands-down the most beautiful moment of my life,” she wells up.
“To share that with Vincent was something else; indescribable, really great.”
Given she never really planned on it, what type of mother has Keddie turned out to be?
“Oh god, I worried about that, and I wonder whether most women worry about it or feel a certain amount of fear. I just knew I wanted to be solid, but I also knew I wanted to be true to myself and I didn’t know how it would feel. You do go, ‘Oh sh*t’, because it’s incredibly discombobulating – my favourite word because it fits in so many ways.
“Whatever plans I may have had – and I really didn’t have many – they went out the window because you just have to be present. You don’t know what a baby is going to be like from day to day, what each new stage will bring.”
Less than two months after giving birth, Keddie put her new parenting skills to the test by bundling up her family and following Fantauzzo to Alice Springs (the starting point for Last Contact, his latest, sold-out art collection, inspired by Indigenous Australia).
“It was just for a week. Vally was about 10 weeks old, so it was still really early days and I was struggling. I needed to be in an apartment for most of the time because I was feeding a lot. But I’d make trips out to see [Fantauzzo at work] and that was really special. It was great watching him engage in that way and connect with a project.”
“We paused her story just as she had bravely navigated motherhood as a single parent rediscovering the joy and romance of life.”
Fifteen months on, a shift in fortunes at Network Ten also saw it green-light the rebirth of Offspring, now finalising production of its sixth season.
For Ten’s programming chief, Beverley McGarvey, absorbing a 30 per cent cost hike to get its most popular local drama back on air was always going to be worth it.
“It’s no secret that we wanted to continue Nina’s adventure,” she says.
“We paused her story just as she had bravely navigated motherhood as a single parent rediscovering the joy and romance of life, while dealing with her fabulously messy family.”
For Keddie, the offer was too good to refuse.
“I couldn’t resist. It got to the point where I thought, ‘I can’t resist the challenge of coming back after a two-year hiatus.’ But also, I couldn’t deny it excited me, and when you feel excitement about work, there’s a reason for that.”
Rejuvenated by her time away, she has relished exploring the light and shade of the series.
“I love the really deep, rip-your-soul-to-shreds stuff, but I also love the romantic comedy. I love the heightened sense of play this show offers. That’s what is irresistible to me – the emotional swings in it. It’s incredibly fun to play with.”
Adding to that dynamic this year are Offspring’s real offspring – Valentino was joined on set by co-star Kat Stewart’s newborn daughter and director Shannon Murphy’s nine-month-old baby during most of the filming.
Keddie says she was not prepared to return to work if Valentino could not come with her, and Offspring’s executive producer Imogen Banks was equally determined to nurture the flexible environment.
“You don’t want to quarantine people, or say, ‘You can’t have this job because you’ve had a baby,’” says Banks.
Fantauzzo has also been a great cheerleader for his wife’s work and open about his attraction to Keddie’s career focus and ambition; qualities she confesses she is only now “more comfortable” discussing.
“I don’t feel like I need or want to apologise for feeling ambitious. It’s a great feeling and it’s a great feeling to be supported by my partner, who is equally ambitious. He’s not threatened by that, as I am not with him. It works for us in that way, we’re good like that.”
“I was pretty surprised I could [have a baby], and I think it’s working out OK. He’s a pretty cool little human.”
Wobbling his way around the Sunday Style shoot, there is no doubt Valentino has inherited his parents’ confidence and contentment.
Sitting at his mother’s feet as she has her hair and make-up done, he mumbles a happy song of “Mam, mam, mammy” while making his own selections from the collection of designer heels laid out for the day.
Keddie is unabashedly smitten: “I’m loving discovering who he is now, because he’s really starting to interact with us. He’s trying to talk, too. He’s responding ‘Yup’, and was rambling away this morning, having his own conversation with the fruit bowl.”
And, for all her fears, Keddie is doing a great job in a role she never thought she wanted.
“I was pretty surprised I could [have a baby], and I think it’s working out OK. He’s a pretty cool little human. Just a sweet, affectionate, happy little thing who makes your feelings and choices different,” she says.
“Then he pops my phone in the toilet and cries because he’s done it. He knows, even at his age; he just looked at me and went, ‘Waaah’, and I said, ‘That’s OK.’ Whatever, we’re away from home, my phone’s broken,” she laughs. “What does it matter? Only he matters. Only his happiness matters to me now.”
* Offspring returns on Wednesday June 29, at 8.30pm on Network Ten.
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