Why leaving Sydney for Tasmania helped Marta Dusseldorp find herself

The pandemic thrust “who am I” moments on the whole world — but actor Marta Dusseldorp had hers before we’d even heard the word Covid.

Marta Dusseldorp.

The pandemic thrust ‘who am I’ moments on the whole world – but actor Marta Dusseldorp had hers before we’d even heard the word ‘Covid’.

That was one factor of many that spurred she and fellow actor husband Ben Winspear to made the decision to pick up their kids, pack up their home and leave Sydney for a slower, more grounded Tasmanian life away from the big smoke.

But in doing so, she had no idea what was about to happen – and the result – the all consuming, meant-to-happen moment – saw the birth of her new show ‘Tassie-Noir’ drama Bay of Fires, which premieres tonight on ABC.

Looking back at the uncertainty before they took the plunge – she says you should always jump.

“Of course we should’ve – you must always,” Dusseldorp tells Insider this week.

Marta Dusseldorp has created, co-produced and starred in new show Bay of Fires. Picture: Adam Gibson

“As soon as you let go of the house, the address the electricity bill, and you pack up everything – and you look around and you’re like how do we ever move all of this … and that’s just a couch and three beds, it’s a lot – but as soon as you let go of all of that, you suddenly realise anything is possible.

“And when the kids have stopped crying because they’re leaving their best friend forever, and you’ve ruined their lives, they start going oh, hello, and going on other playdates and learning about other people and loving them as much as their other friends – and seeing that the world is a big place.

“That they can survive in different spots.

“We got through that – and now they realise they can go anywhere.

“It is about learning about yourself, through other people.

“And I think that’s as important – when you don’t look around and say hello, and try and connect – you don’t know as much who you are, because you’re not stretching yourself.”

Dusseldorp’s Bay of Fires – which she stars in but also co-produces – is what she intriguingly labels ‘Ozark meets Fargo, meets Schitt’s Creek’ – and it was born from a phone call to friend, co-creator and writer Andrew Knight, who she worked with in Jack Irish, Rake and SeaChange.

“Andrew and I have known each other for over 20 years and I’ve been such an admirer of his work … I know his family well and we’re very close,” she says.

“I rang him during the pandemic and I said, ‘look, I know we’ve always talked about creating something together – we’re both locked at home, do you want to just throw some ideas around? Because I really think I am living in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I think I’d really love to share that with the world’.

“And he said ‘okay’.

Marta Dusseldorp as Stella in new TV series Bay of Fires. Picture: ABC TV

“I told him my story of leaving Sydney and moving there and uprooting my life and sort of having a ‘who am I’ moment, and then the pandemic hitting – everyone went through that and everyone was suddenly a fish out of water out of their own lives.

“So we really wanted to explore what that felt like, and what happens I think is you either become who you should have been all along, or you lose sense of who you are all together. “And that’s really what the whole series is about for us.

“Max Dann (Spotsworld) created that with us too, and he lives up in a forest in Tasmania up in the north, so he had very great contact with the Tassie community – and really, unless you stop and have a chat, and really get to know people, you’ll always be outside of that community.”

Also starring Kerry Fox (Conversations with Friends), Toby Leonard Moore (Billions) and Rachel House (Heartbreak High), in the thriller, Dusseldorp’s character Anika Van Cleef – who is closer to her than any part she’s ever played before – is the queen of her family’s business empire and the last person who ever wanted to live in a remote community in the wilds of western Tasmania – but multiple attempts on her life suggest a change of address may be needed. In a nightmare blur, a stranger who claims to be on her side provides her with a new name she hates (Stella), a house of sorts and she and her two kids are whipped off to Mystery Bay — a town so remote it eludes any mention on GPS.

“I wanted to show that really getting to know people who decided to live somewhere else, not in a big city, is really rewarding and can lead to really fabulous things,” she says.

“But Stella, of course, she’s not listening – and she stumbles quite hard into a place that she has no idea what it is.

“And we do keep that from the audience for a while, so there’s a big twist in about episode five and in the meantime, we just wanted to really entertain and help people puzzle it together I suppose.”

Marta Dusseldorp (centre) speaks to the media. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

So unlike her character who was thrown into her big move, how Dusseldorp have guts to make the life-changing transition to Tassie in the first place?

“My goodness, I didn’t have the courage,” she laughs.

“It was really Ben, because he grew up there – he said, ‘Mart – there’s a whole world outside of where we are now and what you know’.

“I mean it’s not like I hadn’t lived other places, but my kids were born (in Sydney) and growing up – and he just said give it a go, see what happens.

“I was still fly in, fly out because I was still shooting A Place to Call Home and when the pandemic hit, and I was shooting Wentworth, I remember the borders were closing, and I had to race to the airport to get the final flight to Tasmania, otherwise I would not have been able, in retrospect, to have seen my family for six months.

“I did the final scene, raced to the airport and I was at the lounge – I had just put my bags in and it was almost empty – no one knew what was going on, I mean, who ever heard of a border closing? And in this Western, privileged society?

“And I went into the lounge and the woman at the desk said ‘you don’t look well, are you okay?’ and I said ‘yes, I feel absolutely fine’.

“And then I realised there was blood on the countertop.

“It was fake blood, because it was dripping out of my eyes – because I hadn’t taken my makeup off from being killed in Wentworth and it was dripping onto the countertop.

“And I was saying ‘I can’t tell you where I’ve been but it’s not real’ and I was licking it to show them it wasn’t real,” she laughs.

“But no one knew what Covid looked like – so it was like I had Covid – but I was like no, I’ve just came off a set of Wentworth.”

Safely back in Tassie with her family, she and husband Winspear made Archipelago Productions and did live performances all through Covid, because it was open.

“People were walking around which we don’t talk about much for those poor people who suffered so badly, but we put on play after play after play, I was Zooming with Andrew and Max and then occasionally we came together just as the borders would open and close, we were running in and out of states to build this beautiful story that ABC picked up in a heartbeat.

Marta Dusseldorp and Ben Winspear.

The pair have fallen in love with Tasmania.

“And as soon as everything opened back up, I got on the financing bandwagon and took my pretend brief briefcase into meetings and said ‘this is why you need to fund us’ and got it up and shot.

“And now we’re delivering it through Australia in the world.

“And it’s very exciting.”

Like everyone, turning 50 also changed things for her – and just about to shoot Bay of Fires – it was a good place for her to be.

“I don’t know any person in the world that doesn’t think okay – 50?” she says.

“I think you look less at yourself, or maybe as a woman, you look less at yourself – and you look around you and you check … are my kids doing well? Am I happy in my marriage? I love my husband so much still, isn’t that amazing? How’s my mum and dad? Check in with your family, your extended family and your creative family.

“So I just saw it as a really momentous moment to look around me and see if everyone else was okay and was I giving everything that they needed.

“And I was just about to shoot Bay of Fires, so I thought, this is a good place to be right now.

“In the centre.

“In the controlling booth of your own life.

“I think as an actor, you can feel a little bit at the whim of other people – do they give you a job or don’t they – are you going to that, or aren’t you? In the audition you get feedback – your hair colour wasn’t quite right, or you need to blah blah blah, whatever it happens to be. “So I just loved that I didn’t need to ask for permission, I suppose.”

In the past, Dusseldorp had said as a woman, she was always telling a man’s story – but she concedes a lot has changed over the last two decades.

“I’m 50 now – back then I was 30 – and nobody stands still,” she says.

“As we know, the world has changed a lot, and it feels like I’m right where I need to be.

“I’ve got two beautiful daughters I’m bringing up, and they’re growing too and I’m trying to be a role model.

“And to me, actually, a life, and collaboration, is all about relationships – and I have some beautiful relationships creatively, personally, and I care about them, and I nurture them, and they nurture me.

Marta on the set of Bay of Fires.

“So this is really built around a lot of trust, a lot of care, and a lot of respect.
“Everyone on this show was hand picked … the whole ensemble cast are geniuses – and I just love actors, as you would imagine, because I am one, and they all delivered so much.

They all delivered much more than we imagined.

“This show really is very dimensional, and there is a secret to it.

“And each of the characters you see on the screen aren’t quite who they seem to be.

“And I think that’s a lovely thing to give to a performer because I think we can be underestimated – like we can only do one thing, or not.”

And so over 16 weeks on the west coast of Tassie, Dusseldorp and her team of geniuses built their dream. And in the dead of winter, no less.

“It really was so incredibly satisfying – and we survived,” she laughs.

“You just try and work truthfully, and with authenticity – and whenever I go around the world to these television markets and so on – they say ‘we want to see local for local, we want to see Australians being Australians.

“And that really gives me heart – that our stories are as important as any English speaking country around the world, and we make it for us, and the world will want to see it.

“So it is a natural progression, I think where I am – but I have just been working my whole life to tell Australian stories and this is hopefully one that people really enjoy and tune into.”

Marta Dusseldorp.

“It’s a bit like when you have your first child, and you realise, suddenly you’re a mother – and you’ve got this baby literally lying on your chest and you’re responsible for their breathing and eating and sustenance and their safety – in a way, that’s a little bit how it is being a producer.

“Because you got to make sure everyone is safe – that’s the most important thing.

“And I remember at the end of the shoot, I took a breath in the car and I thought okay, what just happened? A bit like after you give birth.

“And I thought okay, what’s the most important thing? And that was, no one got hurt.

“And you realise that is so important.

“But having been a mother for 16 years I guess that’s natural, like I get it.

“And I loved being able to respond to people’s needs and what was going on for everybody else – I quite enjoy that, and I feel like that helps me be a better actor because I’m less stressing about what I need to do, or be working on.

“And also because this character came from me and is as close to me probably as a character’s ever gotten, on screen – I was able to just let it come out of me as opposed to pushing it out.

“I think I was a better performer because of it, hopefully, and my intentions were to make sure everyone else had a good time.”

Marta Dusseldorp.

The only setback was the country’s third wave of Covid – which she says was a disaster for anyone’s industry.

“But especially for ours because we have to turn up – you can’t do it remotely,” she says.

“And that was hard.

“I had to hide myself away for a good eight weeks – and that was very lonely because Ben and the girls had to go home and I couldn’t see them, in case of Covid.

“I couldn’t socialise with the crew in case I went down, because we would have to stop and I didn’t want to do that to anyone, or to our budget.

“So that was hard.

“But I knew it wasn’t just me – the whole world had gone through this topsy turvy, so in many ways, I felt like, well, this is your turn, Marta, to do that isolation that so many people have had to do around the world.

“And it will end and you will go home, and you will hug your loved ones.

“And I guess that’s what I’m trying to say the whole thing was built on, during that time, so it has a flavour all the way through it.”

Today she’s on the road doing screenings up and down the east coast of Australia, having come from where they shot it on the west coast of Tasmania.

“We showed the local community there at Queenstown and Zeehan – they’ve got these two art deco theatres and we packed them out, there were about 500 all up,” she says proudly.

“So it’s been very fulfilling 0 and hearing how much they loved it really warmed my heart.”

Bay of Fires is currently on ABC TV and ABC iview.