Deborra-lee Furness: ‘I don’t want to be judged as Mrs Jackman’
In an exclusive interview, Deborra-lee Furness opens up directing upcoming episodes of Neighbours, a career move always expected of a woman who was president of the Barbie’s Fan Club when she was a little girl – and wanting to be seen for who she is.
Stellar
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“I am so sorry. I thought we were doing this at 8.30. It’s my own fault and... I’m sorry.”
Deborra-lee Furness has materialised on a Zoom call with Stellar, seated in what appears to be a working corner of the Manhattan apartment where she lives with her family.
Her voice is enthusiastic, energetic, and, after nearly 40 years spent living abroad following stints in her hometown of Sydney along with Melbourne and London, it has almost entirely flattened into an American accent.
It booms as she offers both apology and explanation for being a fashionable 10 minutes behind schedule. “Hey, I’m a New Yorker! I’ve been here for 150 years. And I’m always on time. So this is weird for me.”
So too, she cracks, is technology – or at least the set-up in which she now finds herself as she settles in for our interview. “People are no longer three-dimensional. We’re all squares! We’re squares with weird backgrounds.” Still, it works for her. “I hate phone calls. I annoy people; I always FaceTime them. I like the visual.”
It’s a trait that has served Furness well for as long as she can remember, stretching back to when she first moved to New York in the early ’80s and studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
“I’m a creative,” she tells Stellar. “If I’m not acting, I paint in oils. I sculpt. I’m designing a house at the moment. As long as I get to be creative, I’m happy.”
Asked if she would be keen to return to acting on a more regular basis, Furness replies, “It’s weird with acting. When I’m in it, I think, ‘Oh I remember this...’ and it’s like getting back on a bike. But acting usually takes you on location for four months and I don’t have that luxury. Because I have kids.
“And, quite frankly, the stuff I have been offered has been less than stellar. I can’t do something that doesn’t turn me on because I obsess too much. And I haven’t been out there auditioning...” She laughs, continuing, “Because maybe I’m too tired.”
If so, it hardly shows. Even on a video conferencing call, Furness exudes the kind of magnetism that keeps you hanging on her every word. And it was that quality, backed by her continuing work as founder of the organisation Adopt Change – which advocates for changes to adoption laws in Australia – that compelled Neighbours executive producer Jason Herbison to ask her to direct a trio of upcoming episodes.
The pair began talking about the idea roughly a year ago, when they met up for coffee after being reacquainted through a mutual friend.
Herbison wanted to map out a story that would reflect his own path to fatherhood, which started after he moved to the US for a spell in 2009. He began exploring surrogacy options there, only to unexpectedly meet his now-partner Pete, and soon after became immersed in the process of adopting a child, daughter Harlow, now nine.
And Furness, who has been candid about her and husband Hugh Jackman’s struggles to conceive naturally, as well as unsuccessful IVF treatments, miscarriages, and their eventual adoption of a son and daughter – Oscar, now 20, and Ava, 14 – seemed like exactly the right person for the job.
“She really knows her stuff,” Herbison tells Stellar. “She sees all perspectives and knows the issues from both the parents’ and children’s sides. She’s a force of nature, a straight shooter and someone who has used her platform to become much more knowledgeable to make change. I don’t think I’ve met anyone quite like her.”
The episodes she came home to direct centre on Aaron and David, a gay couple keen on adopting who ultimately decide to take in a teenage foster child.
For Furness, the project marks her first time in the director’s chair since 2003, when she helmed a short film that featured an ensemble cast including her husband.
Even then, Jackman tells Stellar, his wife’s talent was evident. “She is born to be a director,” he says, explaining, “I’ve been directed by her for 25 years. She has an unbelievable eye, she’s always right and she’s incredibly decisive. Deb is so much tougher on me than any director I’ve worked with – there’s no audition I’ve ever gone to where I haven’t run it through with Deb first.
“I’m not sure she’d tell you this,” he adds, “but she was president of the Barbie Fan Club when she was a little girl. If something on your resume ever foretells you’re going to be a director on a set...”
Furness did, in fact, appear in a clutch of Neighbours episodes in June 1985, when the show had only been on the air for a matter of weeks. But this time around, the opportunity to get behind the camera instead was more enticing.
That’s because, she says, “I got to do double duty. I love directing, but I also get to shine a light on an issue. When we started Adopt Change, there was literally an anti-adoption culture in Australia. People would lower their voice when they said they were adopted; there were all of these children carrying such shame. And when [Hugh and I] looked into adoption in Australia, I was absolutely appalled at how it was handled. So that’s when I started speaking out.
“I suppose that because we were famous and our children were adopted, people would come up and say, ‘We’d love to adopt, but it’s so hard.’ And one day, I just said it aloud in an interview: ‘Why is it so hard?’ I didn’t set out to do this, but I kept being propelled to keep going. I could see that so much was wrong.”
She says there has been progress since founding Adopt Change in 2008. “People still say inappropriate things, but I think the education on the issue is now out there.”
And so are creative endeavours like these N eighbours episodes. She explains, “I can go on talk shows and talk about the injustices and the 45,000 children who are still in foster care in Australia, and how three-quarters will never be returned to their families. But telling that story through characters who are known and beloved makes it personal, helps people understand.” Plus, she adds simply, “I wanted the challenge.”
She certainly got one. Aside from adjusting to the breakneck speed of filming a soap, Furness reveals that as production on the third and final of her episodes got underway, global chaos and urgent travel directives pertaining to the escalating COVID-19 crisis upended her plans – not just to finish the task at hand on the Melbourne set of Neighbours, but also to spend some subsequent downtime here with Jackman and their children.
“We cancelled a lot,” she reveals. “My kids were about to have [US] spring break, so my husband waited for them to finish school and brought them to Australia.”
Oscar, she says, “is into land conservation, and after the bushfires, he wanted to do something. We had a whole journey planned – we were going to go up to New South Wales to do some reforestation and go to Sydney to see Hugh’s family.”
With one day left on her filming schedule, Furness says, “We got called. Production was shutting down. Then we had our immigration lawyer for Hugh’s visa saying, ‘Get on a plane now.’ So I literally had 12 hours. Hugh and the kids had only been on the ground in Melbourne for four days [waiting for me to wrap] when we had to fly straight back. Straight back into the epicentre.”
Furness has a special affinity for her adopted hometown of New York, and happily reminisces about when she came through on a press tour for Shame, the 1988 Australian film in which she played a motorcycle-riding lawyer in a small country town.
“It was about the injustice of rape,” she says. “It was ahead of its time in its portrayal of strong females. I came back to do press – and nobody told me – and I’m driving through Times Square and there I am in leathers on a billboard, three [storeys] tall. That was a kick.”
Like everybody else, Furness and Jackman have had to figure out how to slow down, recalibrate and take up a few new hobbies as they wait out lockdown in the city, which has been hit hard.
“It’s been a surreal experience,” she admits. “We feel very safe here – we wear masks and gloves, we stay home. But every time there is a drama, New York bands together.”
She says that on the night before speaking to Stellar, she recorded a podcast with Network 10 news presenter Sandra Sully. “She said she has no sympathy for me because I’m in quarantine with Hugh,” Furness says with a big laugh. “But he’d been so flat out that it’s wonderful to get more family time. We’re vacuuming, we’re ironing, we’re cleaning.
“My daughter is doing online school and every five seconds she wants a snack or a burger. Hugh’s become a baker. I wake up to the smell of fresh baked bread every morning. And I’m on a carb-free diet, so it’s really annoying.
“The days go very fast – and Hugh and I have played about 400 games of backgammon this month. We’ve really excelled. I’m a better player... let’s just say he’s luckier.”
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She and Jackman met on the set of the Australian TV series Correlli in 1995, and married a year later. At the start of 1998, Jackman recalls, Furness was set to embark on a directing course at the Victorian College of Arts when he was cast as the lead in a West End production of Oklahoma!.
“I said, ‘Oh, Deb, you’ve got to do the course – this has always been your dream,’” he says. “And she said, ‘Nup, you do Oklahoma!. I have a feeling about this.’ She gave that up to go to London with me, and from Oklahoma!... I got X-Men.”
In the years since, the sheer magnitude of Jackman’s stardom has at times overshadowed Furness’s accomplishments, shunted her into the role of professional plus-one, or simply left her pegged as “Mrs Hugh Jackman” – despite the fact she has a robust and varied multi-decade career of her own.
Asked how she navigates it, Furness replies, “Sometimes it’s tricky. People put you in a box and have an idea of who you are. It’s annoying; I don’t like that. The thing about fame that’s challenging is that before, you could meet someone and the joy of getting to know [them] didn’t come with preconceptions that you’re a celebrity or you’re rich.
“I want to be judged for my acting, for my directing. I just want to be seen for who I am. I don’t want to be judged as ‘Mrs Jackman’.”
Next April, the couple will celebrate a quarter-century since they exchanged vows at a church in Toorak, Melbourne.
And when Stellar reminds her, Furness beams. “Yes, we are!” She says they haven’t begun to broach the topic of where or how they will mark the occasion. “Every time we start planning a big anniversary, something happens,” she says. “And next year my husband will most likely be dancing on a Broadway stage.”
Jackman – or Mr Furness, for our purposes – is set to headline a revival of The Music Man, although right now it remains anybody’s guess when New York’s live theatre scene will fully be up and running again.
In any case, Furness says, “It looks like we’ll have to wait for the 30th anniversary. But at some stage, we’ll have a big party. And until then, we celebrate daily.”
Neighbours airs weeknights at 6.30pm on 10 Peach; episodes directed by Deborra-lee Furness will broadcast on June 10, 11 and 17.