Deborah Mailman, Rachel Griffiths bring Australia’s revolving door politics to TV
Rachel Griffiths is a “political junkie” obsessed with Julia Gillard, while Deborah Mailman was raring to play an indigenous woman in the snake pit of politics. Put them together and you’ve got the eagerly-awaited drama Total Control.
Entertainment
Don't miss out on the headlines from Entertainment. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Australian acting greats Deborah Mailman and Rachel Griffiths took very different routes to play political rivals in the eagerly anticipated new ABC drama Total Control.
Griffiths, an Oscar-nominated actor currently riding high as the director of the Michelle Payne biopic Ride Like a Girl, is a self-confessed political junkie and keen student of constitutions, referendums, the two-party system and all the minutiae of our parliamentary democracy, which she proudly contends is the best in the world.
“It’s the most nerdish part of me,” Griffiths admits with a laugh.
So to play fictional Coalition prime minister Rachel Anderson in the six-part drama she helped create and was executive producer on, Griffiths reached out to current and former politicians of all stripes and their staff to make sure they got the details absolutely right.
“My pitch to them was that this is not a cynical show and it’s a show that really explores the price of service,” Griffiths says of the riveting story of an Aboriginal woman who is parachuted into a Senate seat to bolster numbers of a minority government and falls foul of the intrigues and machinations of the party machine.
“I promised them I wouldn’t quote them. There were some people who got engaged because they said ‘you have to get this right’ and I said ‘yes we do — and we will try our best’. People were extraordinarily helpful and I don’t know if a lot of those conversations were very personal to me and perhaps I had a credibility they felt they could trust.”
In an early episode, Griffiths’ Prime Minister is explaining the rules of life in what Scott Morrison might call the Canberra bubble to Mailman’s rookie Senator, Alex Irving, including advice on the pecking order, what to wear and who she can and can’t sleep with.
“I call it ‘the f--- speech’ and I think it’s brilliant because it’s word for word out of a very high profile girl’s mouth,” says Griffith, who clams up on whether it was delivered to her by a current serving politician.
“Let’s just say she is a significant and powerful woman and it was extraordinary — I was just like ‘OK, that’s going in the script unabridged’.”
Mailman, on the other hand, took the opposite path, reasoning that if her character had to find her own way as a green, celebrity candidate in the snake pit of politics, then as an actor she didn’t want to learn too much from real political figures.
“That was really deliberate on my part because she is a novice in the profession and I wanted to really just stick with that as close as I possibly could without filling it with prior knowledge of what politics and that world is,” says the five-time Logie winner.
“I really wanted to stay close to Alex’s journey.”
Both actors, however, agreed that they have new-found admiration for the long hours, isolation and dedication of politicians after making Total Control, which was shot in Old Parliament House, Sydney and the Outback Queensland town of Winton.
“That’s something that me and Rachel Griffiths and (director) Rachel Perkins spoke about — the cost of service,” says Mailman, before emphatically ruling out any change of career.
“It’s very easy for us to sling mud — but I know that I could not do that. I am not capable of being in that position of responsibility and I really do have a lot of respect for politicians who do step up and take the oath of parliament.”
Griffiths also points out the toll that constant travel and the demands of government have on politicians and their families, particularly those from remote regions.
“It’s a very unfamily-friendly business,” she observes, “but it we don’t have people with families representing us then they really can’t understand many of us and the lives we live and the pressures we are under.”
Griffiths, 50, says she has had the idea for Total Control kicking around in her head since her mid-20s, inspired by a woman she knew who was involved in a land rights claim, but could never get it made.
But after decade in the US, the star of US TV hits Six Feet Under and Brothers and Sisters returned to her native Melbourne in 2012 wanting to tell Australian stories as an actor, director and producer.
READ MORE:
WHY OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN LOVES WEED
ELTON JOHN STILL WON’T SPEAK TO MOLLY FOR MADONNA GAFFE
At one point she was attached to a miniseries based on Julia Gillard, intrigued by the world of politics she held so dear as well as the admiration she had for this country’s first female Prime Minister.
While that project that never got off the ground (and she says she looked more to former UK prime minister Theresa May for her character in Total Control), Griffiths says the issues that most interested her were better explored in a fictional situation than a biopic.
“There was a lot more that we could explore of what piqued my interest with the Julia Gillard project,” Griffiths says.
“We do deal with the leadership spills and the knifings. I was and am and probably always will be a huge fan of Julia but that leadership spill was extraordinarily damaging for a decade of politics.”
Part of the reason Griffiths could never get her passion project made was its working title — Black Bitch — which was only changed last month.
Producer Darren Dale, of Blackfella Films, the team behind acclaimed indigenous dramas Redfern Now and Mabo, admits the title was intended to be provocative.
“We set out to have a title that would have a really high bar for us in terms of the drama we wanted to make, something that didn’t fall into kitchen sink or the worthy drama,” he says.
Mailman too was a fan of the original title, pointing out that it perfectly captured her character’s journey and was true to the experience of many indigenous women in positions of authority, including former Senator Nova Peris, who endured all manner of racist and sexist trolling during her political career.
“I loved it,” Mailman says.
“And I can understand why it was going to be very much a controversial title — but then reading the script it was intrinsic to the narrative.”
In the end, however, it was decided that the words Black Bitch writ large on a billboard next to a picture of Mailman would be “completely unacceptable” (in the words of Griffiths), and a name change would ensure that the title didn’t detract from the story and the drama would find the widest audience possible locally and globally.
Griffiths hopes the powerful story and themes of race, gender and the outsider in politics will appeal to audiences of all ages, social situations and political persuasions and believes the towering performance from Mailman — incredibly in her first television lead role — will help it do just that.
“It’s much more designed to be a walk-in-her-shoes story,” she says.
“That’s what is so extraordinary about Deb — you just walk in her shoes. You could be a white, 80-year-old male who thinks that Australia Day should stay exactly how it is but you will walk in that actress’s shoes because she is an extraordinary human and has an openness that says come on this journey.”
Total Control, Sunday, 8.30pm, ABC and iview