Brooke Satchwell: ‘Let’s talk about domestic violence’
ACTOR Brooke Satchwell is all too aware of fame’s dark side, especially in the face of domestic violence, but the 37-year-old is now feeling stronger than ever.
Stellar
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TALKING about her latest television role is taking Brooke Satchwell away from one of her favourite activities. Not that she’s brusque — far from it, in fact, as the 37-year-old actor seems happy to chat to Stellar about just about anything.
From the workload on Neighbours, which she joined when she was 15, to her abiding wish for a lawn big enough to sate her joy of ride-on mowers, Satchwell has plenty of anecdotes to share.
Still, what she’d much prefer to be doing is gardening at her home in the inner suburbs of Sydney. “It’s been a busy couple of days,” Satchwell tells Stellar, referencing the run of projects and press that are ramping up, including her new Foxtel drama series Mr Inbetween. “My head’s sort of spinning, and I’m like: ‘Be here now.’ It’s spring, we’ve got the launch of Mr Inbetween, and everyone comes out of hibernation and things start to pick up pace. Spring’s always been kind to me in that respect. And I’m a gardener and we’ve started to get the blooms early, and it got me a bit excited.”
Gardening doesn’t just offer Satchwell a sign that the seasons are changing — it’s an effective means of finding solutions when life throws up challenges.
“Whenever I’ve got to learn lines, life riddles to solve or contracts to nut out, I go garden. It takes me eight hours to do the front and back and make it look immaculate.
I can guarantee that if I go into the garden with a question, by the time I come out eight hours later covered in dirt, and the garden’s pristine, I have an answer to my question, without fail. I’m stinging to get back into the garden.”
For the moment, at least, Satchwell has found clarity around her career. Her part in Mr Inbetween — the first Australian TV show commissioned by US network FX — is the latest she has taken as part of a strategic plan to broaden her opportunities, in the hope she can eventually begin writing and producing.
Playing Ally, a paramedic who starts a romance with protagonist Ray Shoesmith (a hitman played by Scott Ryan, who also wrote the series), gave her the opportunity to explore new dramatic terrain.
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The show is directed by Nash Edgerton and based on the darkly funny 2005 independent film The Magician, which was also written by and starred Ryan.
It is a six-part project, a span Satchwell says she relished, given her previous and far more exhaustive stints on Neighbours, Water Rats, White Collar Blue, Packed To The Rafters and Wonderland.
“Commercial network telly, by nature of funding and time frames, is a fast-paced beast,” Satchwell says.
“Basically it comes down to: ‘Who am I sleeping with this week and what lines do I have to say?’ I really love it when I have the opportunity to go into other layers, where it’s not all on the page, and deliver in a way that is less tangible.”
Satchwell’s experience fulfilling the requirements of commercial television is something she talks about frankly; she admits juggling the complexity of secondary studies with her work on Neighbours was intense.
“I was doing five hours a day round trip in a taxi to get between school, home and work, and working 80-hour weeks, and getting tutored on the weekends. That’s an excessive workload for anyone.”
But the demands that came with her early career also put her in good stead when she went to Los Angeles in August, with Edgerton and the rest of the cast, to launch the show stateside.
“I was able to navigate it fairly easily,” Satchwell recalls. “People were looking at me going, ‘What are these secret Jedi skills you have?’ I was trained from a young age.”
Honesty is maybe Satchwell’s most defining trait — and she is just as frank when asked to discuss the sensitive issue of domestic violence.
In 2007, her former boyfriend Matthew Newton pleaded guilty to a charge of assault against her, but the conviction was quashed on appeal; in 2011, he would face charges of breaching an apprehended violence order taken out by his ex-partner Rachael Taylor.
The charges were dropped after Newton agreed to comply with a mental-health treatment plan. More recently, Newton stepped down from directing the Jessica Chastain film Eve after a furore erupted over his alleged history of violence against women.
Given the nature of those headlines and the wider discussions around a host of topics affecting women, it is only natural to want Satchwell’s take. For starters, she points out, the nature of the chatter has changed significantly in the decade since her case.
“I think in the early stages it was all about outrage, and everyone being horrified, but the conversation didn’t necessarily progress into what it meant, or what could help shift and change people’s understanding and how people can become so entrapped in situations,” she says, adding that now “there are people like Rosie Batty speaking very publicly.
I chose not to do that at an early stage, because I found that people were getting radically distracted by the whos, rather than the whats — and the people specifically involved in my situation.
It wasn’t the point, really. [It should have been] a discussion about the behaviour. So I didn’t think it was helpful.”
Satchwell remains open to answering questions on the subject. It’s just that doing so can feel awkward, depending on the context.
“I’m promoting a television show and I know I’m going to be asked. I’m only interested in being honest, which is why I respond, but it is tricky to be trying to shoehorn a conversation like this into a conversation about a television show.
But there’s definitely a conversation to be had, and I wholeheartedly support that and in the right capacity, am more than willing to be involved.”
Mr Inbetween premieres 8.30pm, Monday October 1, on Foxtel’s Showcase.
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