How a cabaret show has put Christie Whelan Browne back in control of her life, years after a high-profile sexual assault case
In 2018, Christie Whelan Browne went public with sexual assault allegations against actor Craig McLachlan, flipping her life upside down. Now, she’s reclaiming her story — on the stage.
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After Christie Whelan Browne went public in 2018 with allegations of sexual assault against fellow actor Craig McLachlan, she felt like every aspect of her life was examined by others.
So a new one-woman Cabaret show that examines every aspect of Whelan Browne’s life – from self-loathing to IVF and chronic illness – feels like she is reclaiming her story.
“I’m pretty open. I think it can help people, and I think that helps me as well, because I don’t feel as alone,” she says.
“It feels kind of empowering, and it feels good to share things that are hard.”
A hallmark of Whelan Browne’s two-decade-long showbiz career is her ability to disarm audiences with humour while delving into deep subject matter.
Take her other one-woman show, Britney Spears: The Cabaret, which began 15 years ago.
“At the end of the show I would be crying, as Britney, and the audience would still be laughing,” she says.
“We did the show last year, in 2024, and no one’s laughing any more.
“I think it resonates differently now, but it still resonates.”
Whelan Browne’s career began on stage in Grease, and has included popular TV shows such as Neighbours and Dancing with the Stars.
Ahead of her hometown performance of Life in Plastic, Whelan Browne sat down with the Saturday Herald Sun to discuss life’s major moments, on and off the stage.
‘Never thought it could be a job’
As the youngest child of a sports-mad family, Whelan Brown jokes that she had to “beg” to attend dance class.
“My dad used to have to help with the beading of the costumes because they were fully sequined numbers,” she says.
“I remember one day he just started gluing them on, because he’d run out of puff for the sewing, but of course when you then put it on, they just pop off.”
The Whelans lived in Eltham, in Melbourne’s suburban northeast, in a three-storey house with a pool.
Basketball was the main game; all three Whelan siblings played for the Bulleen Boomers and Whelan Browne was state champion at the age of 13.
A performative streak was always there, and Whelan Browne’s voice turned heads at school recitals before she hit bigger stages.
At St Helena Secondary College, Whelan Browne loved performing but “never thought that it could be a job”.
But after following friends into amateur theatre she landed roles in Guys and Dolls, and Chicago, which got the attention of an agent.
During her professional career she has performed in smash hits such as Grease, Xanadu, Shane Warne the Musical, and The Drowsy Chaperone.
But it was the role of April in Company that “changed my career”, she says.
“People noticed me as a comedic performer.”
From pen pals to wedding bells
One person noticing her performances was fellow stage actor Rohan Browne.
In the mid-2000s, Browne took to social networking site MySpace to ask after Whelan.
“He wrote on my friend’s wall which was a very public declaration at the time,” she laughs.
Eventually Whelan contacted Browne after noticing they had the same birthday, but he was performing Cats in China at the time so the pair remained “pen pals” for three months before going on a date.
They later played roles alongside one another on stage, and married in 2012.
On their honeymoon she thought she had fallen pregnant, but the road to motherhood proved much more difficult than Whelan Browne imagined.
In her mid-20s the actor had been diagnosed with endometriosis – a painful disease where body tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows in other parts of the body – and had surgery.
When pregnancy elude her in her 30s, she went back to the doctor.
“They opened me up and it was just everywhere and causing havoc,” she said.
This sparked a lengthy fertility battle, accompanied by personal introspection.
“There’s a lot of shame in your body not doing what a woman’s body is supposed to do – or a man’s,” she says.
“I talk about it quite a bit in the show because I think so many people are going through it.
“They need hope, because it’s really hard.”
A special egg and motherhood
As she describes her fertility battles, Whelan Browne jokes about having a “shit body”.
“My husband’s been blessed with one of those amazing immune systems and I’m this sickly person,” she says.
“I say when we’re in the nursing home he will be teaching the stretch and flexibility class to the old ladies like his grandma did and I’ll be just sitting in my wheelchair.”
As well as dealing with the pain of endometriosis, Whelan Browne wasn’t producing viable eggs.
After years of unsuccessful treatment, the couple found an egg donor.
Whelan Browne kept a journal of that time, after deciding to keep the donor process a secret, and reads it aloud in her new show.
“It was too shameful that I couldn’t produce my own egg,” she says.
With the “special egg” secured, they went to self-styled fertility queen Lynne Burmeister who asked for one chance to produce a viable embryo – providing a “money back guarantee”.
“She got me the one egg that made the one embryo that made my son.”
Even after learning she was pregnant, anxiety remained.
“Everyone says ‘stay positive, stay positive’. The pressure on you is so high already, if you also can’t have a negative thought? It’s really unfair.
“I always say to women that (negative thoughts) can’t make or break it.”
While the donor egg was never required, Whelan Browne said the freedom of having that choice “took a bit of pressure off”.
She describes her son meeting the almost-donor at a Christmas party, unaware of their special connection.
“He just threw his arms around her and held her and then looked to me and pulled me in and was holding us both,” she said.
“Can you imagine if he was made from her egg? I’d be on the floor crying, saying ‘he knows that’s his real mum, he doesn’t love me’.
“Maybe he just knows she was the angel that came into our lives.”
Power of the sisterhood
While Whelan Browne was trying to stay positive during IVF treatments, she was experiencing a separate gruelling mental health battle.
In 2018, Whelan Browne had gone public – alongside two other women – with accusations that her Rocky Horror Show co-star, Craig McLachlan, had sexually abused her.
McLachlan was charged by police but denied accusations and was acquitted of four counts of indecent assault, after which he sued Whelan Browne – before abruptly dropping the defamation lawsuits.
Last year, Whelan Browne settled her own lawsuit against the Rocky Horror Show production company, declaring herself finally free.
The actor said the experience was “horrendous” but she “would never take it back”.
“I think it shaped me,” she said.
“I was really scared going through it all that I would never get over it, and I was actually going through it all while I was doing IVF and I thought, ‘if I don’t get pregnant I’ll always feel it’s because of that and that I should never have done it because it stopped me from falling pregnant’, which it didn’t in the end.
“I’m trying to not let it define the future.”
Whelan Browne said the saga taught her a lot about supporting other women “in ways that I didn’t understand prior”.
“The sisterhood is very, very important to me now; I don’t know if I always understood just how amazing it is.”
A bogan at heart
Whelan Browne is most often stopped in the street for her roles on two TV shows – Shaun Micallef’s sketch show Mad as Hell, and Neighbours.
“Neighbours especially; it must be those crazy eyes, and playing this crazy stalker girl (Scarlett Brady),” she laughs.
“Neighbours was a gift because it’s an institution.”
Another iconic performance for Whelan Browne was singing the national anthem at the 2012 Melbourne Cup in front of now-King Charles and Queen Camilla, when her “heart was beating out of my chest”.
“When I’m up there, I’m just pretending I’m not nervous. Really, I’m just waiting to get home, and have McDonalds on the car ride home,” she says.
“I’m a bogan at heart.”
Despite her sharp wit, Whelan Browne describes her brain as like a “potato” at the moment due to perimenopause – her latest bodily affliction.
“It’s probably the most debilitating thing I’ve ever gone through,” she says.
So how does Whelan Browne get through rehearsals and shows when her “shit body” just wants to sit down?
“It will show up if absolutely necessary.”
Body image issues feature prominently in Life in Plastic, during which Whelan Browne uses a Barbie doll to discuss memories such as when a former boyfriend told her she was “$10,000 away from being perfect”.
“In the show Barbie says ‘no one wants to hear you talk about this, if you squint you look like Delta Goodrem’,” she says.
“She makes it funny that I’m having these feelings about myself but like all normal women, I hate myself, because we’ve been told we should.
“Later we sing Madonna’s ‘what it feels like for a girl’ and it’s empowering.
“What I wanted the show to feel like was how people felt when they left the Barbie movie.
How did Whelan Browne feel when she left that film, starring fellow Aussie actor Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling?
“I just felt so seen and understood, and I cried, and I felt how amazing the sisterhood is.”
Life in Plastic is showing at the Round Theatre on February 28.
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