Top of the Lake cast are Top of their Game

Sometimes in the world of movies and television the stars do align – literally and metaphorically – to create something special. Such is the case with Top of the Lake: China Girl.

Top of the Lake was filmed around Queenstown, New Zealand.Escape20 February 2022Savvy - Queenstown New Zealand

Sometimes in the world of movies and television the stars do align – literally and metaphorically – to create something special. Such is the case with Top of the Lake: China Girl where some of the world’s most talented actors are guided by one of the world’s most gifted directors.

Consider the silverware shared between the cast and crew of Top of the Lake: China Girl - Academy Awards (Nicole Kidman and Jane Campion), Golden Globes (Elisabeth Moss and Kidman), a BAFTA (Kidman), AACTAs (Kidman and Campion), Critic’s Choice Television Award (Moss), Screen Actors Guild Award (Moss) and a Palme d’Or from Cannes (Campion was the first woman to win the coveted award) - to name just a few.

Yet despite the silverware and star pedigree, in the end a TV series still has to come down to an intriguing story brilliantly realised. This is something that Campion, and her long-time collaborator and co-screenwriter Gerard Lee, have achieved, combining the criminal and personal to devastating effect.

“Top of the Lake is a crime mystery,” says Campion, “And the wonderful thing about crime mysteries is that you’re dealing with characters who are not perfect themselves. They’re entering the mystery, the unknown, and they’re trying with everything they’ve got to find out what happened. And they always come across or come up against their own limitations - the things that they haven’t really worked out about themselves.”

Good actors thrive on exploring complex characters, and China Girl's characters give them plenty to work with. This, together with Campion’s singular vision, drew each of these in-demand actors in to Campion’s orbit and the fascinating world of Top of the Lake: China Girl.Elisabeth Moss: “I was so pleased when I saw the first two episodes because I felt like it had the same Jane Campion-esque element that you want - that really strange sense of humour, that creepy feeling against the beautiful images - but then, it’s much more interior. Jane kind of set the tone at the very beginning with this little manifesto that she wrote for the cast and crew about what Season 2 was. She said that the first season was about the wilderness outside, and the second season is about the wilderness within. For me, that describes it so well, because it feels like a film noir.”Gwendoline Christie: “When I was at drama school I used to go home and watch The Piano regularly, and I’d fall asleep to it. So it really was a part of my world, and it helped me to see the world in a different way and I realised I was not just looking at a story through the eyes of a great artist but I was looking at the story through the eyes of a female director. I watched Top of the Lake and I fell in love with it. I thought it was the most brilliant series. I thought that Elisabeth Moss was brilliant, ravishingly brilliant. The relationships between the characters were so complex and so real, and I really wanted to be a part of it. And so I contacted Jane and a miracle happened. She sent me back a very nice message. And then about six months later I got a phone call from her saying that after she read my letter she started dreaming about me and she’d written a part for me in her new series. So it’s really extraordinary.”

Nicole Kidman: After Kidman saw Top of the Lake she “saw what they were able to accomplish and that was how we were able to go, ‘Oh, maybe we can do Big Little Lies’. We were inspired by Top of the Lake”. Says Campion of Kidman, “Nicole just really wanted to be in the show she asked if there was a part for her and we realised she would really kill as Julia – in fact, once I started imagining her as Julia then it became really fun for me to write and we expanded it, which was a good call because it really brought the themes together.”

Alice Englert: “I think it would be hard to say that anything other than my mother (Campion) drew me to this series. I actually am just a huge fan of Top of the Lake and the truth is that for series one Jane did attempt to write me in there but I got another role which was a lot bigger. But thank God because when they realised that they wanted to make a second series, Jane was determined and I was also determined that this time I would be in it. It wasn't really till the scripts were in a more final stage that I did read them and I really agree with something that Jane said, which is that she finds Top of the Lake to be like a novel and wrote it to be in that way.

David Dencik: “Working with Jane Campion was a major attraction. I had not seen Top of the Lake when I was contacted, so I saw it all in one. And then I read the first four episodes of Top of the Lake: China Girl they sent to me, and I was just mesmerised by the writing. It was so not your average, TV series. The dialogue is irrational and strange and it was really quirky in a very good sense and it appealed greatly to my taste, and to what I enjoy in acting.

Ewen Leslie: “I loved Top of the Lake and I love Jane Campion. I’m a really big fan, I love her films. I was really just happy that I got an audition, to be honest. I thought, ‘Well at the very least I’ve got Jane’s attention for 15 minutes or however long I can stretch this audition out.’ So I went in and did the audition and it was great to meet her. It went well and then a month later I got the call saying that I’d got the job … which was a really great day.