The role that has Natalie Bassingthwaighte talking about what a lot of women are thinking

Let’s jump back 18 years. I’m sitting in my parents’ house, watching a particularly intense episode of Doctor Who. All hope seems lost, the world is about to be overrun, and then as the villain yells “Here. Come. The. Drums”, suddenly a song starts playing: Voodoo Child, by the Rogue Traders.

In the years since, the scene has become iconic, and with time it’s easy to forget how significant and unusual it was for this behemoth of a show to centre a song by an Australian band, to the degree that the episode (The Sound of Drums) shares a name with a line from the lyrics.

Natalie Bassingthwaighte at Two Birds One Stone Cafe. Credit: Wayne Taylor

“We didn’t know anything about it,” says Natalie Bassingthwaighte. The actor, performer and lead singer of Rogue Traders is sitting opposite me at a South Yarra cafe. “Someone just said, have you seen this thing?” They hadn’t. “It was the coolest thing ever,” she says. Though, she adds “we didn’t make any money.” Excuse me? Yeah, she explains: “There’s a thing with the BBC that they can use certain music.” But that doesn’t diminish the joy of having their song featured – “it was still a real highlight”.

Another thing that time has sanded down is the surprise that when Voodoo Child first became a hit, all of us hearing it didn’t realise that the lead singer was, at the time, perhaps best known as Izzy From Neighbours, a fact that was deliberately kept secret. “We wanted people to like the song – or not like the song – based on the song, not because there’s someone in Neighbours in it.”

Bassingthwaighte’s schedule is a beautiful mess of moving parts – her career has moved from musical theatre, to reality television, to a soap opera, to stage acting. Every step of the way she is guided by her passions. “I am a creative person, so staying in one place for too long feels stagnant to me,” she says.

It’s why after a few years on Neighbours she decided to say farewell to the controversial Izzy and turn to music. It’s also why after a few years she left Rogue Traders to pursue a solo career – and then later return in full force.

Smashed avocado with feta and egg at Two Birds One Stone.Credit: Wayne Taylor

For years, she balanced acting and music, sometimes prioritising one over the other but never fully letting either go. Her latest project, however, the one-woman show Shirley Valentine, is shaping up to be her most difficult yet.

When we meet, the rehearsal phase hasn’t started, but Bassingthwaighte is already immersing herself in the role.“It’s the biggest challenge I think I’ve ever had.” Her plan is to have mastered the accent and memorised the script – 40 pages of solo dialogue – before getting into the rehearsal room. Segmenting the process like this is an additional challenge for Bassingthwaighte. “As someone who’s a control freak, you want to be at performance now.”

This column is called Lunch With, but we meet mid-morning at Two Birds One Stone, a cafe near where Bassingthwaighte is staying, to make the most of her packed schedule. It’s not even 11am, but she’s already completed several interviews and will be performing later that night.

As it’s more of a “Brunch With”, both of us are slightly thrown on what to order. Bassingthwaighte decides on smashed avo and adds feta and an egg. I get the deceptively named “tofu salad”, which is both delicious and a mistake because the bulk of it is noodles that add a layer of challenge and inelegance – trying to ask questions while attempting to discreetly wind what seems to be a never-ending strand of soba onto a fork doesn’t work.

The tofu salad.Credit: Wayne Taylor

It becomes clear across our conversation that when she finds a project she is passionate about, the performer locks in completely.

Bassingthwaighte describes herself as the kind of child who wanted to try everything and rarely stuck with anything. “I did all the things – I tried Brownies, and physical culture and gymnastics and hockey,” she says. “My mum would buy the outfit and then I’d be like, ‘No, I don’t want to do it’.” She pauses. “And now I have a daughter that’s the same,” she adds with a laugh.

She did always enjoy singing and dancing, putting on shows for friends and family for 20¢ a ticket. “I was entrepreneurial way back then,” she says with a smile. But it wasn’t until she saw Young Talent Time that things clicked. “I was like, imagine if you could do that? How do you do that? But I grew up in Wollongong, so it felt so far away,” she says. “It didn’t feel like it was attainable.”

However, she didn’t let that stop her. “I asked my mum if I could do singing and dancing like Young Talent Time – I think I said it in those words.” Bassingthwaighte’s mother assumed it would be like her other interests – fleeting – but then caught her daughter leafing through the Yellow Pages trying to figure out how to make it happen for herself. From there, things started to stick. Mostly.

After high school she went to a performing arts college and started heading to auditions but not getting any roles. “I probably wasn’t very good because there was no passion in there. There was no heart and soul, I wasn’t invested, I didn’t want it. I probably just wanted a job.”

Then a friend handed her the script for RENT. “I just knew that I had to do this show – a bit like Shirley.” She was cast in the ensemble and as an understudy. From there she moved on to Chicago, then Footloose, then Grease – and then Neighbours.

As her profile has grown, Bassingthwaighte has been candid about her struggles with mental health and has used her platform to spotlight mental health causes. A few months before we meet, she had shared a photograph on Facebook of her younger self accompanied by a long post tackling hateful comments – and their potential impact – head on.

Bassingthwaighte performing with the Rogue Traders in 2006.

“Someone had said something negative about me and my partner … and I literally got to breaking point,” she says. At the time she was away on holiday – her first in as long as she could remember. “We were having a beautiful time and I read one thing and it hurt so much.”

She pauses. “I can’t even remember what it was now, but it was just like, enough already, you know?” Both in her post and in our conversation she underscores the fact that you never know what is going on in someone’s private life – or if that one comment is going to be the tipping point to them slipping into a darker place or even taking their own life.

“I was pretty fragile that day, and it affected me for probably 48 hours, where I shut down.”

While she has developed ways to cope with the commentary that apparently comes hand in hand with using social media – amplified by being a public figure – even after years of these kinds of comments the impact of them still clearly hurts. She describes the hate she received while a judge and mentor on X-Factor – it was so bad she nearly didn’t return for another season. “People would say the most awful things ... and I just believed all of it,” she recalls.

The lunch bill.Credit:

“I’m nearly 50, and this is still bugging me. Imagine my daughter, my son, like, this is not OK. Stop already.”

Despite her hectic schedule, Bassingthwaighte makes the conversation feel as though she has all the time in the world. She talks about her family, plays she’s seen (“Heather Mitchell in RBG!” she exclaims. “Phenomenal!”), and her mix of excitement and apprehension about her upcoming performance.

Shirley Valentine is a play about a 40-something housewife who is unappreciated by her husband and her children and now, reaching middle age, has found she has lost sight of who she is. So, presented with the unexpected opportunity to go on a free trip to Greece, she packs her bags, leaves a note, and sets off.

Premiering in 1986, the play sparked a much-loved film adaptation in 1989 and now, almost 40 years later, Shirley’s story still feels fresh. “I was floored by how relevant it is now.”

It was a role she felt she absolutely needed to play at this moment in her life. “It’s about a woman in her 40s going, who am I? Where did I go? What’s my life been about? What’s the next part of my life going to look like? And I think that is what a lot of women in their 40s are thinking – where did I go? What purpose have I served? What adventures have I had – or have I not had?

“I definitely resonate with a lot of Shirley’s story, but there’s some [aspects] that I don’t. She’s stuck in a rut. I’m definitely not stuck in a rut. I do too many things,” she says with a laugh.

“We all feel like we’re lost sometimes. Men and women feel like they’re lost in their lives and don’t know what life is for any more. I think life’s too short. People just stay in that rut, stay in that routine, and never want to get out of it because it’s safe to not follow their true passions or their true self.”

Shirley Valentine is on at the Athenaeum Theatre from January 30 to February 16.

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