Small boobs and a secret lover? Sigrid Thornton tells the whole truth

Should you ever let the truth get in the way of a good story?

For instance, if I told you Sigrid Thornton’s burlesque name is “Grover McIntosh”, would you believe me?

“Oh, this is fun,” says Thornton, laughing, as she works out the old equation: first pet’s name + first street name = burlesque name.

Sigrid Thornton is making her Sydney Theatre Company debut in The Lifespan of a Fact.Credit: Wolter Peeters

In my defence, she started it. Why would I ask one of Australia’s national treasures what her burlesque name is? This is the woman who won hearts as Laura in SeaChange and made paddleboats and petticoats sexy in All the Rivers Run. I’m all for a scoop, but that one was unexpected.

Thornton is in Sydney for her debut with Sydney Theatre Company. She’s starring in The Lifespan of a Fact, a Broadway comedy about the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth (so help anyone who believes everything they read).

In it, she plays Emily Penrose, the editor of a US magazine who is caught between a high-minded writer (played by Gareth Davies) and a fastidious fact-checker (Charles Wu) and what each one believes is the truth.

I had been told she was tiny (true) and that Steven Spielberg once said she had the most beautiful eyes in the world (they are hidden behind shaded lenses today, but they look pretty good), but she’s also a delight. A calming presence to my frazzled self, who is now standing before her, breathless, as I made a late dash to our lunch date at the Theatre Bar at the End of the Wharf.

For someone who has been in the public eye for 50-plus years, a favourite of women’s magazines and tabloids, I figured Thornton had some doozies printed about her over time.

“There were a few beautiful ones,” says the 63-year-old. “I’ve kept a couple of them because they’re so ridiculous. Things like ‘Sigrid’s secret lover’ and ‘Small boobs slur’. Just fabulous, really fantastic. They are collector’s items, for me, to show my great-grandchildren. I don’t think anyone else would want them.”

Does she want to fact-check that now? Did she have a secret lover?

“No!” she says, laughing. “It was the person I ended up marrying.”

Did it ever bother her that her personal life was of such interest?

“I’ve done this work almost my entire life now,” she says. “It’s part of my life. And it’s not something I resent. It’s something that I have bought into from the very beginning, in the sense that I can’t have one without the other. It’s not possible.

“So it’s given me this life, that has given me a great deal of satisfaction and reward. I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to make a living, most of the time, with something I still so enjoy. So whatever price is paid by me for that privilege, is a small price.”

The facts are what journalists strive to report each day. Readers expect the truth, so help the letters page (or nowadays Twitter) if they don’t get it.

But do all facts matter? What if we get a bit florid with the scenery? Misquote someone but get the gist of what they’re saying? What if we are just happy with “truthiness”, a term coined by comedian Stephen Colbert when talking about politics: “We’re not talking about truth, we’re talking about something that seems like truth – the truth we want to exist.”

Thornton plays editor Emily Penrose and Charles Wu is the fact-checker Jim Fingal in The Lifespan of a Fact.Credit: Rene Vaile 

Those questions are at the centre of The Lifespan of a Fact, which is adapted from a book by US writer John D’Agata and fact-checker Jim Fingal that details the convoluted seven-year battle over the publication of D’Agata’s essay What Happens There.

(A fact-checker in the US is similar to a sub-editor in Australia, except they are given more time to thoroughly comb through a story. Whereas here a sub often only has time to double-check the basics such as name spellings, ages and any glaring discrepancies in the story. They will also complain a lot. I know, because I’m married to one.)

The basic facts, as presented in The Lifespan of a Fact, are this: in 2003 D’Agata was commissioned by Harper’s Magazine to write about the suicide of a teenage boy in Las Vegas. The essay is pulled when D’Agata and the editors disagree over his more “literary” approach.

The essay is then picked up by another US magazine, The Believer, who assign Fingal, an intern, the job of fact-checking the essay. The pair clash over everything from the colour of bricks on a pavilion (red or brown) to the number of strip clubs that banned lap-dancing on the strip (“I picked 34 because I liked the rhythm,” says D’Agata).

Sigrid Thornton and William McInnes starred in the 90’s TV series Sea Change, set on the Bellarine Penninsula

In the play, the editor of the magazine, Emily Penrose, stands between D’Agata and Fingal as she balances the desire for a good story, one that will generate publicity and sales, and one that is correct.

Do facts matter?

“Of course,” says Thornton. “We’ve experienced, in recent years, a kind of explosion of myths that have done a great deal of damage to the world and to the planet. And that’s something we need to be vigilant about and continually remind ourselves of.

“This play is very pertinent because it is discussing the elasticity of the truth. However, it’s also very specifically discussing how much flexibility an artist or creative has with generating embellishments that serve the central truth of the story.”

It’s an argument that reminds me of a question my five-year-old daughter asked the other day: what’s the difference between a lie and a fib? And is one better than the other?

Sigrid Thornton and Tom Burlinson in 1982’s The Man From Snowy River.Credit: Archive

“I think there are situations where it’s really important to remember other people’s feelings,” says Thornton. “And sometimes a small fib, if you want to call it that, can be placed there to protect another person’s feelings. I think there’s some legitimacy to that.

“But it is a fraught issue when we’re going to talk about who won an election. That’s a big, black lie. It’s not a fib. So there are inexcusable lies. It is a really interesting time to be discussing this now because we have seen the damage that big fat black lies can do.”

Is Emily right in being flexible with the truth then?

“She’s very intelligent, she’s strong. She’s determined,” says Thornton. “But she also has a very, very deep love of writing, about the power of the story. And I can really identify with that.”

Thornton is relishing “ripping off the layers of the onion” in the rehearsal room. She loves that it is a safe space to fail, which is a hard thing to imagine when it comes to, you know, Sigrid Thornton. On screen she can spin between funny (SeaChange) and ferocious (Wentworth), luminous (The Man From Snowy River) and brittle (Peter Allen: Not the Boy Next Door). Fail? Hard to believe it.

“Of course I fail,” she says. “Everybody fails every day. We have our little successes and our little failures, isn’t that life? Mind you, I think it’s very important to understand that, to know that it’s a valuable progression on the road to understanding, particularly with texts. And the fear of failure is also quite important, as well.”

Is there anything she is scared of?

“All of the mistakes that you potentially will make, there for everybody to see,” she says. “But the thing about that is, when you’re playing with an audience, who wants you to succeed on the stage so you can tell your story to them, that anxiety about making a mistake is really overblown by us actors.

“Because whenever there is a mistake, the audience really embrace that. They like to be reminded it’s a flesh-and-blood experience. It’s not celluloid. It’s not a screen. And thank god, you know? When theatre really works, it’s an exhilaration beyond the exhilaration of film and television. Because it’s happening right in front of your eyes.”

Talking of mistakes, what if I have planted one in this story? A mistake for all the keen-eyed fact-checkers out there. Is Thornton’s burlesque name really “Grover McIntosh” or is it “Samantha Musgrave”?

The truth is out there, dear readers, you’ll just have to find it.

The Lifespan of a Fact is at Roslyn Packer Theatre until October 22.