It took 13 years, but Claudia Karvan finally said yes to this hit show
Claudia Karvan’s appearance on Who Do You Think You Are? Australia has been a long time coming. One of Australia’s most beloved actors, charming us since the age of 10 in the family movie Molly, riding the early 2000s share-housing vibe with The Secret Life of Us, and most recently co-creating and starring in family saga Bump, was first approached by producers of the series 13 years ago.
“This was when my kids were a lot younger and my biological dad was still alive,” Karvan says. “He had schizoaffective disorder and bipolar. So it just would have inflamed the relationship. So I backed out of it at that point. But now he has left this Earth, it felt like a much more possible thing to do. And I was really curious about his past – his ancestors and my family from my paternal family. I’d never met his mum, my grandmother. So it was great to just have a clean go at it without all that potential conflict.”
Claudia Karvan hesitated for 13 years before agreeing to go on ancestry show Do You Think You Are? Australia.
Raised in Kings Cross by her mother and stepfather, who famously owned a nightclub where she would hang out with drag queens after school, Karvan spent time with her biological dad in the country. What she discovers about his early life while filming the series, which takes her from Britain and Cyprus to the goldfields of NSW and Otago on the South Island of New Zealand, brings her to tears.
“Marc Fennell [who also appears on this 16th season] had the same experience,” says Karvan. “Like, he blubbed. No one likes to blub publicly. It’s really humiliating. But suddenly, you’re blubbing.”
Also featured this season are fellow actors Patrick Brammall, Matt Nable and Marc Coles Smith, as well as comedian Tom Gleeson, fashion designer Camilla Franks and Alone Australia winner Gina Chick.
“It was the gig of a lifetime,” says Karvan. “Looking back, I feel like it lives with me. It’s a part of who I am now. There’s so much knowledge that I gained and so much reassurance.”
Claudia Karvan, here with her long-lost cousin Douglas Sheppard at Creagh Cottages in Queenstown, New Zealand, was stunned by her emotional response to the show.
Karvan’s daughter, Audrey, appears in the episode, presenting research about a long-lost relative. Her mother isn’t convinced she’s old enough to form a genuine interest in the family tree.
“I think she had to perform that a bit,” Karvan says, laughing. “I did ask her and my son, ‘Do you want to have a watching party on the 13th and we’ll watch it together?’ Yeah, I’ll let you know whether she falls asleep or not … In fact, my kids will just be watching TikTok through the whole thing!”
In the series, Karvan connects with a distant cousin in New Zealand, who holds clues to a mysterious character named Moses. She learns of the wartime artistic pursuits of the grandmother she never met, and of links with the women’s suffrage movement.
“I couldn’t have been more surprised with the level of connection,” she says. “A lot of people who’ve done it said the same thing. It takes you by surprise. It’s almost like putting on a VR headset and walking in your ancestors’ shoes.”
She found herself a willing participant in the wider narrative. “I felt unselfconscious and happy to be manipulated because essentially you are being manipulated,” she says. “They know what’s coming. You don’t. There are rug pulls and blindsides. I love being out of control. I love handing the reins over because in my work life, I have to take a more responsible role.”
Karvan used to believe DNA didn’t have much bearing on identity.
“I thought that nurture was 80 per cent and nature was 20 per cent,” she says. “And now I’ve flipped. I think I recognise more in my DNA than I do in my nurturing. It’s made me feel like I’ve got more ballast. And I feel like in tough times ahead – which will come, that’s inevitable with life – I will call on [my ancestors] and lean on them. And I know that I will be able to get through because I’ve seen what they got through.”
Who Do You Think You Are? Australia returns on Tuesday, May 13, at 7.30pm on SBS.
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