Kitty Flanagan’s TV admission: ‘Helen Tudor-Fisk is really just me’

There’s nothing about Helen Tudor-Fisk that would make her a TV star. The probate lawyer is allergic to any type of fuss, has no time for nonsense and considers her baggy brown suit necessity more than fashion. Under the radar is where she likes to be.

Yet, in the hands of Kitty Flanagan, Fisk has become a star. Not just at home, where Flanagan won most popular actress at the Logies and best comedy performer at the AACTA awards, but in Europe, too, where the show won Best Series Award in the comedy section of the French Series Mania TV festival.

What’s even more incredible - and forgive me, because this is just the type of hype Fisk would hate - is that for years, Flanagan was told the character wouldn’t work. She was unappealing, unlikeable and too much of a hard case.

“Helen is really just me,” says Flanagan.“Which is why she’s always been a bit of a hard sell.

“Because people would say, ‘Oh, she’s going to be unlikeable. People won’t like that character.’ And I think people often say that about a female character, but they wouldn’t necessarily say it about a male character with those characteristics.”

Kitty Flanagan: “We knew we wanted to make a show that you can watch with your kids in the room.”Credit: Rebecca Bana

Flanagan is talking over Zoom from Wagga Wagga. Season two of Fisk begins next week, but she’s in the middle of a regional stand-up tour. Outside cockatoos are screeching and at one point Flanagan’s iPad tumbles backwards leaving me with a good view of the ceiling.

Flanagan is so lovely - and almost infuriatingly modest - that it’s hard to believe she could ever be a hard sell. Straightforward and practical, yes, but a hard sell? Never.

“Kitty is such a funny person,” says Marty Sheargold, who plays Ray Gruber, the co-owner of suburban Melbourne law firm Gruber & Gruber in which Fisk is set. “You see the one bit of her that goes on TV, I get the joy of seeing the whole person - the whole make-up chair experience or going to wardrobe. We just enjoy each other’s company and we have an honest laugh when we’re together.”

See!

What eventually got Fisk over the line was the best-selling success of Flanagan’s 2019 book, 488 Rules for Life: The Thankless Art of Being Correct.

“It had gone gangbusters,” says Flanagan of the book. “So when people were saying, ‘Well, I think she’ll be unlikeable’, I was able to present a book of 488 things, [and say] ‘This is basically Helen’s head. People seem to really like it. So I don’t think she’s going to be unlikeable. Because a lot of people seem to be agreeing with all these rules’.”

And it’s true, those rules, which range from men not wearing ponytails to banning bananas in salads, could have been written by Fisk. It’s Fisk’s general annoyance and confusion at the world that makes her likeable.

Julia Zemiro, who plays Ray’s sister Roz, reckons Kitty has written two halves of her personality in Fisk.

“I think Roz is one side of her personality and the other half is Helen,” says Zemiro. “There are things about Helen that are annoying, you go, ‘Would she really do that?’ But Roz is to the point, Roz cuts to the chase.”

I’ve always maintained that if I ever write a show, it’s never going to have anyone nude in it. No one’s ever going to have sex.

Kitty Flanagan

Flanagan is not so sure. “Maybe Roz is the character I want to be - because she speaks up, says what she wants and rules the roost.”

A large part of Fisk’s success is due to its casting. Zemiro and Sheargold are magical as Roz and Ray, their relationship providing an unexpectedly sweet side to the show. Flanagan wanted the friction a sibling relationship could bring.

Julia Zemiro and Marty Sheargold as siblings and law firm partners Roz and Ray Gruber.Credit: Rebecca Bana

“There’s always a status within a brother-sister relationship, or a sibling relationship of who’s older, who’s younger,” says Flanagan, who co-writes the show with her sister Penny. “We just love being able to have that rather than some sort of fractious married couple. We didn’t want sexual tension. No nudity.”

Yes, there is no nudity rule. Flanagan wanted Fisk to be a show everyone could watch.

“We knew we wanted to make a show that you can watch with your kids in the room,” says Flanagan. “That’s been one of the most satisfying things, is when people say to me that their kids like it. And that sounds like a very daggy ambition - ‘We wanted to write a family show’ - but we don’t think of it as a family show. It’s just a show that, yeah, there’s stuff in it.

“I just remember being a kid and watching M*A*S*H and I don’t think I necessarily knew it was funny, but I would just laugh when my parents laughed or when the laugh track came on.

“There’s elements like that in Fisk that kids latch onto. One of my friends’ kids still walks around the house doing this [she holds up one finger], ‘Hold for Alice Pike’. Little things like that, that you get onto when you’re younger. So we really liked that young people were able to watch it.”

And the no-sex thing?

“I’ve always maintained that if I ever write a show, it’s never going to have anyone nude in it. No one’s ever going to have sex, I’m just not comfortable with it,” she says, laughing. “If I’m on the couch with my mum and a sex scene comes on, it could not get more awkward in the room fast enough. I don’t want to do that to people.

“I think a sex scene should be this: people hold hands and walk into the bedroom, then shut the door and we can all imagine what goes on and then they walk out fully clothed. That’s my sex scene.”

Which, presumably, means there’ll never be any relationship between Helen and Ray?

[Sheargold is] the only person who managed to make Ray charming rather than creepy.

Kitty Flanagan

“Surely to god it’s only a matter of time before Helen and Ray hook-up,” says Sheargold. “I mean, I’ve never had a work relationship go this long without hooking up with someone.”

Sheargold has known Flanagan for more than 20 years, first meeting on the stand-up circuit. “She was a Sydney comic and I was a Melbourne comic,” he says. “And we circled each other around the industry because in those days, no one really went to the other city to work. It was a pain in the arse and you’d lose money.”

Sheargold as the conflict-averse Ray with Flanagan in a scene from Fisk.Credit: ABC

But the friendship endured - they are a delight when they appear on the quiz show Have You Been Paying Attention together - and Sheargold was persuaded to read for Ray.

Sheargold had done a bit of acting before, but he was pretty comfortable doing radio in Melbourne. Then lockdown hit, and he needed something to fill an afternoon, so he got his kids to help film the audition on an iPad while his partner read lines with him.

“We turned it into a half-day of activity because we were bored out of our brains,” he says. “I never really imagined I’d end up getting that size of a part and committing to that amount of work because it was a lot.”

Why did he say yes?

“I’m happy that it is behind me,” he deadpans. “It was a lot more work than I anticipated on top of already having a full-time job.”

Flanagan, however, was thrilled. “He’s the only person who managed to make Ray charming rather than creepy.”

Zemiro is also a long-standing friend of Flanagan’s. The pair first met at an improv night 25 years ago and they have since lived and travelled together. Roz was written specifically for Zemiro and it’s for this reason that Flanagan is able to tell Zemiro to tone it down a bit.

“I can be a little bit over the top and big for the camera, right?” says Zemiro. “[I said to Kitty] You have all the permission in the world to say to me - because she co-directed - to say, ‘That’s a bit 10 out of 10, energy-wise. Can you bring it back to a three, to a five?’”

A big part of Helen, Roz and Ray - not forgetting Aaron Chen, who plays the mulleted probate clerk George - is their costuming. Everyone has such a specific look that you know exactly who they are before they open their mouth.

I don’t like choosing clothes. I’m not comfortable. If I wear a dress, I feel like I walk around like a man in a dress.

Kitty Flanagan

Roz is every inch the officious office manager, with her skirt suits and high hair that seems even higher for the second season. “It was just such a gloriously delicious thing to work out with a make-up artist,” says Zemiro. “There were some mornings I’d be like, ‘Is that a bit high?’”

Ray, meanwhile, does a nice line in a tight knitted jumper with a tie.

“Ray wears all the clothes I would never be brave enough to wear,” says Sheargold, who also likes to imagine Ray sitting at home, shirtless, drunk and crying while listening to Evanescence.

“I think there’s a whole other show in Ray,” says Sheargold. “Perhaps one of those spin-offs, like Joanie Loves Chachi.”

But the star of the show is undoubtedly Flanagan’s brown suit. Why on earth…

Aaron Chen as George and Kitty Flanagan as Helen Tudor-Fisk. 

“That, again, is me,” says Flanagan. “I never know what to wear. I would love it if I could just wear the same thing every day. Because that would just take out so many choices. I’m not comfortable in fashion.

“When I was on The Weekly, people thought I was making a real statement wearing suits, that I was going, ‘No, women don’t have to wear this [a dress], we can wear suits, too.’

“It wasn’t a statement. The only thing it was a statement about was that I don’t know what to wear. I don’t like choosing clothes. I’m not comfortable. If I wear a dress, I feel like I walk around like a man in a dress.”

But, as with all things Fisk, people have started to catch onto brown.

“The minute we finished filming [season one], brown suits started appearing everywhere,” says Flanagan. “I’m not crediting Helen with starting a fashion trend, I’m just saying people keep sending me things, like there was this beautiful picture of Miranda Tapsell in - it was a nicer brown - but she was basically wearing a big brown suit.

“We were one season ahead of our time, and then brown became fashionable.”

Maybe it was Helen’s fashion sense that won over the French?

“It definitely wasn’t Helen’s fashion sense.”

Season two of Fisk begins on the ABC on October 26.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.