Tim Minchin sidekick Milly Alcock’s road to success

Milly Alcock can feel her career shifting up a gear.

Rising star Milly Alcock in Sydney. Picture: Ryan Osland

Milly Alcock can feel her career shifting up a gear. There’s already been plenty of praise for her performance in Upright, the new TV series in which she stars alongside Tim Minchin.

The show hasn’t even aired in Australia yet, but the early stirrings of hype at home and abroad have been hard to miss. “This is hands down the biggest thing I’ve done,” the 19-year-old says. “The biggest part I’ve had to play.”

Upright is centred on Lucky, an itinerant musician played by Minchin, who sets out across Australia with a piano in tow. He bumps into a worldly teenager called Meg (Alcock) and the two set off on a roadtrip across the Nullarbor.

Alcock has several screen credits to her name, including Pine Gap and Les Norton. When it came to Upright, she had only a passing knowledge of Minchin’s work.

The one thing she did know was that their screen chemistry had to be spot-on. Theirs was an unusual pairing; an older man travelling across Australia with a teenage girl, so the two actors needed to make a convincing case. “They made me well aware this lives or dies on how these two people interact with each other,” Alcock says, referring to the production team.

On Foxtel from Sunday, the eight episodes were shot late last year in Adelaide, Kalgoorlie and Perth. Minchin, an executive producer, shares writing credits with Australian heavyweights Kate Mulvany, Chris Taylor (The Chaser) and Leon Ford (Offspring). The cast includes Heather Mitchell, Rob Collins and the late Ningali Lawford-Wolf.

Alcock had travelled straight from shooting the thriller Reckoning to the set of Upright. It was the Sydney actor’s first visit to WA, and she quickly formed a bond with her co-star, the multi-talented actor, singer and songwriter from Perth who has won global renown for writing the music and lyrics for the musicals Matilda and Groundhog Day. “It came really naturally for Tim and I. We got along really well. I think he’s amazing, I love him. It just clicked and we knew it was going to be OK.”