Maia Mitchell on corsets, stitching fake skin and why she came home to make The Artful Dodger

Maia Mitchell made her name overseas in The Fosters and Good Trouble, she couldn’t believe her luck when she scored the chance to shoot a project at home — even if it meant braving a corset.

Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Maia Mitchell in a scene from The Artful Dodger.

Aussie actor Maia Mitchell couldn’t believe her luck when The Artful Dodger came her way.

After spending a decade in Los Angeles, the Lismore born and raised actor had moved back to Australia after the coronavirus pandemic and was looking to be in something homegrown. And after starring in feel-good Disney fluff such as Teen Beach Movie and its sequel, then graduating to contemporary family dramas The Fosters and its spin-off Good Trouble, a period piece was right at the top of her bucket list.

The Artful Dodger, based on the character of the same name from the 1838 novel Oliver Twist, set in 1850s Australia, and shot in Sydney last summer, ticked all the boxes.

“I was just looking for something transported you to another world,” Mitchell says over Zoom call from Montenegro, where she is currently filming. “I’ve done a lot of very grounded drama and so I was excited to do something that was a little more genre and that was a little more of a challenge.”

Add to that the fact that Game of Thrones and The Queens Gambit star Thomas Brodie-Sangster was already on board as Jack Dawkins – aka The Artful Dodger – as well as revered British veteran David Thewlis (Harry Potter, Wonder Woman) as his shady former mentor Fagin, and Mitchell says it was “a no-brainer”.

Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Maia Mitchell in a scene from The Artful Dodger.

“It’s unlike anything I had done before and I just thought it would be such an adventure, and it was,” she says. “It was a dream job.”

Even dream jobs however, have their downsides, and Mitchell soon discovered the big one that comes with period pieces, particularly for women. Playing Lady Belle Fox, the daughter of the Governor in the fictional New South Wales colony of Port Victory, Mitchell had to squeeze herself into the corsets and dresses that were de rigueur for the upper classes of the era. While she says the constricted clothing was a good on-set reminder of the societal restrictions her character was experiencing; it was also bloody uncomfortable – particularly in the middle of a sweltering Sydney summer.

“We were in Parramatta, in this warehouse studio in the middle of summer in several layers of clothes and just not really breathing for six months, but honestly it helped,” she recalls. “It was a physical reminder constantly.”

“And also, my character, Lady Belle, is a bit of a rebel and doesn’t really consider herself much of a lady at all. So, it was fun to play with the uncomfortable nature of the costumes and live in that and let that show. It was good, but it was very hot and so sweaty. We would have AC vents just pumping directly under our skirts at moments. It was chaos.”

While The Artful Dodger takes its inspiration from beloved Dickens characters, the eight-part Disney+ series created and written by James McNamara (The Outrageous True Story of Milky Moore), and co-written by award-winning Aussie veteran Andrew Knight (Hacksaw Ridge, Jack Irish, Sea Change, Ride Like a Girl), is an entirely original creation with a crackling script, rock and roll swagger and a top-notch local supporting cast including Tim Minchin, Damon Herriman, Miranda Tapsell and Susie Porter.

Thomas Brodie-Sangster made his first visit Down Under for The Artful Dodger.

It tells the young adult story of Dawkins, who has graduated from child thievery on the grim streets of London to become a promising surgeon Down Under, supplementing his meagre income with gambling. His prospects of rising through society’s ranks are dealt a blow when Fagin, who had left him to rot in a prison cell years earlier, reappears and tempts him back to his old ways to pay off a cards debt. His life is further complicated when he meets Lady Belle, who aspires to become the first female surgeon in the colony and enlists Dawkins’ help as she begins to discover more about his murky past.

For former child actor Brodie-Sangster, Zooming in from Bristol in the UK, the opportunity to make his first foray Down Under a work trip with Thewlis was irresistible.

“The first thing I remember reading it going this is really fun,” Brodie-Sangster says. “In the script that I was reading, it starts with him just running around the street and it introduces you to this fun colourful world, full of fun colourful characters, and I thought what a fun adventure it would be.”

Although the Artful Dodger character is best known to many from his cheeky chappy songs such as Consider Yourself and I’d Do Anything, from the musical stage adaptation and 1968 Oscar-winning movie Oliver!, Brodie-Sangster says he looked elsewhere for inspiration. Everything he needed, he found in Knight’s script and courtesy of the elaborate period sets created in Parramatta and Rozelle, as well as a meticulous costume department.

Thomas Brodie Sangster had medical training to play a surgeon in show.

“It’s a very, very different world to that world so I didn’t really find it all that useful,” he says of the film. “Obviously I loved that film. – it was brilliant and I remember growing up with that film. It was also quite scary – I remember that was one of the first films that scared me. But I didn’t use that as a reference at all – I basically worked off the scripts really and tried to bring the character that was in the scripts alive.”

What was crucial for Brodie-Sangster as a surgeon and Mitchell as an aspiring surgeon, was to look the part in the operating theatre. Not only did they both read through real-life case files of an era when surgery was gory, low-tech, and often as dangerous as the affliction, they were also put through their practical paces by a medical expert.

“For me, it was (looking at) different women who were in medicine at the time who were breaking the glass ceiling and trying to draw from that and also all the procedures that we had to do practically,” says Mitchell. “We had a medical adviser, a doctor, who would walk us through and we had to practise. We would be sitting in the makeup room practising our suturing on like a piece of (prosthetic) skin. It was a bit gory.”

Maia Mitchell plays aspiring surgeon Belle Fox in The Artful Dodger.

Such was the hectic schedule on The Artful Dodger, that Brodie-Sangster says he didn’t get as much time as he might have liked to explore Australia. He managed to get away to the Blue Mountains for a weekend, climbed the Harbour Bridge and was taken on a bush walk by Mitchell, who insisted he had to swim in a creek before he left the country.

But if they get a second series, Mitchell says she has grander plans to get her co-star up to her beloved Northern Rivers region and beyond.

“He’s an honorary Aussie at this point,” Mitchell says of her co-star. “If we do a second season, I want to take him up to Byron Bay and go a little further north. Maybe do Hamilton Island, Cairns, that whole pocket because there’s lots to see.”

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Working in her homeland for the first time in more than a decade and being closer to her family has given Mitchell a taste for more and made her realise just how much she misses Australia, even if her job still takes her around the world.

“I rarely get to be at home honestly, but working in Australia was definitely my goal,” she says. “As much as I can be home, I try to be, especially because I lived away for so long. I was in LA for 10 years, so I think once you realise how homesick you were and you move home, every time I leave, I’m desperate to get back. But I will be home for Christmas so I am excited.”

The Artful Dodger streams on Disney+ from Wednesday.

Originally published as Maia Mitchell on corsets, stitching fake skin and why she came home to make The Artful Dodger