British comedy actress Sally Phillips gobsmacked by first Logie nomination

Actress Sally Phillips speaks to news.com.au about her surprise Logie nomination, and an upcoming reunion decades in the making.

Best Lead Actress in a Comedy at this year’s Logie Awards is a stacked category – including, perhaps controversially given it’s Australian television’s “night of nights”, an American (Leighton Meester) and a Brit (Sally Phillips).

Phillips is nominated for her role in the first season of the acclaimed ABC comedy series Austin, which returns for a second series tonight.

Speaking to news.com.au, the British actress is sad that she won’t make it down to Australia for the big night – not that she likes her chances of winning.

“I’m not going to win,” she insists.

“But it is voted for by the public, which is partly why I’m so completely thrilled to be nominated... I think I see it as a step on my citizenship journey.”

Phillips’ relationship with Australia started when she was a child, and her father, who worked at British Airways, moved the family to Mosman on Sydney’s north shore for several years.

“I had an Australian accent, and when we came back to the UK, my English teacher was Australian and so I got mercilessly bullied for trying to suck up to the Australian English teacher... people thought I was just putting it on, but I couldn’t hear it, I couldn’t get rid of it,” she explains.

Sally Phillips with Michael Theo (centre) and Ben Miller in Austin.

“But we loved it out there and consequently, if I get offered a job to do in Australia, I always say yes. Where other people might say ‘That’s a long way,’ I say ‘yes please’.”

The latest Aussie job for Phillips has been Austin, an Australian / British co-production starring former Love on the Spectrum participant Michael Theo in his debut acting role.

Theo plays the titular character, a young man living with Autism who reaches out to his long-lost birth father Julian (Ben Miller) – much to the shock of Julian’s wife, played by Phillips, who had no idea this son ever existed.

One delightful surprise from the show’s first season was just how good Theo was at carrying the show – not because of his disability, but because he’d never acted before (and ‘reality TV star to acclaimed comic actor’ is not a path well-worn).

“What makes him such a brilliant actor is that he has no armour, so he doesn’t have any defences,” Phillips says.

It also made filming particularly intense at times. Phillips reveals that her co-star struggled when season one wrapped, finding it hard to adjust to the reality of life as an actor: One minute the cast and crew are like your family, the next minute the show’s over and you don’t see them at all.

Phillips is up for her first Logie - and hopes it counts for something in a citizenship application.

“Making the show, he was living independently for the first time. We were having dinner together most nights, and there were lots of people checking in with him every day, asking: How are you? Do you need anything? And he didn’t want to go back to reality, really. It was pretty tough,” she admits.

But with Michael in mind, the cast made sure to keep up their connection between seasons – one Phillips says she’s sure will continue for years to come.

“Michael held us all to account, and has kind of gone: ‘Tell me this is real, this friendship.’ And it definitely is. I mean, we spoke yesterday. But I think he does find it quite hard, the on again / off again thing of acting.”
Now, the first time actor is in an unusual position: He’s nominated for a Best Lead Actor in a Comedy Logie... the same category as his on-screen father.

“I’ve told him, it’s all right, it’s not a competition, and he said, yes it is,” Phillips says with a laugh. “So I really hope he beats Ben, because it is a competition, as it turns out.”

While Phillips’ acting career started earlier in the 90s with roles in UK comedies like I’m Alan Partridge, In The Red and Hippies, it was her role in the hilarious sketch comedy show Smack The Pony that became her breakthrough.

Running for three seasons from 1999, the show saw Phillips form a comedy trio with Fiona Allen, Doon MacKichan for a surrealist look at everything from modern dating to pop music videos.

L-R: Fiona Allen, Phillips and Doon Mackichan & Sally Phillips in Smack The Pony, circa 2000.

Despite a rabid fanbase, Phillips confesses they always felt like “also-rans” in the UK, typically losing any TV comedy awards to Sacha Baron Cohen and his Ali G character.

They, did, however, win two international Emmy Awards for the Best Popular Arts Show – but as Phillips recalls, their comedy nemesis Ali G still got the last laugh.

“I remember flying back [from the Emmys] and we were a bit drunk and had the Emmy with us. Sacha was going into first class and I remember Doon going, ‘We’ve got a f**king Emmy. And we’re still in economy!”

L-R: MacKichan, Phillips and Allen will reunite for shows next month.

There was a flurry of excitement earlier this year after an announcement that the trio will reunite for shows at the Edinburgh Festival, taking place next month.

Tempering expectations, Phillips explained the new show is more of an interview-style format about their TV days, with a couple of sketches thrown in. Might it be a test run for bigger things to come?

“Well, we’re going to share a flat and see what it’s like being together – we’re all going to live toether for five days. Because we used to hang out so much, and so the show became like a diary, really. You’d come in and say ‘this thing happened,’ then you’d give it a twist and make it a sketch.”

Phillips also recently reprised her role as friend Sharon in the latest Bridget Jones film Mad About The Boy, reprising a role she’s now played in four films across almost a quarter of a century.

Director Michael Morris, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renée Zellweger, Leo Woodall and Sally Phillips at the Australian premiere of Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy in Sydney back in February. Picture: Hanna Lassen/Getty

Mad About the Boy earned the best reviews of the whole series, striking a markedly different tone to the slapstick antics of some of the earlier films.

But despite the positive reception, Phillips says she and the rest of the cast felt sure this was their last outing.

“The last scene that we shot together was a birthday party. We were in this beautiful house and we danced like crazy for four or five hours, and at the end of it we all put our arms around each other and burst into tears,” she recalls.

“It’s the last one, and that’s it … but it’s been nearly half my life. I went for the first read-through on the day of my 30th birthday, and I’m now 55.”

Austin returns this Sunday, 27 July at 7:30pm on ABC TV and iview. You can cast your votes at TV Week Logies ahead of the ceremony next Sunday August 3.

Originally published as British comedy actress Sally Phillips gobsmacked by first Logie nomination