Raising the bar

Claudia Karvan stars in new ABC legal drama Newton’s Law. She tells DANIELLE McGRANE what it was like to inhabit the world of a barrister and what makes her character so likeable.

Claudia Karvan doesn’t always want to bring her characters home. While they may have challenged her as an actor, she often wants to shake them off, move on and try to forget their distress.

But Josephine Newton, her latest starring role, is someone she has wanted to play, and even become, for a long time.

“I’ve played really fraught characters, really challenged characters, characters that are going through really devastating times and I was champing at the bit to play a character who had authority and resilience, and heroic characteristics,” she said. “So when Josephine came I said, ‘This is exactly what I’ve been champing at the bit to play’. It was just serendipity.”

Karvan even wanted to bring Josephine’s qualities home with her after a day spent shooting on the ABC show Newton’s Law.

It’s not as though life’s a piece of cake for Josephine. In the first episode, the suburban solicitor’s practice is burnt down and she’s persuaded to return to the Bar and enter Knox Chambers, alongside old uni friend Lewis Hughes (Toby Schmitz).

At the same time, she’s going through marriage separation and trying to figure out her new role as a single mother to a teenage daughter.

But Karvan can’t help appreciating how this character handles the different things that life throws at her.

“I genuinely like her,” she said. “There’s just this outlook that Josephine has where she’s never judgmental and she never buys into conflict or challenges, she rises to it and looks at it as an opportunity to solve. And you can take that into your own life and say, ‘Yeah I can have that attitude too’.”

Karvan sat in on real court cases while researching the show, and there was a legal adviser on set at all times, which lends the show a level of authenticity.

The actor also has personal connections to the world of law.

“One of my closest friend is a barrister who was working on the Ivan Milat case. So I do channel her a lot when I’m playing Josephine,” she said.

“What was really eye-opening was how small that world is. It’s a village. The judge may be your friend or the barristers you’re opposing may be your friends.

“The other aspect of it are how many similarities a barrister’s life shares with an actor’s life. It’s a performance, you’re performing for the jury, so the jury has got to like you, they’ve got to trust you, they’ve got to listen to you and you’ve got to win them over. So they’re your audience.”

In real life, the barristers Karvan met were keen to talk about their work and inspired all the time, challenged by their careers.

“It strikes me that it can be a very rewarding career, a very gratifying career,” she said.

With all of that real-life inspiration to hand, many of the cases tackled on the show have a basis in the real world.

“There’s a transgender story which I think was heavily influenced by an Australian Story, there’s a hilarious storyline about the custody of a pet, there’s refugee storylines,” she said.

There’s also, of course, plenty of drama outside the courtroom.

Early on in the series, it looks like e one of Josephine’s potential suitors could be her new colleague and old friend Lewiswis – at least if the palpable on-screen -screen chemistry is anything to go by.

“He’s a great character, Lewis. He’s soo sardonic but really is reachingg to be a warmer r and more connectednected person,” she said.

“He wants to chase moneyney and fame butt he’s also got thishis real admirationn for Josephine’s ’s qualities, so they’re hey’re a little bit of f an odd couple.” Newton’ss Law Thursday, 8.30pm 0pm on ABC