Six sides to this story
Seven Types of Ambiguity, a new series based on the novel by Elliot Perlman, kicks off on the ABC this week. Two of its stars, Xavier Samuel and Leeanna Walsman, talk to DANIELLE McGRANE about it.
One perspective on any given situation is never really enough. Memories of the same event tend to vary from person to person as we try to process what we’ve experienced within our understanding of the world.
Seven Types of Ambiguity, a new ABC drama based on the 2003 novel by Australian author Elliot Perlman, seeks to explore this concept.
When a child goes missing, it sparks a chain of events which, when split into six different episodes, is told through the eyes of six different characters.
“It gives you an unusual licence to recreate your own perspective on things and I think that’s sort of what happens in life, people process things differently. What you saw one way someone else saw it in a completely different way and I think that’s a really great device for a show,” one of the show’s stars, Xavier Samuel, said.
Samuel, who shared the screen with Kate Beckinsale in last year’s Love and Friend
ship, seems to be cropping up in nearly every Australian film released at the moment includ- ing The Death and Life of Otto Bloom and A Few Less Men. Playing the role of Simon Heywood in Seven Types of Ambiguity was his first foray into TV and there are advantages of being in a small-screen drama, he explains: “It’s nice to be able to spend a bit more time with the character and not have to get it all across in an hour and a half.”
This character, Simon, plays quite a pivotal role in the show and demands the extra time.
“This is a role that’s so far away from anything that I’ve done,” Samuel said.
“Sometimes it’s easier to paint him as mentally unstable as a way to process and justify his actions because it’s so outside the norm.”
Simon is the ex-boyfriend of Anna Marin, played by Leeanna Walsman.
Anna, as the mother of the young boy, Sam, who goes missing, is another one of the six leads from whose perspective this story is told.
“When you do television you have lead characters and all these really interesting characters who pivot around a lead, but in this show, because of the storytelling … we all have an opportunity to really delve completely into the characters’ stories, so it’s almost like six different little films in the one piece,” Walsman said.
Walsman’s character is part of a supposedly happy marriage, before her child goes missing and dredges up some characters from the past.
“It’s that one incident which is huge and has a trickle-down effect on all the issues that aren’t spoken of. It’s already creating massive trauma and every single character has got it,” Walsman said.
As events spin out, the other characters have their parts to play. Anna’s husband Joe (Alex Dimitriades), Simon’s friend Angela (Andrea Demetriades) and Hugo Weaving’s psychologist Alex Klima all have their own interpretation of events.
“There are so many fractures, you come into the show already fractured and you’re just given the worst scenario that if you’re already in a fractured relationship like those two are (Anna and Joe), then that trust is fractured even more,” Walsman said.
From Simon’s perspective, Samuel was given the chance to explore an unorthodox reaction to events. His character wasn’t ready to move on from his exgirlfriend, and that was exciting for him as an actor to analyse.
“What a great question for Elliot Perlman to ask: Why do we have to move on? It’s obsessive and it’s dangerous, it’s romantic but it’s unhinged. I find that really exciting,” he said.
Walsman: “It’s that one incident which is huge and has a trickle-down effect on all the issues that aren’t spoken of. It’s already creating massive trauma and every single character has got it.”