Rough seas on horizon
Safe Harbour stars Ewen Leslie and Phoebe Tonkin tell DANIELLE McGRANE about the complex and gripping four-part thriller.
Major life decisions rarely offer black and white answers, and most people find their solutions in the grey areas in between.
Safe Harbour is a gripping new psychological thriller on SBS that puts its characters into an impossible situation, where knowing what’s right and what’s wrong isn’t always clear.
The four-part drama series follows a group of Australian friends and family members on a sailing holiday who meet a boat full of asylum seekers looking for their help to get to Australia.
“It’s really complicated, it’s so political and an obvious question that will come up for viewers is ‘ What would you do if you were in this scenario, what decisions would you make?’,” actor Ewen Leslie said.
Leslie plays Ryan who is captaining this sail boat and, along with his friends and family, played by Phoebe Tonkin, Jacqueline McKenzie, Joel Jackson and Leeanna Walsman, they vote to tow the asylum seekers.
“It’s not as simple as, ‘If I came across a boat of asylum seekers would I take them to Australia?’ because ultimately you’re out there, you’re with your family and you have 40 people who say, ‘I want to come on to your boat’,” he said.
“It’s an incredibly difficult situation that they’re in.”
So, the Australians tow the asylum seekers to safety and they all live happily ever after in Australia… of course, this isn’t what happens. In fact, it’s unlikely that this could ever be the outcome considering both the physical dangers posed by this course of action and the political implications.
Safe Harbour addresses these problems pretty early on in the story. The morning after the Australians have made the decision to tow the boat, they wake to find that the rope has been cut and the asylum seekers have already disappeared.
The storyline jumps to five years later when the repercussions of these events are made clear, and everyone is asking the question, “Who cut the rope?”.
“Ryan finds himself investigated by the AFP, and is possibly up for peoplesmuggling charges and facing 10 years’ prison. It’s really complicated,” Leslie said.
Safe Habour manages to make this highly politicised issue a personal one, encouraging viewers to become invested in the lives of a family of asylum seekers and the Australians from the boat.
“There’s no clear good guys and bad guys and both families, who are on opposite sides of the coin, each make decisions that are questionable,” Leslie said.
“No one always does the right thing and I really like that.”
Australian actress Tonkin, who has been working in the US on massive TV shows such as The Vampire Diaries and now The Originals, had been looking for a project like this to bring her back home to work.
“I’ve been trying to find an Australian project for ages and this was kind of the perfect one,” Tonkin said.
“It was really interesting to play someone that has quite a lot of sadness and toxicity inside her. That was really exciting for me to play with.”