Getting older? Cop it sweet
LIVING IN THE MELBOURNE LOCKDOWN IS GIVING MICHALA BANAS A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON WHAT’S IMPORTANT IN LIFE
Michala Banas first popped up on our screens at the tender age of five, so we – and she – have watched her grow up through the ensuing 37 years.
She acknowledges it’s a challenge at times – especially in the oft image-obsessed industry.
“I’m like, ‘OK, I’m getting greyer and I’ve got wrinkles and my face moves a lot’,” Banas says, with a laugh. “And I think that’s important to see it on screen.
“As much as I go, ‘Oh, geez, look at that’, it’s who I am and I’m ageing, and no disrespect to anyone who wants to adjust their appearance – you go, girl and guys, it’s your body and your life – but for me it’s nice to see all sorts.”
As Banas sagely reminds us, it’s about embracing all the things about yourself, or alternatively, growing a fringe “as cheap Botox”.
“I just want to play all kinds of people,” she adds.
“I don’t just want to be the pretty one. I’ve been the pretty one sometimes when I was younger. Now, as I’m getting older, it’s about: What else can I be?”
Banas is currently playing Senior Sergeant Erin Riley in Halifax: Retribution. She’s never played a cop before, despite auditioning for such a part numerous times. Ironically, she didn’t even have to audition this time.
“I don’t know if they actually thought it through,” she says, with her infectious laugh. “On my first day, we were shooting in a hospital and they gave me a holster and the gun.
“The crew were like, ‘How come they gave you such a big gun – what’s that about?’. I was all, ‘This is a regular-size gun, it’s just on a small person’.
“Clearly, I look like a twit. Hopefully they don’t regret it. I’m really having the best time.”
And we can see that when we first catch up with Banas in the last days of filming the Nine drama. It’s a blustery and unseasonably warm October day in Melbourne. She and Jane Halifax herself (Rebecca Gibney) are cooling off inside a production vehicle, lip syncing along to Beyonce’s Run the World (Girls) – which will undoubtedly show up in Gibney’s now-famous musical Instagram posts.
They’ve become firm friends. The respected actors have met a bunch of times but this is where “they fell in love”, Banas jokes.
Gibney later shares that the instant Banas arrived on set, she was like a “giant light bulb”. “It was getting towards the end and we were all getting tired, and then she came along and it was fantastic,” Gibney says. “We became instant best buddies; she’s definitely one of those people I will know forever.”
It’s a cast heavily laden with talent: Gibney, Banas, Claudia Karvan and Anthony
LaPaglia, mixed in with some new faces. While Banas is one of the veterans, she still learns from everyone. An important life lesson she gleaned from actor Nicholas Hammond of The Sound of Music and The Amazing Spider-Man fame.
“When I was 15, doing the kids show Mirror, Mirror, and I was saying, “This is so amazing and I’m learning so much’, (Hammond) said ‘me, too’, and that taught me an extraordinary lesson. I’ve never forgotten that and it’s so true the older I have got.”
This year has been filled with learning moments for the 41-year-old, as well as plenty of time for reflection, as she and husband Toby Truslove cope with life in locked-down Melbourne. It’s been tough for the self-confessed mild control freak to learn to let go and not know the outcome of everything all the time.
Banas jokes, when we catch up on the phone to check in, that she’s really getting to know every corner of their house. She’s taken up tai chi – online, obviously – and links with people from across Australia and the globe four times a week from her garage.
“I feel very fortunate, really, because I have a lovely, safe home and love spending time with Toby,” she says. “I know not everyone can say that about their living situation.
“We actually got a puppy a few months before lockdown so we’ve got our hands quite full, and the puppy is distracting us from any doom and gloom. That’s not to say we’re not having ups and downs like everyone, but for the most part we’re doing really well.”
Professionally she, just like so many others in the decimated arts industry, has lost so much work.
Banas is accustomed to the peaks and troughs of acting, but nothing like the COVIDinduced drought.
“It’s often either a feast or famine, so when it’s a famine you just think ‘I’ll just go and be a waiter’,” she says, adding that’s not something she’s had to do for many years. “But now that’s not even an option. So to have all your options taken away has been kind of scary. I’m not sure we’ll ever go back to normal-normal, and that’s probably a good thing.
“I know it sounds kinda corny but I really think we all need to stop. For so long, especially in my industry, there’s been ‘the show must go on’ mentality. You might be so unwell but putting on makeup and people going, ‘Out you go; you’ll be right once you’re on the stage and under those footlights’.
“Now, if you have a sore throat, it’s all ‘You’re not coming in’. And nor should you. You need to take of yourself and your health has to come first – that’s become very clear.”