Heat of the moment
After catapulting to fame in 2008 thanks to Packed to the Rafters, these days Jessica McNamee prefers to fly under the radar. The Windcatcher star chats to Siobhan Duck about reunions and the renaissance of Aussie drama
IN much the same way the cast of Friends is forever bonded by their shared experiences working on the hit series, Jessica McNamee remains close to all her Packed to the Rafters castmates.
“We’re all still in touch,” she smiles. “I see a lot of George Houvardas and Hugh Sheridan. We’re all in a funny Instagram thread where we send memes to each other.
Rebecca [Gibney] and Erik [Thomson] are in that too. We all still check in with each other often. I saw Zoë [Ventoura] recently on the Gold Coast at a premiere and we had a good chat.”
While Gibney, Thomson and Michael Caton were already established household names, the Channel Seven drama made McNamee, Sheridan, Jessica Marais and the rest of the young cast into overnight celebrities when it debuted in 2008.
“It’s funny because we were all so young, particularly the kids in the cast,” she recalls.
“We didn’t know what we were doing. We weren’t that good. But it all ‘steamrolled’ and we all got caught up in it.”
McNamee laughs as she recalls running up and down hotel hallways with her bathrobe-clad castmates after the 2009 Logies.
“It was like we were on school camp,” she smiles of the event, where Marais, Houvardas and Sheridan were all nominated for awards.
“We were all in our early 20s and just being silly and having so much fun.”
It can be hard for some to understand McNamee’s experience on Rafters now that we are living in the streaming age.
“People were planning the whole week around their Tuesday nights, when they would get takeout and be home by a certain time to watch that show,” she shrugs.
“It’s just not the same now.
You binge a show in a week, you forget about it and you’re on to the next show.
“But we were just in people’s living rooms every week. For years.”
McNamee found sudden and intense fame overwhelming, noting that Rafters brought her more recognition than any of the big Hollywood films she has subsequently made.
“I was talking about this with a friend at the weekend, who’s American,” she says.
“They were asking how I got my start [in] my career, and I was like: ‘I can’t really even explain to you what it was like’.
“It’s funny because that [period] was the most recognisable I’ve ever been, out of everything I’ve ever done.
“That was also the hardest time in my life in terms of being able to function in a normal existence.”
After leaving the show part way through the third season, McNamee looked to further her career in America.
“I kind of ran away,” she says thoughtfully.
“I did start working on projects but I was very selective about it. I actually avoided network TV in the States because [Rafters] was on a smaller scale to the kind of notoriety you can get on a network TV show in America – where millions more people would see it – [and] that was so overwhelming to me.
“So, I shied away from any of those shows for a long time.”
She has also actively sought out roles which prove she’s capable of being more than just the girl next door with small (but memorable) performances in The Meg, Chips, Battle of the Sexes (playing controversial tennis champion Margaret Court) and Mortal Kombat.
She’s always keen to find projects that will bring her back to Australia. The first instalment of Mortal Kombat was shot in South Australia during the pandemic and its sequel was shot on the Gold Coast late last year.
From there, she headed to Melbourne to film a small part in the Stan family film Windcatcher.
Although it’s not a starring role, McNamee was thrilled to work on Windcatcher, seizing it as an opportunity to show local audiences her funny side.
“On paper, there wasn’t a lot to this character,” she says of her role as fire chief Sharon Cobb.
“And the great thing was, I could see real potential to – in the same way I did with Margaret Court – make her a really fun, memorable role in the context of the movie.”
The movie reunited her with her old friend, Looking for Alibrandi’s
Pia Miranda. The feel-good family movie follows a young Indigenous boy who dreams of using his natural running talent to beat the bullies at his school sports carnival.
Unlike their first job together, Miranda and McNamee now find themselves some of the most senior cast members, acting alongside child performers Lennox Monaghan, Coco Greenstone and Max Turner.
“So, at this point my first and my last job have been with Pia,” she laughs.
“We shot this pilot and it was so sad that it never went [anywhere]. It was called Secretary, and I was the bimbo hottie and she was the buttoned-up secretary. I was
19 at the time.
“It was about four secretaries in a legal office and it had an amazing cast including Susie Porter and Peter O’Brien... it was right when Australian Idol hit and that year reality TV just blew up so a lot of networks went down that route [instead of commissioning new dramas].”
McNamee is glad to see that drama is back on the agenda and that there is such diversity in storytelling, as typified by her two most recent films.
“It was such a nice dichotomy because I was going from this gritty, violent ‘Alpha’ role in Mortal Kombat that was a huge-budget, huge-scale project and flying down to do this very femme, comedic role on a set that was really intimate and like a family,” she explains.
“So, it was the two ends of the spectrum. It was awesome.”
When Ellie and Pete Wagner (Rose Byrne and Mark Wahlberg, both pictured) look at their lives, something is missing – as their thoughtless relatives constantly remind the childless couple. At an event for potential foster parent-child connections, the Wagners meet Hispanic-American siblings Lizzy (Isabela Merced), Juan (Gustavo Escobar) and Lita (Julianna Gamiz) and jump in the deep end. What happens next is a roller-coaster ride with a very steep learning curve.