‘I FELT SO ASHAMED’
THE MUCHLOVED ACTRESS OPENS UP ABOUT MOTHERHOOD, WORKING WITH CATE BLANCHETT AND TACKLING TOUGH TOPICS
Asher Keddie reflects on her new project with Cate Blanchett.
From the outside, it seems Asher Keddie has it all. A successful acting career, striking good looks, and a loving artist husband, Vincent Fantauzzo, with whom she shares son, Valentino, 5, and stepson, Luca, 10.
But, speaking candidly to WHO, the 45-year-old reveals that she, like the rest of us, still struggles to find her place in the world. “I think like everybody, I’ve had moments like that or periods like that in my life where I [thought], ‘who am I?’,” she says from the Berlin International Film Festival where her latest show Stateless premiered.
“What do I want to do? What do I stand for? I still question myself in that way.”
Keddie, who rose to fame on Love My Way opposite Claudia Karvan and Ben Mendelsohn, says working on this latest project, an ABC drama, caused her to face a bit of an existential crisis.
“I’m pretty sure I know who I am as a mother,” she begins. “I know who I am as an actor … but throughout the making of [Stateless], I was questioning myself a lot. It was confronting, and it threw up quite a lot of questions. I still do [question things] even though, at 45, I’m definitely more of a solid person.”
The six-part series, also starring Cate Blanchett, The Handmaid’s Tale’s Yvonne Strahovski, The Affair’s Dominic West, and Jai Courtney, is inspired by true events and shines a light on the treatment of refugees in an Australian immigration detention centre.
The former Offspring star plays immigration department official Clare Kowitz in the series that is airing on both ABC and Netflix and was executive produced by Oscar-winning star Blanchett and her production company Dirty Films.
According to Keddie, the pair don’t share any on-screen time, but she says Blanchett was incredibly involved behind the scenes. “We were in contact constantly throughout my shooting period, which was much longer than hers,” Keddie says.
While Blanchett appears in only a handful of scenes, she was very hands-on. “I can’t say I was surprised by her ongoing commitment through the shoot,” Keddie reveals.
“I knew she would be like that. I just knew. And early in the piece when I came on board, I knew how incredibly passionate and committed [and] invested she was in the project. It had been [nearly] seven years she’d been working on getting the project up.”
Much of the filming took place in the South Australian town of Port Augusta, where the Baxter Detention Centre is located and though Blanchett wasn’t on site all the time, Keddie says her presence was always felt. “I [would] get text messages in the middle of the night,” Keddie says of the constant contact with her co-star.
“She’d be in London, I’d be in Australia in the middle of the desert, and so I felt like she was there. She was that hands-on in that, and very supportive of the project. We felt very held by her at a distance, I think. But I just feel really proud of what we’ve done.”
Keddie is also proud of the big issues in Australia’s past and present that the show
“I’m pretty sure I know who I am as a mother”
tackles, with the accomplished actress admitting she herself had a lot to learn ahead of filming. “When I was asked to come on board the project, admittedly I was really ignorant,” the star confesses. “I had really not delved much further than the headlines and I felt ashamed of that.”
She admits that getting to know the extras – some of whom had been in detention in the past – opened her eyes further.
“It was incredibly difficult to push the emotion down every day shooting this because it was so authentic; the situation that was created for us,” she says. “We were surrounded every day by 100-plus extras … some of them had been in detention for five years at a time.”
Keddie says the effects of making the series will remain with her forever.
“When it comes to voting … a lot of people – myself in the past included – would say, ‘Oh, I’m not a political animal … it’s not my thing’,” she says.
“Well, we have to be interested in it, actually. And I kind of feel much more encouraged, having made the project, to be less lethargic about voting and about what is actually going on … Perhaps the conversation will ignite that kind of more frontfootedness, instead of just not caring.”