From Jean to jail:
Kate Elliott’s career banks sharply right with a role as a neo-Nazi in Wentworth. Sarah Nealon reporrts
Kate Elliott’s career banks sharply right as she goes from playing Jean Batten to a neo-Nazi jailbird.
To say Kate Elliott’s latest character has a striking appearance is an understatement. There’s the big swastika tattoo on her neck, skinhead-style shaved head, and a cut and bruised face.
The New Zealand actress is playing neo-Nazi Spike Carter in Wentworth.
Watching Elliott on screen, it’s glaringly obvious the gritty character is a far cry from her glamorous turn as the ambitious and charming aviator Jean Batten in the one-off drama Jean.
Elliott joined the cast of the Australian prison drama for its sixth and latest season where her character is serving time for holding up a convenience store and assaulting its Muslim owners.
“I [was given] a little blurb saying [Spike] was a street fighter and that she was a nasty piece of work and that everything she did came from a place of anger,” says Elliott. Coincidentally, she was already in character for the skinhead role. “I already had a shaved head so that probably helped. I’d been focusing a lot more on directing and producing. I’d always wanted to shave my head to explore identity, I guess. And as a female to see how it made me feel.” After landing the role of Spike, Elliott learned more about her character when she temporarily relocated to Melbourne. “Once I got there they said, ‘We’re looking at this character as being a neo-Nazi’. “And with everything that’s going in the world at the moment, I thought, ‘Oh goodness. How do