SISTERS ARE DOIN’ IT FOR THEMSELVES
Hannah and Eliza Reilly create television with a fresh, femalefirst approach. Their show Growing Up Gracefully was a smash hit – the clip for their
“3:43 song” about the gender pay gap has
7.8 million views on Facebook – and next up, Sheilas tells the stories of overlooked heroines in Australian history. They prove that siblings can build an entire career out of getting along
We grew up on a farm an hour out of Sydney, fairly isolated from other children so we only had ourselves for company. We would keep ourselves amused by catching snakes and lighting small fires. It was pretty idyllic. We rarely got proper TV reception, so out of boredom we would put on hour-long improvised plays for our parents, and they seemed to enjoy them and encouraged us to do more. They’re very patient people.
While hosting a show on Sydney community radio station FBI, Julian Morrow from The Chaser heard us, gave us a call and asked if we were interested in television, which is when we pitched Growing Up Gracefully. Our inspiration for the show came after collecting a few really strange ’50s etiquette books for women. We wondered what would happen if they were applied in a modern context – could we actually learn something from them about what it means to be a young woman today? We wanted to explore the contradicting expectations put on women by both old and new ways of thinking, for example, that we’re expected to be “beautiful” but not “try too hard”, and encouraged to be “sexy” but shamed for being a “slut”. It’s mind boggling. We didn’t expect the show to be so well-received. Our mum is in the show, playing herself, and we really didn’t want her to disown us.
We’re launching Sheilas this year, which we’re very excited about. We’re excited to revive some forgotten stories of great women in Australian history – WWII spies, bushrangers, activists – the way we’d wish it was presented to us, with lots of jokes and costume changes. Their stories are legitimately inspiring, especially in this cultural climate. It’s nice to think, “If this bad-ass lady can make it through being a spy, hunted by Nazis in WWII, I can make it through the Trump presidency.”