Double trouble

A new Australian drama brings together the world of high rollers with an everyday, middle-class family due to a strange turn of events. Actress Sara Wiseman has taken on a starring role in the series and tells Danielle McGrane about this exciting new show

S ara Wiseman knows a good thing when she sees it.

She starred in A Place To

Call Home, the popular Aussie drama which ran for six seasons. As soon as the show’s creator Bevan Lee mentioned he had another project in the works she was interested.

“I’m a huge fan of him and his work. He’s so committed and dedicated to his characters and his stories,” Wiseman said.

“His imagination is quite extraordinary as well as his knowledge of the world. Bevan had shared with me that he was developing a new show and very generously said that he saw me in one of the main roles as Sophie.”

Wiseman jumped at the chance to audition for Between

Two Worlds, feeling both buoyed and apprehensive after Lee’s vote of confidence.

“It’s a catch 22 because I’ve been told things like that before from other creators and you can pin your hopes on it and it doesn’t go your way, so it can be desperately heartbreaking,” she said.

It didn’t help her nerves when she realised how much she wanted to play the character.

“I fell in love with her and how Bevan spoke about her and what she stood for, and she kind of sat with me,” she said.

Wiseman plays Sophie – a teacher whose young adult son is an AFL player. A few incidents destroy her happy life, taking away someone she loves and exposing some harsh realities.

Throughout it all, Sophie takes a pretty admirable stance and Wiseman could relate to some of her actions.

“I feel that I’m a bit of an activist when it comes to civil rights and moral rights and all that sort of thing,” Wiseman said.

“I guess Sophie is a bit of a hero in an understated sense. A lot of women are, they do incredible things but maybe don’t get the glory that potentially some men do. There’s a lot of very strong wonderful women that just do things out of the good of their heart and never get any credit for it.

She’s that underdog I guess.”

Her character is also thrown into a world very different to her own, a world where a billionaire, played by Philip Quast, lives by very different ethical rules.

“I saw her as very much the heart of the show in terms of her nurturing nature and the way she functions in her world with her family and her career, and putting others before herself. There’s very much a strong moral compass with Sophie,” she said.

“So it was really interesting having two extremely different worlds playing out two different lifestyles side by side – the glamour and the quality of that very, very wealthy untouchable world, to one that is familybased and middle class.”

Her character is forced to make some big decisions. While some might see her actions as disloyal, she was looking at the bigger picture.