Cult following

As Wentworth returns for an eighth season, Marta Dusseldorp joins the prison drama as a new character. She tells Danielle McGrane who she’ll be playing and what it was like being inside Wentworth’s walls.

M arta Dusseldorp knew the stakes were going to be high when she joined the cast of Wentworth.

As a fan of the show, she’d watched enough episodes to know it’s often a matter of life or death in this series.

“In Wentworth, I sometimes feel like I’m watching real people,” Dusseldorp said.

“Rather than going, ‘That’s a great performance that actor is giving’. I find myself going,

‘If that person doesn’t stick up for themselves, they’re going to die’.”

The stakes were also high because this show has been running for seven seasons, Dusseldorp was about to enter a pretty exclusive club.

But she knew she could make a mark with her character,

Sheila Bausch, a senior figure in a cult – a far cry from anyone Dusseldorp had played before.

She’s also a completely different kind of operator than any of the other women inside Wentworth’s walls.

“She’s psychological and not muscle. A couple of the main players who’d been on the show for a long time said to me, ‘We’ve never had a character like yours on this show’ and I thought that was really interesting, to get to be that other type of instrument,” Dusseldorp said.

“Violence is not her language and she doesn’t feel she needs it. And she doesn’t frankly, because she understands people who are captured,” Dusseldorp said.

“And she understands how to use their vulnerability, which is within every captive person. So she uses that psychological boxing in a way to render people useless.”

“I watched Wild Wild Country to help form Sheila. If you watched the woman who ran Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, her intensity of purpose and her belief in her truth, it’s startling when you hear what she’s really doing and the things that she’s putting in place around, and getting other people to do for her,” Dusseldorp said.

“I mean, Sheila is not a nice person. But I stopped judging my characters years ago.”

With judgment aside, Dusseldorp really enjoyed playing the character, especially when she got to spar with great actors such as Susie Porter, who plays Marie Winter. The pair have a history that goes way back, having first worked together on the 1997 film Paradise Road.

“Susie and I had so much fun. We love each other dearly, and we respect each other intensely, so it’s like playing a really good game of tennis,” she said.

Dusseldorp enjoyed her moments both on and off screen while working on

Dusseldorp: I mean, Sheila is not a nice person. But I stopped judging my characters years ago.