Wrong girl, right move
Since her breakout role in Packed to the Rafters, Jessica Marais has become the golden girl of Australian TV – and there’s something so right about her next starring role, in Ten’s The Wrong Girl. She tells DANIELLE MCGRANE what makes this show so good.
Marais: “Life is kind of grey and messy, and I think that’s kind of the beauty of the show.”
Jessica Marais has been the right girl in several successful TV shows. She won the Logie for Best Actress this year for her role in Love Child and was also a member of one of the most successful Australian TV families, the Rafters.
So don’t be fooled by the title of her upcoming show,
The Wrong Girl, because Marais is most definitely right for this one, too.
“I’m very excited,” Marais said. “I think it’s time for people to see it. I feel like we’ve been sitting on a little secret that we’ve all been secretly enjoying.”
Considering the show is based on Zoe Foster Blake’s bestselling novel of the same name, it’s hard to know how many secrets there could really be.
“It is a departure slightly from that storyline,” she said. “We’ve never tried to do exactly what the book did. We’ve tried to flesh it out a little bit. The storyline in the book would probably be more suited to a one-anda-half-hour film than an eight-episode series, so we take a few twists and turns.”
Marais, who was a fan of the source material before she was asked to be a part of the show, says they have captured the heart of the relationships in the original story.
The actor plays Lily Woodward, the producer of fastpaced morning television show The Breakfast Bar, who finds herself torn between two very different men.
One of those men is chef Jack Winters, played by Rob Collins, who stars on the cooking segment of her show. Jack also happens to be dating her best friend and housemate Simone, played by Hayley Magnus.
Does that mean Lily is breaking an unspoken girl code with this crush?
“Life’s not black and white like that,” Marais said. “Life is kind of grey and messy, and I think that’s kind of the beauty of the show.”
It’s certainly messy for Lily, a girl-next-door character who happens to work in a remarkable job.
“I think everybody struggles to find a happy balance between their personal life and their work life, particularly when your work life is demanding and your personal life is confusing,” she said.
“Lily works in a job that is highly stressful and manages it all pretty well. There’s something very relatable about her because of the way Zoe wrote her in the book,” she said.
“She’s remarkable as well as being incredibly relatable.”
Also in this remarkable world is a host of other char- acters, including morning TV hosts Eric and Erica, played by Craig McLachlan and Madeleine West. Where Erica is professional, Eric is a bit of a larrikin and a cad. “The things that Eric does are so unforgivable but Craig brings this cheeky, generous joy and sort of innocence to it, which I think is really beautiful,” she said. The filming of the breakfast show scenes took place on the actual set used for Ten shows such as The Project and the cast got tips from the real crew. The experience was pretty close to the real-life situation. “Every time I go on a live radio show or a live breakfast show now, I have so much respect for the producers and also the hosts, and all the people involved, because in morning TV you’re always one second away from disaster,” she said. “You’re always having to be prepped for damagecontrol situations.” The show, along with its cast of quirky characters, provides many opportunities for humour. “I think there’s a lot of comedy in it,” she said. “I don’t know if I am funny in it, but I think the other characters are really very funny, and quirky and interesting. There’s something I love about every single character in this.”
Rounding out the highprofile cast are Kerry Armstrong as Lily’s mum Mimi, Ian Meadows as Pete – Lily’s other man, who also happens to be her friend – and, in a cameo as a weather man, radio host and husband of the author, Hamish Blake.
The cast and the writing work so well that, as far as Marais is concerned, there is the potential for more.
“I’d love to see it go to a second season,” she said. “It would only get better if we did go to a second season.”
It would also mean Marais’ golden touch continues after Packed to the Rafters and Love Child.
But she remains modest about her part in all these successful shows.
“I don’t think I have anything necessarily to do with the lucky streak,” she said.
“I’ve just been lucky enough to be involved in really good projects.”
It helps that it’s a particularly ripe time for Australian TV, with networks and streaming services commissioning more original content than ever before.
It’s something she’s grateful for and never takes for granted.
“Just to have work in this country, that’s an incredible thing for an actor to have.”
The Wrong Girl Wednesday, 8.30pm on Ten