MIRANDA TAPSELL:
The star of Love Child and The Sapphires was married twice last year – once to her real life fiancé and once on screen. Miranda Tapsell tells Genevieve Gannon about bringing her dreams to life.
her magical outback wedding
Four years ago actor Miranda Tapsell took a trip to the Top End. Usually, when the Larrakia Tiwi woman heads north, she is on a journey home – to the sultry city of Darwin, where she was born; or the tiny town of Jabiru, tucked in the craggy wilderness of Kakadu National Park, where she spent much of her childhood, swimming and crabbing with her mother; or to the unspoiled Tiwi Islands, where her mother’s family lives. But this time, she was on a mission. She had a proposal tucked in her bag and an important meeting pencilled into her diary. She always makes appointments in pencil because
the entertainment industry is so fickle, but this meeting – with Northern Territory Tourism – was unbreakable. She had an idea, and needed money to get it off the ground. She was determined to be the change she wanted to see in the world.
“I made that speech and I had to walk the talk,” she says.
“That speech” was a cry for change in Australia’s film and television industry, delivered on TV’s night of nights, the TV Week Logies. Miranda’s performance as Martha Tennant in the retro drama Love Child had earned her the titles Most Outstanding Newcomer and Best New Talent, and she had seized her moment in the spotlight to make a call for greater representation of all Australians on screens.
“I had this sick feeling in my stomach before I went on stage,” she says. “Then I went: ‘Okay, I might upset people and my career might go quiet but what’s the point of having this moment if you’re not going to take it?’”
Dressed in grey and silver evening wear, the newcomer clutched her trophy and, with a quiver in her voice, pleaded her case. “Put more beautiful people of colour on TV and connect viewers in ways which transcend race and unite us,” she said. “That’s the real Team Australia.”
“I made that speech and I had to walk the talk.”
The assembly of actors, producers and executives, burst into uproarious applause. Miranda smiled a with relief.
Now, she had a chance to put her money where her mouth was. She was travelling to the Northern Territory to secure seed funding for a rom-com she was writing with fellow actor Josh
Tyler. The two had been spit-balling ideas for a script. Josh had recently returned from the Top End and surprised Miranda with his enthusiasm for the place. “I said, ‘really?’ Because everyone who’s been there tends to talk about
how there were too many mosquitos and it was very expensive,” she says. “We shared this love of rom-coms and he said, ‘we should totally set one up there.’”
For most people, the story would end there. Who hasn’t practised their Oscar acceptance speech in the bath? But despite never having penned a screenplay, Miranda started writing. Being set in the Northern Territory, her film would be, as much as anything, a love letter to her homeland.
Almost four years later, her film is making its way into the world. Top End Wedding premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January this year to warm reviews and will open in Australian cinemas this May. It’s difficult to overstate what an achievement this is.
“It’s really hard what she did,” says Rosemary Blight of Goalpost Pictures, who produced the film, and The Sapphires, in which Miranda made her film debut as Cynthia. “What Miranda has achieved by coming up with an idea, getting that early seed money so that she could write something and bring it to someone like us and say: what do you think? Hundreds of people try to do that – even more – thousands across the country. She took the initiative. It’s really easy to make a speech about it, but it’s hard to get your hands dirty and do it.”
Today, Miranda has a glow of satisfaction about her. She’s sitting, grinning, in a black banquette set against a concrete wall in an industrial chic café in Brunswick, where she lives with her new husband, comedy writer James Colley. Despite having just emerged from the busiest period her life – at the same time as Top End Wedding was premiering, Miranda was planning her own wedding – she is full of the charismatic energy that’s been charming fans since 2012. Her large brown eyes sparkle as she gushes about both her own wedding and the experience of bringing her Territory love story to life.
On set, Miranda’s mother, Barbara, had remarked that the film was all good practise for the upcoming real-life wedding, and she was right. The pair tied the knot in December last year, not long after the filming wrapped. They were married near Wollongong, surrounded by family and friends. Miranda said her vows in a custommade dress of fine oyster silk and three different types of lace. Fortunately, she says, her own ceremony wasn’t quite as trouble-plagued as that of her on-screen alter ego – though not without hitches.
“The PA system didn’t work so everyone speaking and our celebrant had to project,” she says. “My mum was slightly concerned at how low cut my dress was, but she got over that really quickly once the music started playing.”
The thing that caught her off guard was the nervousness she felt before walking down the aisle. “It’s weird because I’m used to stepping on stage. But I think, because I wasn’t a character, I had nothing to hide behind,” Miranda muses. “I didn’t have a mask on. I’m vulnerable when I have to be myself.”
Of course, she had nothing to fear. The couple are incredibly loving towards each other, with James mounting an Instagram campaign to win Miranda another Logie. He had been a fan of Miranda’s work before they met, but Miranda didn’t realise how much he admired her until after they were together. “The story he likes to tell is that I pursued him,” she says, laughing.
James was outed by friend and comedy writer, Bec Shaw, who Tweeted a private message James sent her after Miranda started following him on the social media platform. “I can never tweet again. She can never know how much I love her,” he gushed.
“I just love the fact that our friends continue to roast my husband on Twitter,” Miranda says. “It’s very, very funny. They just completely shifted the narrative and said: I think you liked being pursued.”
Warmth emanates from Miranda as she talks about her new husband. “It really touches me what a good friend he is. He is friends with so many women and that’s also great,” she says. “Our day was really touching because so many of our friends have invested in
our love and I’m so glad they got to be a part of it.”
The December wedding capped off a year in which Miranda was able to deliver on the vision she articulated on the Logies stage. As a voracious consumer of film, television and books, she is passionate about good stories that are well told, but has always questioned why women like her are not often part of those stories. “While I can still relate to them, it would be really lovely to have that space opened up more and if I can be a part of that by writing, then that’s great,” she says. “I know that representation won’t change the gap in health or education between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It won’t change the high incarceration rates. But if it can bring the humanity back to Aboriginal people, if it makes people take that step back and say: ‘Well, they’re human like me’, art can play a really important role in having those conversations.”
Rosemary Blight has produced some of Australia’s best-loved film and television programs of recent years including the forthcoming Helen Reddy biopic I Am Woman. She says that from the first moment she laid eyes on Miranda, she knew she had the unquantifiable quality that separates the stars from the superstars. “I remember walking into [The Sapphires’ casting director] Nicky Barron’s office, past where all the actors sit. We were down to the last girls and there was Miranda sitting next to Shari Sebbens,” she says. “They were these giggly, alive, effervescent young women. We’d looked for months for those girls. I’ll never forget that first sight of her.”
At the time, Miranda had done little screen work. Being cast as Cynthia propelled her into the very top echelon of Australian movie production. She was shooting with the trailblazer Deborah Mailman, hot property Jessica Mauboy and international star Chris O’Dowd, who was fresh from his role in the mega hit Bridesmaids. The Sapphires was a life-changing opportunity. Lauded at Cannes and an Australian box-office hit, it was a solid launching pad. Soon after came Love Child and Logies success. But despite →
“I’m a lot more vulnerable when I have to be myself.”
this momentum, the leading lady roles a burgeoning star might rightly expect did not materialise.
“She wanted to know – after The Sapphires, which was a romantic comedy of sorts, and extremely successful – why wasn’t there another Aboriginal woman of colour in a central romantic comedy role,” Rosemary says. “So she went and just did it.”
Miranda is more modest about the process, which she describes as a collaboration between filmmakers and the people of the Northern Territory. Director Wayne Blair and the rest of the production team embraced the setting and everyone worked hard to connect with the communities in the Northern Territory and tell a story that was true to the spirit of the place. Indigenous language is woven through the script, and vibrant wedding costumes were created by Indigenous designers. Production manager Libby Collins is Tiwi, and she was a crucial envoy between the parties. The production called on extras from Katherine and the Tiwi Islands, and Miranda’s mother, father and aunty make cameos.
“My family on Tiwi stepped in and shared the knowledge,” Miranda says. “Bringing Indigenous people into an Indigenous story is imperative because that’s what grounded the film. Their knowledge of the country speaks much deeper than ‘Here’s a pretty landscape’. Their knowledge of the country really made the film.” Miranda, James, their family and friends are part of a new wave of voices, including Family Law creator Benjamin Law and Kitty and Kiki creator Nakkiah Lui, changing the way Australia is represented on screen. Last year Miranda and Nakkiah launched podcast Pretty For An Aboriginal where they discuss power, dating, sex and race with irreverent humour, winning fans and awards. Their searingly funny take-over of the series final of ABC’s Get Krak!n was called groundbreaking and “must watch TV”.
“Us being the only two Aboriginal women in this space, we just sort of gravitated towards one another,” Miranda says. “We managed to really make each other laugh.”
As Miranda talks about her mission to open Australian screens to more voices and faces, she’s as friendly as ever, but carries the responsibility of her task. “I feel people are still uncomfortable with some of the issues that affect Aboriginal people. It’s still incredibly contentious,” she explains. “When I talk at events or on TV I’m constantly making notes … I don’t want my words taken out of context. I don’t want people to think I’m trying to start any wars.”
Yet, Top End Wedding evinces none of that caution. It is joyous, light-hearted. There are moments of pathos but the afterglow is sunny. This wedding-themed romp across the Never Never that follows a race-against-time, will-they-orwon’t-they narrative is designed to delight. “It’s more than just Four-X, humidity and crocodiles,” Miranda laughs. After a January honeymoon in Vietnam, and the premiere of her film in Utah, Miranda returned home to plan
for the future. She hopes to collaborate more with Nakkiah, and follow in the footsteps of creator/performers she admires like Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling. Now she has taken the leap of faith into writing and producing, her world has opened up.
“I’ve built my career on being thrown in the deep end,” she says. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes along the way but at the same time people have seen something in me. I’m constantly mapping out my future.” We can’t wait to see more.
Top End Wedding opens nationally in cinemas on May 2.