Tasmanian Gothic
‘Creepy’ crime series will show Apple Isle in a new light, writes James Wigney
FOR a spook-loving actor like Emma Booth, the new Aussie drama The Gloaming was a no-brainer.
The award-winning former model from Perth, who admits to loving “creepy stuff”, came across the new “Tassie-noir” series while perusing scripts during pilot season at her Los Angeles base, where she has found international success as the villainous Mother Gothel in the long-running fairytale drama Once Upon a Time. The eight-part series, from the creator of Foxtel’s acclaimed but divisive global hit The Kettering Incident, was right up her alley, combining elements of her favourite genres – crime and the supernatural.
“This combined them so seamlessly but in a really grounded, realistic way,” says Booth, relaxing on a couch in a trailer between takes on the Hobart set.
“It’s got the occult, it’s got witches, it’s got ghosts – but it was written in such a realistic way that I thought ‘this is brilliant’. I am a huge fan of
True Detective and The Killing – they are two of my favourite shows – and so this is really quite similar to that. For me it was like ‘how do I get this?’”
Fortunately, writer and showrunner Vicki Madden already had Booth in mind for the role of Molly, a Hobart detective whose investigation of a routine murder uncovers a tangled web of political corruption, shady business dealings and dark, otherworldly practices.
Apple Isle native Madden, whose twisty, complex, sometimes baffling Kettering Incident helped put her home state on the map and coined the term “Tassie noir”, had seen Booth in her AACTA Award-winning role in Hounds of Love, in which she dressed down dramatically to play the enabling, abused wife of a killer.
“I think she loved the fact that I was not vain,” says Booth. “It was showing the toughness and insanity of this character but with a vulnerability combined. She has been very picky with the cast because she needs to sell the supernatural as something real and needed to get actors who can really sell it and be super believable.” Madden says she was indeed impressed by
Jack Irish and Glitch star Booth’s acting ability, as well as being captivated what she calls a “displaced energy”.
“The first time I met her she was jumping all over the couch and she was hungry so she had all this food in her bag and she was dancing all around the room,” says Madden, who cut her teeth in the UK on The Bill, The Clinic and K9 before returning home to win an AACTA and a Logie for Kettering.
“I always look for people and actors who, like myself, are a little off kilter and the way they look at the world is just slightly different. She embodies that, even more so now that I know her. She’s very creative and free-spirited and Molly is very that. She’s a very messy character, not that she would probably like me calling her that.”
After years overseas, Madden, a proud Tasmanian, went to great lengths to shoot Kettering in her home state and she hopes that
The Gloaming will help to bolster the fledgling film and television industry there.
But more than that, she believes that Tasmania itself was an integral part of Kettering and provides a unique setting and history that feeds into the mystery and supernatural elements of The Gloaming.
“The past in this particular island has never been resolved and here it’s particularly dark,” she says. “I have taken friends around places I have known since childhood where massacres happened or convict slavery or otherworldly things – a lot of people disappear – and I always loved the idea that because of the dark history they decided to change the name from Van Diemen’s Land to Tasmania and I think that says everything.
“You can’t just change a name – you have to address the issues. So when Port Arthur happened – which was terrible – I remember having a really strange feeling of not being surprised. I think there is a lot of unresolved grief, which is what I deal with in The Gloaming.”
THE GLOAMING – STREAMING ON STAN THE KETTERING INCIDENT – FOXTEL ON DEMAND