‘I WANT TO BE A MUM’
Singer Casey Donovan shares her exciting family plans
It’s an odd thing for her to say, but Wentworth star Tammy MacIntosh felt out of place in prison. You might think four years on the tough-as-nails TV drama would equip you, to some degree, to deal with life behind bars. It didn’t. “I had this instinctive feeling it was just wrong to walk into the real world of these women who have committed crimes and are paying the price without their families,” MacIntosh, 49, tells WHO. “It was invasive.” It was research. The actress, who plays snarling Top Dog Karen ‘Kaz’ Proctor, is speaking to us from the relative safety of Governor Vera Bennett’s (Kate Atkinson) office on the Melbourne set of Wentworth, ahead of the show’s seventh season (airs Tue., 8.30pm; Fox Showcase). Keen to get an insight into the lives of real-life women in lock-up, MacIntosh, a familiar face on TV screens since her days in popular drama,
All Saints, visited a Melbourne prison – an eye-opening experience, to be sure.
“There were a group of girls who were mainly drug addicts – they’d been on and off ice from a very young age,” MacIntosh says. “They said they could get stuff they wanted, but they were trying to support and lift each other. There were a group of Top Dogs – two or three of them – and they were extremely violent. The tools they used were savage.”
She’s done other research, too – the kind of stuff, she says, which has taken her into the “heart of darkness”. Like watching YouTube video investigations of child trafficking. “It really helps you to know the truth, because it affects and informs the gravity of your performance,” she says. “It opens a wound inside you that is awful to live through. Everyone does their research and brings that to the set every day. But this job is so amazing because of that commitment.”
People bring their A-game to this show about prison life, there’s no doubt about it. And heaven help anyone who doesn’t. “We have to do this together,” MacIntosh says. “Actors can focus on themselves a lot. It’s kind of our job. But across the board, we come in as a group of human beings representing prisoners, a small faction of the world that doesn’t
really get a voice, and together we get in the muck and really get down to the basic human condition together. If there is someone who is not on board, they’re going to stand out like dog’s balls. You’re not going to believe them for a second.”
While there have been other shows that centre on women in prisons – the series on which it is based, Prisoner, for instance, and the US drama, Orange is the New Black
– none aims as high as Wentworth.
“I was talking to someone the other day, saying, in terms of the epic nature of the storylines – and it sounds like a really random comparison – but I was thinking of Game of Thrones,” Celia Ireland, 53, who plays Lizzie Birdsworth, says. “We have murder, torture, rape, love, although not necessarily incest, but we have all these themes and they exist inside the four walls of this prison.”
Wentworth has been commissioned for another 20 episodes after this season. MacIntosh would be happy if it never ended. The show’s strength has been its ability to evolve over the seasons. Wentworth has lost key characters, from Bea (Danielle Cormack) to the monster that was Joan ‘The Freak’ Ferguson (Pamela Rabe), who was buried alive by Will Jackson (Robbie Magasiva), and added new characters which send the series hurtling in another direction. This season, we’re introduced to two new characters in Dr Greg Miller (David de Lautour), Wentworth’s new forensic psychiatrist, and officer Sean Brody (Rick Donald).
As the season unfolds, battlelines are drawn between MacIntosh’s Kaz and inmate Marie Winter (Susie Porter), who entered the fray in Season 6. Marie ran brothels, trafficked women and dealt drugs on the outside. She is a master manipulator, which Kaz has seen in the way she has sunk her claws into Allie (Kate Jenkinson). She may have Allie, but Kaz has the no-nonsense Rita (Leah Purcell) on her side. How will the power struggle between Kaz and Marie play out? “It’s kill or be killed,” MacIntosh teases.
Of course, Kaz also has her hands full looking after poor Liz, who was diagnosed with dementia in Season 6. “Liz went through a really dark hour of the soul and attempted to kill herself,” Celia Ireland says of her character’s journey last season. “If it wasn’t for Kaz she would have administered a hot shot, thanks to Marie, and died.” And let’s not forget it was Kaz who prevented Sonia (Sigrid Thornton) from killing Liz by … well, pushing Sonia off a building. What are friends for, right?
In Season 7, we find Liz struggling to remember her way around the prison. And yet, Ireland says, there is a “glimmer” of acceptance by Liz of her condition. What we see is the deepening of the symptoms of dementia for Liz, in terms of memory loss and paranoia, and “how she manages all of that”.
Liz was initially imprisoned for running over her mother-in-law in a tractor while drunk. After all her character has been through, Ireland concedes she wasn’t thrilled at the thought of her character getting dementia. “I thought, ‘Oh my God, but that means she’s completely diminished,’” she recalls. “But I realised that that’s not the case and there’s a lot to explore within that diagnosis and within the restricted world. But it also, really cleverly, gives the other characters a relationship to Liz and her disease.”
Dementia is obviously a crippling and, in many ways, tragic disease. In preparing for her scenes, Ireland says she spoke to a man
with early onset Alzheimer’s disease, who told her he has moments of confusion, where “there is nothing familiar” and there is a “fear of feeling rudderless”. “And then the moment will pass, and someone will come along and scoop him up and there will be an identifying thing,” she says.
As we see in the opening episode of the season, Liz’s illness makes her vulnerable to people like Marie. The thought of Marie manipulating Liz is horrible, yet intriguing, and is what makes this season unique. “Everybody is vulnerable,” Ireland says. “I think it’s the first series where, across the board, there’s really deep excavation going on, Emotional stuff for everyone.”
Oh, and while we’re talking about emotional journeys, there’s no denying it’s going to be a hell of a ride this season for Vera, who is pregnant with Jake’s (Bernard Curry) child.
What’s really interesting – and slightly sweet – about the first episode are Jake’s attempts to be the supportive father-to-be, much to the chagrin of Vera. “I’m the last person that would be saying this, but I was watching that episode and going, ‘He’s (Jake) being really cute and giving this a red hot go and I think he’s going to pull it off, damn it!’” Atkinson, 46, says. “Anyway, Vera’s not going to make it easy for him.”
When we pick up the series, we see a different Vera to previous seasons. Atkinson says there is almost a buoyancy about Vera, or a “lift from her shoulders”. This probably has something to do with a conversation she has with Will and what she asks him to do (no spoilers here!). It doesn’t last, she warns, but seeing Vera bond with Will is fascinating. “I’ve really enjoyed watching the kind of growth of the allegiance between her and Will, because if you go back to Season 1, Will and Vera were not mates,” Atkinson says.
And what of being pregnant on the series? Atkinson is adamant about what it was like to wear a prosthetic belly. “It was horrible!” the actress laughs. “It was really uncomfortable, and I couldn’t wait to get the damn thing off. I really feel for women who have carried a baby.”
As much as fans might like to see Vera have her baby and finally, for once, enjoy a semblance of happiness, this is, after all, Wentworth. This show has a nasty habit of offering hope, only to cruelly snatch it away. “Happy endings are few and far between for poor old Vera, so who knows what could happen. But she is definitely carrying a fair-sized belly,” Atkinson says.
“I thought, ‘That means she’s diminished” —Celia Ireland