History repeating for Gibney
Two years after finishing playing everyone’s favourite suburban mum on Packed to the Rafters, Kiwi-born actress Rebecca Gibney is returning to series television – but in a very different guise.
You’re returning as Detective Sergeant Eve Winter, who we first saw in The Killing Field. What was it that made you want to come back? I am a huge whodunit fan – I love Broadchurch, I love The Killing, I love The Bridge. I love trying to figure something out; trying to work out ‘‘who done it’’. I also loved Halifax when I did it all those years ago. I did seven years, and we made 21 telemovies, and I loved that character. So the feeling was to create something similar.
Did you work with the show’s creators to develop your character? Chris Martin-Jones, who had just produced A Place to Call Home, came on board and he also had fantastic ideas. What we realised was that we were all on exactly the same page, we all knew we wanted to create the type of show we loved. [We were looking at people like] Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect – that strong female character/older woman. When I met with [creators] Sarah [Smith] and Michaeley [O’Brien] early on, the concept they first presented to me was quite different. They were very open to me contributing, and that’s what has happened.
Which means you get to explore a little more of Eve? Some of the comments that came back from the telemovie were that ‘‘we don’t know enough about her’’; ‘‘we don’t know about Lachlan [Eve’s love interest, played by Peter O’Brien], and the relationship between those characters. We haven’t seen her vulnerability’’. I think the fact we have now got the opportunity in the series to ‘‘go home with her’’, to meet her family and find out her weaknesses [is great].
She is a complex character and also one of the few strong, older women we see on screen. Was that important to you? I have been around for a long time, so I hope I know what some people want to see. I know I have a very loyal, fabulous audience. I have a lot of older women coming up and saying, ‘‘It’s so great to see an older woman portrayed on television’’. Incorporating that into the whodunit genre seems to work.
You have your own production company with your husband Richard Bell: will you have time to develop the ideas you have for that or is Eve Winter taking up your time right now? Hopefully this year I will have some time. We’ve got a studio around the corner, and my husband and I will hopefully take [our son] Zac to school and then go there, write for the day, and then pick him up. Hopefully this year is about developing new things, and if Winter is well received, then the second series is in the pipeline. Let’s hope people love it.
You clearly have no plans to slow down any time soon? Someone said to me the other day, ‘‘What’s bad about 50?’’ and I said, ‘‘I can’t actually say anything’’. Yes, I’ve got more lines, and yes, I’m getting a turkey neck, and yes, I have a tummy that I’ve had for the last 10 years and really it’s not going anywhere – but who cares? I don’t care any more. I’m actually very comfortable. That’s the best thing about 50. Carly Rae Jepsen’s new album is essentially a relentless onslaught of bubblegum pop with a weird 1980s aftertaste.
For hard-core pop fans that’s probably a good thing, but for the rest of us it’s a lot to digest, particularly when it’s all coming at you from Jepsen’s sugary-sweet high register.
It’s that lack of range that is the problem, really. Almost the entire album sits in that same vocal range.
Yes, she makes an attempt to change up the production and the instrumental arrangements, but as soon as her vocals kick in every song may as well be a remix of the last.
If you flick through the songs at mid-point, only one stands out.
Your Type sits at a slightly more subdued level, and, while on its own it’s not particularly notable, in contrast it becomes a stand out.
The thing about Jepsen is that her songs are incredibly catchy as singles.
They beg to be sung and danced along to. They’re a little bit 80s in a Madonna and MJ kind of way, a little bit 90s in an S Club 7 sort of way, and the melodies and lyrics are simple and repetitive enough that they jam in your head for weeks.
But, when you stack them all on top of each other, it’s all just a bit much.
Rebecca Gibney is returning to the dark side – and she couldn’t be happier, writes Clare Rigden.
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