Marta Dusseldorp: 'I GAVE UP LOTS OF SECRETS'

THE AUSSIE ACTRESS ON STEPPING INTO HER CHARACTER’S ‘UNCOMFORTABLE’ SHOES AND WHY SHE LOVES A CHALLENGE

- Sara Tapia

Holed up at home in Tasmania during the pandemic, Marta Dusseldorp decided to call up her old pal, writer and executive producer Andrew Knight. “I’ve worked with [him] on and off for probably about 20 years. I did After the Deluge that he wrote and Jack Irish. So I’d always said to him, ‘I’d love to create a show with you’ and he’d be like, ‘Yeah, yeah,’” the Aussie actress tells WHO how her upcoming series, Bay of Fires, came about.

“I called and said, ‘I bet you’re not travelling around the world right now. Is now the time?’ And he said yes. He later told me that he didn’t mean it and was just trying to get me off the phone. But I began talking to him about being in Tasmania and what it really felt like and the opportunity that was there to tell the story, in a remote place, of a woman who has been taken out of her life, like I felt I had been.”

And so the eight-part comedic crime series, which Dusseldorp produced herself, was born. Shot against the beautiful, film set-worthy backdrop of Tasmania’s west coast, it tells the story of Stella Heikkinen (Dusseldorp), a single mother-of-two, who finds herself in a small, remote community against her will.

Here, the actress shares her experience of stepping into a producer role and why she’ll never leave Australia.