Source : PERTHNOW NEWS
Believe it or not, Georgie Parker is turning 62 this year. It’s a hard fact to wrap your head around, especially as for many of us, she’s frozen in time as the fresh-faced star of A Country Practice who burst to national fame when she scored a part on the beloved soap, aged 24.
“Ha! Well, unfortunately I have been around for a very long time,” Parker laughs when we mention this to her.
We’re chatting about the passing of time ahead of the premiere of Parker’s new TV series, Dalliance.
Parker stars alongside friends and contemporaries Heather Mitchell, Hugo Weaving, David Wenham and Catherine McClements, as a 60-something woman navigating the next chapter of her life.
The series is produced and created by acclaimed father-and-son creatives John and Dan Edwards, alongside Mitchell, who steps into the producer’s chair for the first time.
Described as “a heart-wrenching, affectionate, and at times hilarious relationship drama about a group of best friends who discover that life, love and sex in their 60s are not what they expected”, it feels like nothing else on Australian TV — in the best possible way.
“That’s right — I don’t think there actually IS a show like this,” Parker agrees.
“There might be a UK show bubbling around, or a Norwegian drama, but it’s not specifically about a group of people who have known each other, in-depth, for 40 years, falling apart.
“Someone said to me that it’s reassuring to spend time with people of this age on screen, because apart from the depth of experience, it just feels like such a fresh story.”
Co-created by one of Australia’s most successful producers, John Edwards, it stands as a great bookend to other dramas he’s had a hand in bringing to the small screen.
Edwards famously made The Secret Life Of Us, about a group of 20-somethings. Then came Love My Way, which saw Claudia Karvan’s character navigating life in her 30s.
In 2009, Tangle hit screens, and was all about a group of 40-somethings. This series feels like a logical progression.
“I was initially a little reluctant to attempt to make the show,” Edwards explains.
“But Dan (his partner in production company Roadshow Rough Diamond ) was persistent, and a couple of things happened that persuaded me to try.
“One was when a friend of mine died while overseas, and his wake brought together people who hadn’t seen each other in donkey’s years. That was a start.”
In the drama, Parker plays Rose, who is married to Weaving’s character, Billy. They’ve been together 40 years, but something happens in the first episode that resets the course of their lives, making their friend group reassess everything they thought they knew about one another.
It’s fertile ground for drama.
“Everything feels highly relatable,” Parker explains.
“And I think that is the magic of what Heather, Pip (Karmal, a writer and executive producer on the series) and John have been able to create: you see these people on screen that you go, ‘Oh, my sister would do that!’ Or ‘My brother would say that’.
“It all feels very real.”
“Some were single, and some weren’t. Some had been in the dating scene, and some hadn’t,” Edwards explains. “But the common theme seemed to be that nobody expected to find themselves like this in their 60s.
“We were all astonished by how immature we still were, and how — apart from the body parts that weren’t working quite as well — we didn’t really feel any different from how we’d felt in our 30s or 40s.”
Parker relished the opportunity to lean into this — the stories she saw playing out in scripts were the stories she was seeing playing out in her own life.
“There have been a couple of great friends of mine whose marriages have broken down,” she says.
“It’s a bit like, ‘Oh, great the kids are grown and gone! I’m looking at stopping working soon, we can now have this time of our life’, and then their lives just fall apart.
“And also, people are getting sick, and dying — it all starts to happen at this age.
“I have this conversation a lot at work (on HomeAand Away) with the crew who I’ve worked with since I was 20 and it’s like, ‘Wow!’ At what point do you go, ‘Is work that important that I die before I get to do all the things I said I’d do before I retire?’
“You feel like at 60 you should have your life really sorted out and you should be able to double down on what you believe in.
“You find yourself asking a lot of questions.
“It’s a time in flux for a lot of people, and I find that interesting.”
It was why she jumped at the chance to get involved in the project.
Parker remains a series regular on Home And Away (she has played the character of Roo Stewart since 2010), but producers give her regular time away for other projects.
“I count myself incredibly lucky,” she says.
“I have done a lot of theatre — I guess I disappear for a while from screen, then come back, and it’s a bit like, ‘Oh! Here she is again!’.”
Parker is busier than ever — and before you ask, no, she has no plans to retire any time soon.
“I have got to say, if you are a lucky enough actor, you don’t retire — you just work less,” she laughs.
“But that does not seem to be happening to me at this time — I seem to be working a whole lot more, which I am very grateful for.”
