Source : the age
Laughter might not come easily to the characters Leah Purcell plays: taciturn police sergeant Andie Whitford in High Country; fierce but distraught Molly Johnson in The Drover’s Wife; double-crossed undercover cop, now prisoner, Rita Connors in Wentworth.
But asked why she thinks audiences have embraced her High Country character, she erupts in raucous and infectious laughter. “Maybe they just like me … everyone fell in love with me!”
As an actor, director, producer and playwright, Purcell has forged a remarkably varied and successful career playing fierce and tough-minded women battling adversity and hardship. It’s what lies beneath that hard surface that is key to her appeal.
What Lies Beneath is also the subtitle of the returning season of the mystery thriller High Country, which sees Whitford back in uniform and investigating dark deeds in a small, close-knit town.
For those coming in late – no spoilers – High Country evolves around Purcell’s police officer Andie, who is transferred to a picturesque but insular mountain township of Brokenridge to replace retiring cop Sergeant Sam Dyson (Ian McElhinney, the veteran Northern Ireland actor best known as Barristan Selmy in Game of Thrones).
It’s a town filled with grievances, suspicion and vendettas and a handful of missing-person cases. Those disappearances dovetail with the discovery of a far-reaching conspiracy involving many of the town’s residents.
Alongside the mystery-thriller element, High Country also dealt with Andie’s new-found connection to her Indigenous ancestry and relationships with partner Helen (Sara Wiseman), teenage daughter Kirra (Pez Warner) and ageing mother (Melissa Jaffer).
It was filmed in Victoria’s high country, mainly around the township of Jamieson, which is where John Ridley – who created the show with Marcia Gardner – grew up and continues to live. The dramatic mountain landscape is a key element of the show. It also happens to be a region associated with many real-world events, from missing hikers to the cult known as The Family and most recently the notorious fugitive Dezi Freeman.
Purcell wears many hats on High Country. In addition to playing the lead, she is an executive producer, which allows her to have input to the script and key production decisions. She is also the cultural consultant, ensuring all protocols are correctly carried out. That haunting voice on the opening soundtrack is hers as well.
The new season takes up months after the events of the 2024 debut. It kicks off with a double murder on a houseboat, but there are many continuing storylines and characters, most notably Sam Dyson and Andie’s family.
Purcell says that many decisions regarding the new, eight-episode series were based on audience feedback. “Everyone fell in love with their relationship,” she says of Andie and Sam.
“We both thoroughly enjoyed working with one another. So we kept [the storyline] open and everyone’s diaries aligned and away we went,” she says. “He’s a great bloke and phenomenal actor and the story lent itself to opening up that relationship. It’s a thriller, so there’s many threads to the story, and it’s a great thread to have him being a part of.”
Audiences also felt that Andie’s domestic relationships were authentic. “Pez [Warner] reminded me of myself,” says Purcell. “She had no training, comes from Newcastle, is a little go-getter. We all have a great relationship and I think that comes across clearly in the first season.”
Andie has now settled into her job and has begun to understand the lay of the land. But she remains very isolated. Work is her life, her family. We only see her wearing her dark blue uniform. “That was all part of trying to show her isolation and what she’s put herself in at home.”
The new cast includes Brendan Cowell as a gnarly, surly and possibly shifty detective who has a contemptuous history with Dyson, as well as a troubling personal connection to the victims of the houseboat murder.
Purcell has played opposite Cowell on stage, describing him as deep and very smart. She credits Ridley and Gardner for allowing actors to “mould the words to suit their mouths. Brendan is very clever with that shorthand, which suits his character … the abruptness and poeticness around some of his lines.”
Season two of High Country has a noticeably different palette and setting to the first, which was dictated by the seasons in which the filming took place. “The lakes were down. So you utilise what you’ve got. He [John Ridley] said it’s a great way for any secrets that are hidden in that man-made lake [to be revealed]. When the water goes down, the secrets will rise and that’s what happens.”
Where season one was all lush and damp forests, season two is a baked and receding lake (the actual Lake Eildon), a barren mine and the glare of summer.
“We utilised that in the story, the change of landscape,” says Purcell. “The hardness of a mine, the masculinity in this story. It was all a hardened approach to the various landscapes up there. Turn one way and you’ve got lush mountains. Turn and you’ve got a mine shaft. That was all deliberate, just working with the landscape and the time of year we could shoot.”
Purcell believes that the success of High Country in the UK and US, where it aired on BBC and Hulu respectively, was due to it breaking the mould of what Australian stories are normally about. Instead of red-hot desert, viewers saw snow, mountains and greenery.
But mostly, she says, it was down to the character. “That’s what you want from your leading lady, that the audience falls in love with the character and what she was going through. And it’s a First Nations story, that was something else that makes this different. A woman trying to work out who she is and there happened to be this First Nations connection to Country.
“It wasn’t just the landscape; the landscape was talking. A lot of people thought that was a great addition to our cop story.”
Purcell recently added librettist to her extensive list of credits, having written the opera adaptation of her play, film and novel The Drover’s Wife, which is also being turned into a TV series. The series “is not what people think. It starts with Molly Johnson’s six-times granddaughter in 2020. We’ve flipped it, coming at it from a different perspective. It’s not just the movie in six episodes. We always try to find a different way into those stories.”
There’s nothing accidental about Purcell’s confidence and skill as a TV creator.
“People have said, ‘Leah you’re so easy to shoot’. Because I understand what they need, what the camera person needs. It’s experience, and time. It’s a talent to be at one with the camera, just me and it. It’s a talent that you learn if you’re aware of it. Some people can be in the industry forever, and it’s not quite their thing, but I’ve had a couple of DOPs come up to me and say you’re so easy to shoot because you understand what the camera is doing.”
She recalls one of her first roles on Police Rescue. “It was my training ground. I would sit and watch and understand when the camera was moving or crept in for a close-up. When Steadicam came in, that was magic, that was like dancing.
“I love that challenge. Sometimes you can get caught up for a very long time trying to get the take if you don’t understand what they’re trying to achieve with the camera. So I would ask them, what do you need from me? It’s all very clinical, it’s maths when you break it down. It’s our job to make it look natural. I learned very early that the relationship other than [with] your fellow actor is with the camera.”
But even after 35 years in the business and despite a full slate of future projects, she takes little for granted. “It’s a tough industry, but you’ve got to believe. I’ve created paths and proven myself that I can hold a show. We’re a small industry, so everyone wants a piece of a very small pie. We keep chipping away and hoping that our stories come through and rise to the surface.
“As they say – what lies beneath,” which prompts another hearty laugh.
High Country: What Lies Beneath premieres on Monday, September 14, on Binge.
