COVER STORY

The view from the top, albeit thrilling, can be disorienting — a fact the Australian supermodel Ajak Deng knows all too well. Standing just shy of six feet, Deng naturally towers over many in her company, but there are moments when even she can’t quite fathom the height. 

Take a recent skydiving experience.  “It was all fun and games until we reached 5,000 feet,” she says. “I was like, ‘This is it?’ And they were like, ‘No, we’ve got 10 more thousand feet to go.’”

Deng is afraid of high altitudes, and in the aftermath of the 2014 disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight 370 she developed a phobia of air travel, a major inconvenience for someone required to commute internationally for work. The skydiving, she explains, was an attempt to face — and hopefully quell — her fear. Peering down from her position in the sky, Deng could no longer see cars; far below, they looked like ants. “I said, ‘No, I changed my mind, I’m sorry. I’m not doing this,’ ” she recalls. “They’re like, ‘The plane can only land with [just] the pilot, so there’s only one way out.’ ” She jumped. 

The tactic worked. Not only did Deng conquer her fear of flying, but she became hooked on the adrenaline. “I want to go skydiving in Dubai over the Palm — my dream,” she says of the emirate’s palm tree-shaped human-made islands. Deng flew into Sydney for our interview from Brisbane, her home for the past 12 months and one of many relocations Deng has made in her 33 years. 

Born in 1989 against the backdrop of civil war in what is now South Sudan, Deng fled the country’s violence with her family to a Kenyan refugee camp, where she spent three years waiting for Australia to approve their visas. During this period, Deng’s mother died of malaria. Deng is the second eldest sibling and responsibility fell to her to care for her three sisters and four brothers. The death of her mother caught the attention of the authorities, and the family’s application for refugee status was expedited, allowing them to formally immigrate to Australia, where they settled in Melbourne. Deng was 12 years old.

This is a short extract from our newest issue.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of our new issue in newsagents nationally or buy to receive T Australia straight to your letterbox. You will find it on Page 56 of Issue #15, titled “Higher Purpose”.

The game is already won but the SCG still throbs with expectation. The Sydney Swans lead Geelong 101–69 in the Friday-night clash with under seven minutes to play. Yet when Lance “Buddy” Franklin collects an easy mark 30 metres from goal, the noise from the crowd is immense. People surge towards the Paddington end of the ground, clambering on top of advertising hoardings and scrambling onto the fringes of the oval, camera phones cocked at the ready. They’re primed to capture a moment of history. Franklin stands on 999 career goals and now has the chance to become only the sixth VFL/AFL player to reach the magic number of 1,000.

Ignoring the hubbub, Franklin steadies himself and takes stock. He eyes the  goal with wary respect, as if it’s a mountain he is yet to summit. He takes a deep breath, then lopes forward on those long limbs, breaking into a trot, before his left boot connects to send the ball arrowing straight between the posts. What follows is that special form of deranged euphoria that sport can occasionally unleash. Franklin is engulfed by hundreds of Swans fans, the grass of the oval turning red and white from the ocean of supporters who swarm the field to celebrate with their conquering hero.

Coming on March 25, 2022, after months and months of pandemic gloom, the response to Franklin’s 1,000th goal — that riot of untrammelled joy — felt necessary. “I loved it, I loved  it,” says Franklin when we speak on the phone. “It was such an amazing moment — to kick a thousand goals and have my closest family and friends there to witness it. That was something that I’ll cherish forever.”

Seen from another perspective, those scenes at the SCG were remarkable for being the first mass pitch invasion at an AFL ground since 2008. The man responsible for triggering the last one? A certain Lance Franklin, who provoked the delight of Hawthorn fans when he joined the exclusive ranks of the “Centurions” by kicking 100 goals in a single season. That Franklin is the common factor in both of these frenzies is no coincidence; it’s proof of the Buddy effect.

In 2013, the Swans prised Franklin from Hawthorn with a monster nine-year $10 million deal. It’s easy to forget how contentious the move was at the time. The Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons summed up the view of the naysayers, bellowing — in block capitals — “HAVE THE SWANS GOT FREAKING ROCKS IN THEIR HEADS?” Critics viewed Franklin as potentially disruptive to the Swans’ famously harmonious team culture. How would the player with a party boy reputation fare amid the bright lights of Sin City? What if injury sabotaged the lengthy deal? “I predict tears,” FitzSimons wrote.

But hindsight is not always cruel. One man who spoke out at the time, hailing the genius of the Swans’ move, was the celebrity agent Max Markson. Franklin, he suggested, had the potential to become Australia’s answer to Michael Jordan or David Beckham. “That $10 million deal — I’d probably double that now,” Markson tells me. “The Swans should’ve paid him more.”

In this sports-mad country, he explains, few sportspeople truly resonate on a national scale. The football codes, after all, are largely divided over regional lines. Tennis players and cricketers are big drawcards, sure, but they travel the world for much of the year, while swimmers, Markson points out, “are only seen once every two years at the Olympics or Commonwealth Games”. Fuelling the agent’s conviction that Franklin would be a hit was his recollection of Warwick Capper, who, allying his aerial majesty with his skin-tight shorts and blond mullet, had gone to the Swans in the mid-’80s and supercharged the AFL’s profile nationwide. Markson believed that Franklin could repeat the trick and live with far less pressure than he could in the AFL-obsessed fishbowl of Melbourne. “And Buddy has just been a superstar for the Swans,” says Markson. “He’s consistently performed and is just really, really talented.” 

Markson, of course, is right. You can’t unpack the Buddy Franklin phenomenon without marvelling at his dead-eyed brilliance on the oval. The 35-year-old is the fifth-greatest goal kicker in VFL/AFL history. Yet it’s not just the weight of numbers that makes him special, but also the quality of his strikes, his ability from distance and his unerring capacity to conjure something from nothing. His most famous goal from a lengthy highlights reel is still the 2010 masterpiece against Essendon, when he plucked a loose ball from the air and, with three bounces, escaped the clutches of Cale Hooker to accelerate down the left flank. The acuteness of the angle looked impossible, but Franklin somehow contrived to slot the ball home while running at full pace. It was a goal that showcased not only the player’s freakish athleticism, but also his audacity and ice-cold poise.

Such brilliance may seem instinctive but it’s the result of a lifetime of graft. Franklin has worked tirelessly to build himself into the footballer he has become. When he arrived at Hawthorn in 2004, he was a gangly beanpole: 199 centimetres tall, he weighed 87 kilograms and shocked the team’s fitness coach as he struggled to knock out a set of pull-ups. Determined to become more powerful, Franklin knuckled down in the gym. Today, he weighs 106 kilograms. His physique is relevant to his fame, too, because it makes him a conspicuous presence. You don’t have to be an AFL fan to recognise Franklin at a glance. 

Part of the reason his profile now transcends sport is his marriage to Jesinta Franklin (nee Campbell), a former Miss Universe Australia and one of the country’s most well-known models. “I remember when I was on Who magazine, we used to call them the Posh and Becks of Australia,” says Nicky Briger, now the editor of Marie Claire Australia. “I can’t think of a bigger power couple in Australia from that perspective of pop culture meets sport meets fashion. Buddy and Jesinta both amplify each other.” 

Illuminated by the paparazzi’s flashbulbs, the appeal of supercoupledom is nothing new. The world has been mesmerised by sparkly double acts since the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. But the currency of a power couple has never been as valuable as it is in the social media age. Brand sponsors now win extra visibility when the significant other supports their partner by promoting their content through likes or reposts. Such marketing clout is deepened by an emotional connection that is kindled by our soppiness for romance. 

When Franklin married Jesinta in 2016, he was catapulted into the hearts, minds and Insta feeds of a whole new audience. Take Marie Claire. As a women’s magazine, it’s not in the habit of anointing male cover stars. But, in 2018, Briger didn’t hesitate to put the Franklins on the cover, shooting the pair on Sydney’s Maroubra Beach at dawn to avoid the paparazzi. “The only other man we’ve had on the cover was George Clooney in his heyday,” she says. 

The upshot of all this is that sponsors fall over themselves to be associated with Franklin. His current partners include Zenith, Crown Hotels, Swisse, Telstra and the AFL, while he’s previously worked with Dior, Nike, Coach, Beats by Dre, Politix, Driza-Bone and Gatorade. The mix of brands reflects his breadth of appeal. All this makes sense from a marketing perspective, but there was a time when Franklin was a somewhat unlikely candidate for Australia’s most bankable athlete.

The last time I met Franklin was in Sydney on a Men’s Health cover shoot in 2017. Three things stood out. The first was that I’d never witnessed such protective management of a subject, with all questions highly vetted. It far exceeded anything you’d get with a Hollywood actor. The reason for this paranoid vigilance soon became apparent. Franklin is unusually shy. His wife attended the shoot purely for moral support. “He’s really nervous,” Jesinta told me. There was clearly a huge disparity between “Lance” as he introduced himself (the former country boy from Western Australia) and “Buddy” (the one-man superbrand). 

The final notable aspect was that Franklin is absurdly photogenic, with his rugged physicality, blue eyes and easy smile. The photographer couldn’t get a bad shot.

His bashful nature may stem from his humble beginnings. Franklin grew up in the outback, about 170 kilometres northeast of Perth, with four older sisters on a small hobby farm that had sheep, goats, horses and a pet donkey. “You know the movie ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’?” he says. “We actually lived on that road. We were literally out in the dirt, in the middle of nowhere.” Franklin’s father, Lance Snr, worked as bricklayer (the nickname “Buddy” emerged as a way to differentiate the pair) while his mother, Ursula, was a full-time mum. The nearest community was to be found in Dowerin, a sleepy wheatbelt town with a population of fewer than 500. “The local school was called Ejanding and it only had 12 or 13 kids in it,” he recalls. 

The soundtrack of Franklin’s childhood was the self-generated thump of leather against corrugated tin. “We had shearing sheds and painted these blue goalposts on them,” says Franklin. “I would spend hours and hours by myself, kicking the ball up against them.” This image of a young Franklin honing his craft alone in the dusty heat of a remote farm evokes inevitable parallels with another legend from Australia’s sporting mythology. Don Bradman famously practised by hitting a golf ball with a cricket stump against a water tank in his backyard in Bowral, New South Wales.

Along with dedication, Franklin had solid genetics to work with. Lance Snr not only gave his name to his son, but also his giant frame and, having played state hockey for Victoria, no shortage of hand-eye coordination. Ursula, meanwhile, was a handy netball player, while her brother Larry Kickett played football for East Perth and Claremont in the WAFL. “Sport was a huge, huge factor in our lives from a young age that would bring the family together,” says Franklin. “We’d all jump in the car on Saturday mornings, the girls would do netball and athletics, and I’d do football. My parents were huge on making sure that we got an education and sport was second for them. But if you were to ask me, I’d probably say it was the other way around.”

As a teenager, Franklin was awarded a sports scholarship to attend Wesley College in Perth, a school that has developed many a future AFL star, including Ben Cousins and Jarrad Schofield. “I’m forever grateful for the opportunity to go to such a prestigious school,” he says. “Without that chance, who knows? Maybe I wouldn’t be playing AFL — you never know. That school gave me an opportunity to get an education, but also to try my shot at football, too.” Franklin capitalised on it and, in 2004, he became the No. 5 draft pick by Hawthorn to launch his professional career. 

His belief in the life-changing value of education is, in fact, the reason for this interview. One of Franklin’s sponsors is the Swiss watch brand Zenith and, as part of the partnership, he collaborated on a timepiece inspired by the Australian outback. The result is a customised version of the Zenith Defy Extreme in which the dial is rendered in an orangey red with a texture inspired by the sacred site of Uluru. Only two watches were made: the first for Franklin himself; and the second was auctioned off for the Australian Literacy & Numeracy Foundation (ALNF), with all proceeds put towards books and learning supplies for children in Alice Springs. Support
for kids in marginalised communities is urgently needed, with the foundation reporting that 46 per cent of Aboriginal adults in Australia are “functionally illiterate”. “Obviously, myself being Indigenous, my kids being Indigenous, just to see what the charity do to raise awareness is unbelievable,” says Franklin, who has been a foundation ambassador since 2017. “I think sometimes we take education for granted — we think of it as a given. To see what the foundation is doing for Indigenous kids is fantastic.”

Franklin’s passion for this issue stems from his mother, a Whadjuk-Noongar woman. “I’m super-
proud of my heritage, where I come from and of my people,” he says. This sentiment is illustrated by the tattoos on his left arm. Just below his shoulder is a portrait of an Aboriginal Elder playing the didgeridoo that melds into a series of Indigenous-inspired motifs. “Next to the picture of the old fella, it’s all about land, kangaroos, the bush,” he says. “It’s just telling a story about hunting and where we come from, really. But it’s a pretty special piece of artwork that really means a lot to me.”

That Franklin cares deeply about Indigenous matters is indisputable. Yet what’s also notable is how cagey he is when discussing them. At one point, leading on from a remark he made about his mum, I ask Franklin whether she ever talked about her experience growing up as an Aboriginal woman. The reply comes back polite but firm: “That’s a touchy subject; if we could just leave that question out.” Trying to contextualise the ALNF’s work, I ask about a trip he made with Hawthorn’s Indigenous players to Alice Springs and the Top End in 2009. Did he see anything confronting that broadened his awareness of Aboriginal life? Once again, Franklin deflects. “Definitely, it was eye-opening,” he eventually concedes. “But it just made me so proud of my people and my heritage.”

This guarded approach is Franklin’s stock tactic for broaching a subject that is, of course, incredibly complex, emotive and fraught. Any divergence from it is rare. But in 2020, following the death of George Floyd in the United States, Franklin entered the discussion with a six-part Instagram post highlighting racial injustice and the fact that “Indigenous Australians make up three per cent of the population and about 30 per cent of the prison population”. Since then, that impassioned blast has been removed from Franklin’s feed, which is now dominated by sponsored posts. 

Watching the footballer’s careful dance around the subject brings to mind Barack Obama’s words on the dilemma facing any high-profile personality of colour. “Many times, America is quick to embrace a Michael Jordan or an Oprah Winfrey, or a Barack Obama,” the former president said in the Netflix documentary series “The Last Dance”. “So long as it’s understood that you don’t get too controversial around broader issues of social justice.”

Dr Tom Heenan, who lectures on sport and Australian culture at Monash University, suggests Franklin’s ambivalence about openly discussing such matters is unsurprising. “Buddy’s family have memories of the Stolen Generations,” he says. “These people didn’t talk about who they were, because to talk about that would mean you could be removed. So it is understandable that Buddy wouldn’t talk about family background. He’s also seen what happens to other people who have spoken out. He’s seen the racist taunting of Adam Goodes and how that affected him.”

Goodes, who won two Brownlow Medals and two premierships, was subjected to terrible abuse after he was named Australian of the Year and subsequently made comments about his Aboriginality and race relations. Franklin played alongside Goodes at the Swans and, in a 2014 match against the Western Bulldogs, the pair were racially vilified from the stands. Such incidents are still depressingly common in football. When the AFL Players’ Association released its Insights & Impact Report in September, it found that almost a third of Indigenous AFL athletes and players of colour had experienced racism. 

The fact this is still such a live issue may explain Franklin’s reticence. However,  Dr Heenan believes the Franklins have found another way to articulate their position, with Jesinta increasingly becoming the couple’s public voice on social matters. In 2019, during a radio interview with Sydney’s KIISS FM, she upbraided the host Kyle Sandilands for the ignorant way he referred to her husband’s heritage. The following year, Jesinta penned a column for Stellar magazine that explained why she wouldn’t celebrate Australia Day on January 26. “I have seen my husband well up when talking about his mum and how she used to have to run away with her siblings when they knew the government trucks were coming to take them away from their parents,” she wrote.

“Jesinta is far more ‘out there’ when it comes to Indigenous issues,” Dr Heenan says. “She seems to be the mouthpiece for him, because it’s just easier for her to speak about these things as she’s not a Black person in a football code that really does still have problems with its treatment of First Nations’ players.”

Franklin may not be a vocal advocate on such matters, but Dr Heenan says he expresses himself in a different mode. It was Goodes who highlighted how football was originally an Indigenous game, citing an 1881 book called “Australian Aborigines” that describes how for tribes in western Victoria, “one of the favourite games is football”, a sport played with a possum-skin ball filled with pounded charcoal bound together with kangaroo sinew. “Buddy would’ve been aware of football as an expression of Indigeneity,” says Dr Heenan. “It seems to me, at times, he plays
with that expression: ‘This is my game. This is my domain.’ His assertion of power on the football field is a comment in itself.”

Franklin, of course, is a footballer, not a politician, and is self-aware enough to know that silver-tongued oratory isn’t his primary skill. “I hope that that’s OK, mate,” he says at the end of our interview. “I’m not the best at talking about myself.” Fortunately, in his line of work greatness is measured in deeds, not words, and Franklin is aware of that power, too.

That’s why, after scoring his 1,000th goal, Franklin posted a picture of himself on Instagram from the Swans’ locker room. Despite it being his long-awaited moment of personal glory, Franklin’s head is turned from the camera, allowing the focus to centre on the Aboriginal flag draped over his back. “It’s about breaking down those barriers,” he says of the post. “It’s about giving our Indigenous people that platform to go, ‘You know what? If Lance Franklin can make it — or if any successful person that’s Indigenous can make it — I can be successful in this world, too.’ If a young kid looks at that picture and thinks, ‘You know what? I can succeed at something if I put my mind to it’; if that happens, then I’ve done my job.” The picture has no verbal caption, just three heart emojis in red, yellow and black.

This is an extract from our newest issue.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of our new issue in newsagents nationally or subscribe to receive T Australia straight to your letterbox. You will find it on Page 66 of Issue #10, titled “Buddy Franklin”.

Off camera, Miranda Otto and Teresa Palmer are a fascinating pairing: Otto with her signature red mane and regal poise, every inch the award-winning acting legend, and Palmer radiating a natural charisma that is evident in her string of Hollywood movie roles. Both women live in Los Angeles, but their paths, until now, have hardly crossed. It’s taken the chilling tale of a Melbourne cult accused of abducting and brainwashing children to finally bring the two Australian acting exports together. Now, on the small screen, as mother and daughter, they are forever bonded, at least in streaming history.

Otto plays the cult leader Adrienne Beaufort with an unnerving undercurrent of malevolence in “The Clearing” (now streaming on Disney+; all episodes available from 5 July), an adaptation of a loosely fictional 2019 book by JP Pomare. The thriller takes inspiration from cults and their leaders throughout history including The Family, led by the yoga teacher Anne Hamilton-Byrne, who drew followers from Melbourne’s elite in the 1960s and ’70s with a mix of Christianity, Eastern mysticism and apocalyptic prophecy. 

While Adrienne seems the epitome of evil, Otto tells T Australia: “I try not to judge characters. You really have to just be inside it, seeing it from their point of view. 

“I found her fascinating as a totally self-made person,” she continues, “who completely reinvents herself into the person she wants to be. She keeps herself away from a fair amount of the ugliness of the situation but, yes, there is a lot of weight in what’s going on.”

Palmer plays Freya, a woman forced to face the demons of her past in order to stop the kidnapping and coercion of children. As a mother of four, Palmer says she grew to understand her character. “I could relate to her in terms of just wanting the best for your children,” she says. “This is a woman who’s picking up the shattered pieces of her life to try and tend to her son, and grappling with these gaping wounds of her past. 

“I love that both fragility and strength coexist within her while she’s putting one foot in front of the other,” she continues. “And I found that a beautiful thing to put on screen — this woman trying her hardest to change the narrative for her son and to create something that she was never afforded.”

Otto is assisted in her role not only by a formidable acting pedigree, but by costuming that includes a distinctive white-blonde wig and an unexpectedly covetable retro wardrobe. Says Guy Pearce, who also stars in the series: “We were surprised each time she turned up in some new vision of ’70s glamour.”

“In finding characters, I really rely on costume designers,” explains Otto. During her childhood in Brisbane and Newcastle, with her mother, Lindsay, and father, the actor Barry Otto, she designed costumes for scripts that she wrote with friends. “I feel that if you can look it, you can pretend to be it,” she says. “It can give you enormous confidence.” 

Not that the actress needs twin sets and pearls to convince anyone that her star shines brightly. She is, according to Pearce, “the ultimate professional, utterly prepared always but, more importantly, alive with instincts and awareness that can’t be taught”.

Palmer’s approach is slightly different: for her, an effective performance has roots in the personal. “You can’t help but draw on your own ways of being when you’re colouring a character,” she says. “So much of it stems from who you are and the way you see the world.”

Off screen, Palmer says she seeks out “authentic, intimate, revealing conversations where you can be vulnerable”. The actress now lives in the Beachwood Canyon area of LA, but she comes from more humble beginnings. Her parents separated when she was three, and in the years after that Palmer mostly lived in public housing with her mother, Paula, whom she calls her best friend and “the sweetest, most generous, innocent person you’ll ever meet”. 

As for becoming an actress, Palmer once told Vogue Australia: “I think my dream was born out of escapism, because I grew up in a really loving environment, but my mum had some mental health challenges and I just channelled a lot of my emotions through acting.” Her big break was winning a talent contest in Adelaide in 2003, before being cast in the Australian independent film “2:37”, about a high-school suicide, for which she was nominated for an Australian Film Institute Award for Best Lead Actress. 

On the day we talk over Zoom, Palmer is doing double duty, discussing her acting career while nursing her sleeping daughter, Prairie Moon — something she manages to make look both effortless and oddly glamorous. She and her husband, the actor and director Mark Webber, have three more young children — sons Bodhi Rain and Forest Sage, and daughter Poet Lake — and share custody of Isaac Love, Webber’s son from a previous relationship.

Palmer is also the co-founder of the wellness supplement company Lovewell and the parenting website Your Zen Mama, which gives her a platform to talk to other women about fertility, pregnancy and conscious communication with children. “I love that part of my life; it sparks joy in me,” she says. 

The family eats a plant-based diet, she tells me, and then laughs when she recalls the time a film crew came to her property and she insisted on rescuing snails from a garden path before allowing the crew to enter the pool area. Of her daunting schedule, Palmer says: “It’s always a juggle. Mark and I tag team and my mum is often with us. We also have non-negotiables: I need one hour alone without anyone asking me for anything, and I usually use that time to have a bath. I’m tired a lot of the time, but I wouldn’t change any of it for anything.” In fact, she says: “I’d have more children. I’ve always wanted a really big family, but I’m in a season of work right now and I’m lapping up every minute of opportunity.”

Over the past decade, Palmer has starred with Liam Hemsworth in “Love and Honor”; Billy Bob Thornton in “Cut Bank”; Christian Bale in “Knight of Cups”; and Chadwick Boseman, Luke Evans and Alfred Molina in “Message From the King”. Next year, she will appear opposite the heartthrob Ryan Gosling in the big-budget action movie “The Fall Guy” (she describes him as “such a beautiful, kind person”).

Her husband is a long-time advocate for the homeless and the couple helps raise funds for the cause, which is also championed by Webber’s mother, the American anti-poverty advocate Cheri Lynn Honkala. 

Otto, who has been happily married for two decades, has said little publicly about her husband, Peter O’Brien, a fellow actor she met during a Sydney Theatre Company production of “A Doll’s House” (she told one media outlet,  “I knew we were right for each other”). The two have a daughter, Darcey, 18, and live in West Hollywood, though Otto admits she isn’t a fan of the paparazzi’s invasion of everyday life and the obsession with “presentation of self 24/7”. 

Her long and successful career has involved sharing the spotlight with such actors as Jim Caviezel, Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise in such milestone movies as “The Thin Red Line” (1998), “What Lies Beneath” (2000) and “War of The Worlds” (2005). Otto worked with O’Brien on “Through My Eyes” (2004), a television miniseries about Lindy Chamberlain, and, more recently,
on the crime caper “The Unusual Suspects” (2021), in which their daughter also stars. 

Asked if Darcey may follow her parents into acting, Otto says: “Having grown up with two actor parents, she sees the business quite realistically. There’s never any secure, absolute certainty. You have to have a strong sense of yourself and you have to be really passionate about taking it on.” But, she adds, “What I find really encouraging is that Darcey doesn’t just see this business as a place where young women end up as actresses. She’s interested in directing, or editing …”

Now that Darcey has almost finished school, Otto is discovering the benefits of her own new-found freedom. “I’ve turned down roles because I felt I couldn’t miss the last months of Darcey’s schooling,” she says. No more. Otto has just wrapped the fantasy-adventure film “The Portable Door” — again with a knockout wardrobe — alongside Sam Neill and the Academy Award winner Christoph Waltz, under the direction of Jeffrey Walker, of “The Clearing”, whose other credits include the television hits “Lambs of God” (2019) and “Modern Family” (2009–2020). (Otto’s half-sister, Gracie, joined Walker and the mostly female cast and crew to co-direct “The Clearing”.)

In July, Otto will appear in the Australian horror film “Talk to Me”, the directorial debut of the YouTube stars Danny and Michael Philippou. Then there’s the Kenji Kamiyama-directed prequel to Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” film trilogy, “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim”, to be released in 2024. For Otto, it means revisiting  a “hugely empowering” role that required her to ride into battle swinging a sword. She won a SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture for her portrayal of the shieldmaiden Éowyn and still
has the original sword at home.  

Both Otto and Palmer believe that the battle for women’s equality in the entertainment industry is slowly being won. “Television, even more so than streaming, has had a huge effect on a wider range of women’s roles,” says Otto, who, in the past two years, returned to Australia to star in the critically acclaimed ABC drama series “Fires”, about the 2019–2020 bushfires, and in the Netflix comedy series “Wellmania”, in which she plays a celebrity sex therapist. “Shows that allow characters to develop over one or many seasons mean really good, meaty roles that are more creatively exciting than playing somebody’s wife,” she says.

It was Otto’s mother, a fashion designer and retailer, who taught her that women should not be valued for their looks alone. “She’s a self-made woman so I have seen her as someone who could stand on her own feet, and that’s the kind of thing that fills you up with confidence,” says Otto.

Palmer concurs that roles for women today are “not always just playing the love interest, which I think was most of my roles in my early 20s”. One of her favourites: portraying the jockey Michelle Payne in the 2019 biopic “Ride Like a Girl”, directed by Rachel Griffiths, her co-star from 2016’s “Hacksaw Ridge”. “I love being directed by females,” says Palmer. “They just have a different perspective. And I love watching films with a strong female lead. I still get stopped on the street by people saying what an impact that movie made on them.”

In the British television series “A Discovery of Witches” (2018–2022), Palmer and her co-star, Matthew Goode, enjoyed “favoured nations”, an industry expression for equal contractual terms. “I am hearing more about situations like that, so I feel like the narrative is changing,” she says. “Although we’re not there yet.” Another example of progress Palmer notes is the careful supervising of sex scenes by “intimacy coordinators”. 

Playing opposite Otto has been a career highlight for Palmer. “I’ve always been a huge fan of her characters and her work ethic, and I’ve heard so much about her through the years because I’m friends with Gracie,” she says. For her part, Otto says Palmer is “such a great casting for Freya because she seems to carry the weight of this past history of the character, but she doesn’t let it weigh down every scene”.

Although the women have arrived at the same place via their own distinct paths, their beliefs about the nature of success are strikingly similar. “It’s finding the things that really light a fire in you and make you happy, and being able to pursue those,” says Otto. “On some days, for me, that’s just managing to make my way to work or complete a recipe and it actually turns out, and the other days it’s finding a way to make a scene or a particular character work.”

For Palmer, it’s “getting to be a mum but also getting to do what I love as a career … The fact that they coexist is wonderful and every day I feel grateful for that.”

This is an extract from our newest issue.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of our new issue in newsagents nationally or subscribe to receive T Australia straight to your letterbox. You will find it on Page 56 of Issue #13, titled “The Other Woman”.

Off camera, Miranda Otto and Teresa Palmer are a fascinating pairing: Otto with her signature red mane and regal poise, every inch the award-winning acting legend, and Palmer radiating a natural charisma that is evident in her string of Hollywood movie roles. Both women live in Los Angeles, but their paths, until now, have hardly crossed. It’s taken the chilling tale of a Melbourne cult accused of abducting and brainwashing children to finally bring the two Australian acting exports together. Now, on the small screen, as mother and daughter, they are forever bonded, at least in streaming history.

Otto plays the cult leader Adrienne Beaufort with an unnerving undercurrent of malevolence in “The Clearing” (now streaming on Disney+; all episodes available from 5 July), an adaptation of a loosely fictional 2019 book by JP Pomare. The thriller takes inspiration from cults and their leaders throughout history including The Family, led by the yoga teacher Anne Hamilton-Byrne, who drew followers from Melbourne’s elite in the 1960s and ’70s with a mix of Christianity, Eastern mysticism and apocalyptic prophecy. 

While Adrienne seems the epitome of evil, Otto tells T Australia: “I try not to judge characters. You really have to just be inside it, seeing it from their point of view. 

“I found her fascinating as a totally self-made person,” she continues, “who completely reinvents herself into the person she wants to be. She keeps herself away from a fair amount of the ugliness of the situation but, yes, there is a lot of weight in what’s going on.”

Palmer plays Freya, a woman forced to face the demons of her past in order to stop the kidnapping and coercion of children. As a mother of four, Palmer says she grew to understand her character. “I could relate to her in terms of just wanting the best for your children,” she says. “This is a woman who’s picking up the shattered pieces of her life to try and tend to her son, and grappling with these gaping wounds of her past. 

“I love that both fragility and strength coexist within her while she’s putting one foot in front of the other,” she continues. “And I found that a beautiful thing to put on screen — this woman trying her hardest to change the narrative for her son and to create something that she was never afforded.”

This is a short extract from our newest issue.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of our new issue in newsagents nationally or subscribe to receive T Australia straight to your letterbox. You will find it on Page 56 of Issue #13, titled “The Power of Two”.

I hear Jacob Elordi before I see him. “Hey, guys!” he shouts from another room in the hotel suite we’re shooting in, moments before his six-foot-five frame enters the living room. “Great to meet you,” the 25-year-old says, his hand outstretched to shake. Elordi’s voice is deep, with a faint American inflection betraying the Brisbane-raised actor’s Hollywood address, a move he made in 2017 to take a gamble on the Los Angeles audition circuit. 

The difference a few years can make is head-spinning. After relocating, Elordi endured a string of casting call noes and his bank account dwindled to just a few hundred dollars. On more than one occasion he was forced to sleep in his car. Now he is working alongside some of the industry’s most venerated talents: he stars in the director Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming feature “Saltburn” alongside Rosamund Pike and Carey Mulligan, and he recently wrapped production on the Sofia Coppola-directed Priscilla Presley biopic, “Priscilla”. “It’s like something that you would think of in a dream, and then it coming true and then having to live it — it was really nothing short of magic,” he says of being directed by Coppola. “And she’s a really beautiful, calm person. I just learned so much about filmmaking.”

Elordi recognises that his ascent, though not unique, has been uncommonly swift. He broke ground and gained public attention (and millions of Instagram followers) through his portrayal of the bad boy Noah Flynn in Netflix’s three-part film series “The Kissing Booth”, before joining the ensemble cast of HBO’s hedonistic drama “Euphoria”, set at the fictional East Highland High School. In the latter, Elordi portrays toxic masculinity incarnate Nate Jacobs, a psychologically volatile quarterback who favours violence over vulnerability. He notes that his approach to character preparation differs for each role he undertakes; to channel the mindset of the polarising jock, for example, Elordi studied the behaviour of TikTok-famous “gym bros” and predatory sharks. 

Some actors, when speaking to the benefits of a serialised performance, cite cast and crew camaraderie or the long-term devotion of fans. For Elordi, recurring roles provide something different: a do-over. “Often when you’re making a film, you’ll do a scene and it’ll haunt you for years,” he says. “[Television] gives you an opportunity to maybe right your wrongs.”

This reference to redemption hints at an intensity, or perfectionism, that is inherent in Elordi’s approach to his craft. In a 2022 interview for the podcast series “The Edge”, produced by Tag Heuer, he discloses his longstanding relationship with self-doubt and self-criticism, and speaks of how he is unable to watch his performance playback objectively (“not even for a second”). “I quite enjoy being highly critical of myself. It makes me demand a certain quality of work,” he tells the interviewer.

Tag Heuer is the reason for his brief return to Australia. Last year, Elordi was appointed an ambassador for the luxury watchmaker, a position also held by fellow actors Chris Hemsworth and Ryan Gosling. A brand event later this evening marking the 60th anniversary of Tag Heuer’s Carrera model doubles as an Elordi family reunion. On the T Australia set, backdropped by Steve McQueen’s 1968 film “Bullitt”, which is playing on the nearby television, Elordi and his older sister, Isabella, discuss camera settings while their mother, Melissa, offers everyone coffee.

Elordi is mindful when choosing whom he surrounds himself with. His relationship with Tag Heuer, is “about working with good people”, he says. Shared values play an important role in the actor’s creative collaborations and it’s why he enjoys working with Isabella, a photographer. “Having your picture taken is kind of a super vulnerable, uncomfortable thing, so doing it with my sister is just like being a kid,” he says. “We used to take pictures and make all sorts of things all the time.” 

References to childhood provoke reflections on time. Is Elordi a nostalgic person or a futurist? Is he adept at living in the moment? “I think we’re kind of all damned to look to the past and to the future,” he says. “Every now and then you find that sweet spot where your feet are on the ground and you’re kind of really taking part in a moment.” He pauses. “But I don’t think you can live there for very long.”

The archetypal Australian leading man is larrikin-leaning: mischievous, rowdy and big-hearted. On first impression, one might paint this actor with the same brush — physically, certainly, Elordi is larger than life. But our time together reveals a more introspective individual, an erudite cinephile who takes his work seriously and seeks to occupy a more serious leading man position. 

His idols speak to the blueprint Elordi is following. The list includes Brando, Olivier, Bale, Ledger and McQueen — screen legends whose oeuvre and success he one day hopes to emulate. “It’s quite an eclectic bunch of people,” Elordi says of the through line connecting his professional heroes. “I think the thing that carries through is a kind of respect, and a respect for — if there were to be such thing as a craft — a dedication to this singular thing which is performance.

“I appreciate that bravado in all of them,” he continues, “choosing this performance to be their religion and their faith, and the kind of intensity in the way they pursue it.”

Despite his past admission of self-doubt, Elordi’s demeanour suggests a seasoned interviewee and a performer who backs himself wholly. The podcast interview affirms my hunch: “It would be remiss of me not to say there’s this pit somewhere in my stomach that’s deeply, deeply confident in the work that I do,” he said. In conversation with him, it’s easy to forget he is just 25. How lucky for us that Elordi’s got nothing but time. 

This is a short extract from our newest issue.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of our new issue in newsagents nationally or subscribe to receive T Australia straight to your letterbox. You will find it on Page 56 of Issue #12, titled “Taking the Lead”.