Many Australians have grown up watching Georgie Parker on All Saints and Home and Away. Editor in Chief Michelle Giglio chats to Georgie about her new Paramount+ drama Dalliance, an exploration of love and life in your sixties.
It’s an intriguing question: would you ‘rent’ out your partner for the night? This dilemma is posed soon after the opening scene of new Paramount+ series Dalliance. Retired cameraman Billy (played with great gusto by Hugo Weaving), is on a ferry watching boats racing in Sydney Harbour. He strikes up a flirty conversation with onboard chef Dani (Heather Mitchell).
The electricity from a summer storm steams up the encounter, but nothing salacious happens and Dani ends up driving Billy home to wife Rose. The women get talking over a few wines, and Rose offers to ‘rent’ out her husband to Dani, who needs a date for an event.
It’s almost seems like Indecent Proposal reversed – for seniors. But as the episode evolves, it becomes clear that Dalliance is about a lot more than basic instinct, exploring life, love and sex in your sixties through the at times hilarious interactions of a close group of friends. Sex romp in a campervan? You bet!
“I think the surprising thing is that a lot of people, 60-year-olds included, have the assumption that they’ve settled into a certain life,” Georgie Parker, 61, says. “You’ve worked, if you’re lucky enough, you’ve been married, you’ve had children. Then you settle down and enjoy the rest of your life.
Georgie’s character Rose in Dalliance (above) ends up ‘not quite telling the truth’ to protect herself
“And when things happen, like there’s loss, or a marriage breakup, or friendships break up, then everything falls apart. You’re starting again or you’re trying to redefine yourself in your sixties, and what Dalliance helps explore is that just when you think you’ve got life sorted out, you don’t.”
The six-part series was filmed in suburbs across Sydney, including the Clovelly Bowling Club with its million-dollar views across the Pacific Ocean. As the music of Paul Kelly and The Angels peppers the soundtrack, you get a familiar feeling of a life that could be anyone’s in Australia. People with problems we can all relate to – an unhappy marriage, a partner who never shows up, sibling rivalry and a sniff of infidelity. Wherever you are on your life journey, these are issues we may all face sooner or later.
Georgie’s character Rose and Billy have been happily married for 40 years. They are ‘the solid couple’ for their group of friends. “Rose has complete faith and trust in this man, the only man she’s loved for her whole life,” Georgie says, setting the scene. “They have weathered everything. They’ve parented a beautiful child together. They have an unshakable relationship.”
So when Rose has no hesitation allowing Dani to borrow Billy as her ‘plus one’ for a night, and then an ‘event’ causes things to unravel, we are left questioning her decision. “These aren’t perfect people, making perfect decisions,” Georgie points out.
“Life is life, and it just happens to you no matter what age you are.”
This leads to Rose not quite lying, but ‘not telling the truth’ either. “As opposed to lying, it’s a protection,” Georgie explains. “She’s incapable of digesting the events in a way that’s proportionate enough for her to have conversations that are truthful.
Dalliance dream team: David Wenham, Heather Mitchell, Hugo Weaving and Georgie
“She protects herself from having the conversation. And that happens in life all the time.
“But you would never call it a lie. When you lie, you are protecting someone. Someone may ask ‘How are you?’ and you reply: ‘I’m fine.’ How often is that not the case? So is that a lie? Or is that, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t talk about it. I have to protect myself.’”
Home and Away: Georgie has had a 16-year partnership with on-screen dad Ray Meagher, who plays Alf
For someone who turned 61 last year, Georgie has thought long and hard about ‘getting older.’ “I think you come to realise in your fifties that your life is actually still as vibrant and tumultuous as ever and things are still happening, and why would it stop at 60? Or 70? So you realise life is life, and it just happens to you no matter what age you are.”
The cast is dotted with many of Australia’s most well-known and loved actors, including Weaving (The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Love Me) David Wenham (Elvis, Sea Change) and Catherine McClements (The Family Next Door), with some new faces like Kate Winter (The Witcher). All the main actors are aged in their sixties and have worked together on and off over the decades.
Weaving and Georgie first worked together when she was 23 and he 27, on Dadah is Death: A Long Way from Home, the story of Australian heroin traffickers Barlow and Chambers who were hung in Malaysia for their crimes. “Hugo had a photo from that, because we were a couple in the show,” Georgie recalls. “And he gave that to the art department on Dalliance and said, ‘Use this as one of our honeymoon shots.’ And it’s just priceless. He looks so cool and I’ve got a perm and it’s just hilarious!’”
Heather and Georgie have known each other since their mid-20s when they did a radio play. “We’ve worked on quite a few things together, and she’s been a beautiful friend for all that time. And Catherine McClements and I worked on a couple of things together back in the day and I adore her.”
I ask Georgie how these existing relationships and friendships influence the dynamic on set. “What, being old?!” she laughs.
“One of the main things you bring to the table when you’re 60 is 40 years of experience. And that is invaluable to any room that you can be in. Whether you’re a 60 year old man or woman, you’ve had 40 years of experience, if you’re lucky enough in the job that you love, which is as rare as hen’s teeth anyway.
“It enables you to have deeper conversations about things, so the conversations were lively and intelligent.
“And I think it shows in the scenes and in the fact that the characters are complex and no one’s straight up and no one’s a cliche.
“Every character is unique and complicated and interesting for all those reasons.”
Combined with newcomers, it created a ‘healthy, really wonderful, exciting set to be on,’ Georgie adds.
Many Australians would know Georgie from her time as Nurse Lucy on A Country Practice, Nurse/Nun Terri on All Saints, and for the last 16 years, Roo Stewart on 7’s Home and Away. With an acting career so expansive and diverse, it’s almost like Georgie is the familiar ‘girl next door’ for so many generations.
Theatre is Georgie’s first love, seen here in action at Kirribilli’s Ensemble Theatre last year for How to Plot a Hit in Two Days
“I’ve been in people’s homes a lot, with A Country Practice and then Fire and All Saints and lots of other shows I’ve done. I’ve been very fortunate. I do not remember half my work!”
Daughter Holly arrived while Georgie was in the thick of it 26 years ago, with screen writer husband Steve Worland (of Paper Planes fame, amongst other award-winning titles). “A lot of the huge chunks of work that I forget was when I was a new mother and just getting through things, working 14-hour days with a baby. It was just impossible.”
It may have seemed impossible, but Georgie won not one, but two Gold Logies in the two years after Holly arrived for Most Popular Personality on Australian Television in 2001 and 2002 (while at All Saints).
“I think there was a period in my thirties and my forties where I was exhausted all the time. And since my fifties and sixties I’ve been reinvigorated again. I’m excited about the amount of work that’s coming my way – and there is a lot of work coming my way.
“I’m grabbing it with both hands and saying, ‘Thank you very much’ because I’m happy to admit to myself now that I love hard work. I don’t like easy work. I want it to be hard.
“I want it to be challenging because then you’re stretching yourself and you’re exploring new things about how your job works. Because an actor’s job is not finite. And it’s also not precise. There are always these multiple tiers to the work you do.
“And I take that very seriously and I love it.”
I ask Georgie why she still turns up to Summer Bay to act in one of Australia’s longest-running television dramas, Home and Away, filmed at Palm Beach.
“I have a family to feed!” she laughs. She adds in a more serious tone: “It’s a great community there. The crew are people I worked with when I was doing A Country Practice. So this is a family I know very well. And also it’s steady work, which in this job, doesn’t exist anymore. There is no other show on in the Australian landscape that gives work consistently to actors and crew and production people that Home and Away does. So it’s a huge, valuable resource for our industry.
“I’m working all the time. So I count my blessings that I actually get the ability to say that as an Australian actor, when 99% are unemployed at any one time. So there’s lots of reasons why I stay.”
The actor often takes time off from Home and Away to do other work, like Dalliance but also theatre, her first love. Sydney locals have become accustomed to seeing Georgie up close and personal at Kirribilli’s Ensemble Theatre doing a world-premiere David Williamson play or a slick comedy. I have seen Georgie on the stage and she is as bright, energetic and personable in conversation as you would expect. What does she love about theatre?
“It’s just the most natural environment for an actor that I can think of,” she reflects. “It’s just you and the audience, and you create the world of the show and the characters, and you’ve got three hours to do it.
“Also the energy of performance on stage suits me. I love the adrenaline of it. It’s challenging because things always go wrong in the theatre. And I love that. I love the unexpected thing happening and you just have to weave it into the performance and make it work.”
As for latest work Dalliance, where characters drive through suburban Sydney and squabbles sometimes turn hairy after a few drinks, it definitely has the feel of other classic Aussie dramas from the last two decades. Which is not surprising due to the involvement of producer/creator John Edwards, who brought us Offspring and The Secret Life of Us.
Georgie says Dalliance has ‘such a great heart to it.’ “And it has that great sense of community and such an Australian iconic feel to it. It’s got the chaos and the mess of people’s lives, all bound together by friendship and a love for each other. There’s a lot of drama in the show, but it’s hilarious, which is life. It’s a great snapshot of life in your sixties.”
Watch all six episodes of Dalliance on Paramount+ from 27 August.