First published in ‘The Guardian’ Sept 24, 2022
I was in the original series of Heartbreak High in 1994. I was dead by the end of season one but there’s nothing like knowing exactly when and how, and why you’re going to die, to make the experience of living just that more precious. The early season’s story arch drawn from the original film, Heartbreak Kid, was about a motherless young male student who falls in love with an older woman, his teacher, although by the time the film became the series and the whole teacher-student relationship was ditched they still went with the son (Alex Dimitriades) who loses his mother, as a point of dramatic departure. And after I died Peta Toppano was poised to join the series as the glamorous housekeeper who arrives soon after my death to look after my kids and my widowed husband (Nico Lathouris) whom she falls in love with I think. I’m not sure. I couldn’t bear to watch. Clearly, I’ve not yet worked through my usurpation.
Lathouris, a second generation Greek and I, a second-generation Italian were like so many of the cast the children and grandchildren of migrants. The ethnic diversity of this show is now well-documented and that it set a precedent in Australian TV series-land cutting through the dominance of all the other Anglo white – bread shows made it a standout. The show’s gritty harder-edged verité aesthetic and subject matter were fresh too. It looked and sounded more ‘real’ than the other stuff on offer for younger viewers. In the 90s Heartbreak High was appointment viewing like Countdown was for me when I was a teenager.
I aced my audition for the show. As a young actor of ethnic bonafides starting out in the late 80s and early 90s, and with the burgeoning success of the Wogs out of Work phenomenon, I was being invited to audition for any part requiring ‘someone ethnic’. I had the flu on the day of the audition and was so dosed up on whatever it was they used to put in those tablets back then, I read the part with such febrile conviction it was one of those rare times in the life of an as-yet un heart-broken actor’s life when I just knew I’d nailed the role of the Greek mother of the then eighteen-year-old Dimitriades. My ‘condition’ on the day also meant I provided a non-specifically Southern European inflected voice that was so husky I sounded like something from the Godfather. The producers might have been a little disappointed when I turned up to our first rehearsal in Maroubra Sydney a few weeks later sans the huskiness and looking a bit more fresh-faced than I had in the audition. I was only thirty-three years-old after all and so once I got to costume and makeup, just how to make me ‘read’ that bit older was the thing. The solution: baggy clothes, hair always in a tight high bun and face unadorned. All this would serve to age me up a bit. And oh yeah, I was an actor so, um, I could actually, you know, act like I was the mother of two, and the wife of an older man.
Last week my thirteen-year-old nephew’s barber asked me for my autograph. What? Heartbreak High’s recent reboot means that a new audience is going back and watching the original 7-part series, also on Netflix. This’ll sound disingenuous but I felt a bit weird. I mean I loved being a small part of the early days of that show, but I looked a real fright that day with my nephew and he was demonstrably unimpressed. ‘Were you on television? How embarrassing.’
Heartbreak High was the most interesting and positive acting experience I ever had on television. I’d done small parts and guest appearances in a few things before then and although always incommensurately grateful for a gig, any gig, had never really enjoyed or fully engaged in the world of TV acting. As a late – 80s drama school graduate I was a snob about television, let alone commercials (as if!) and anyway I looked too fat on television and was not prepared to starve myself in preparation for every audition. In between teaching (my mother had convinced me to get the proverbial second string to my bow because wanting to act was all well and good, but I needed real job qualifications), I did a lot of ABC Radio drama (back in the days when ABC Radio National still had a thriving drama department) and worked in the theatre on new Australian plays.
After the barber shop moment, I went home and watched the first few eps of HBH again for the first time in years and was struck, firstly, by how young I was – that’s always a shock for some reason – but mostly by how good the thing still looks and sounds and how strikingly energetic and fluent it is. The makers of this show had a strong vision, and the integrity of that vision is evident in the show’s overall coherence and attention to detail. This is because of a number of reasons, some more tangible than others because trying to understand why a piece of art just works is not always easy but it was in part due to the show’s less orthodox approach to casting and to the rehearsal process – which was more Mike Lee (extensive improvisation and rehearsal and script development) than Neighbours (little rehearsal, fast turn -around) that distinguished the original Heartbreak High.
Niko Lathouris, as well as playing my husband, was the show’s dramaturge and acting coach. Most of the young actors were relatively inexperienced, some had never been in front of a camera before. When we were not required on set Lathouris had us in the rehearsal room improvising, playing, exploring themes and scenes, spending time immersing ourselves in the world of the series. Lathouris conducted these sessions with rigour and care and the cast were treated as an ensemble, this extended rehearsal time, highly unusual in television, bonded us as group. Those young actors learned how to ‘be’ rather than to ‘act’; to listen rather than to recite, to affect ‘realness’ in the service of story.
The worst thing about revisiting this show was watching my own funeral. The keening and the crying. The bent out of shape grief of my husband. My little girl’s clasping disbelief. My sister’s horror. My son (only a couple of years younger than my real-life son today) with his grown-up denial and anger fuelled grief. In 1994 I hadn’t lost too many people yet. Maybe I would have acted dying better if I’d known then what I know now about the whole death and dying business.
It was fun to relocate to Sydney from Melbourne for a few months in the summer of ’94. I got used to being picked up every morning at 6AM and on the way stopping to collect an invariably sleepy grumpy young Dimitriades who already had the reserve and self-assuredness of a star in the making. I stayed with an oddly, defensive young married couple whilst in Sydney, who no doubt thought it a good idea at the time to house a visiting actor but had quickly soured to the concept. But that’s another story.
I watched the first three episodes of the new Heartbreak High straight after I watched the old one. I reckon HBH Mark 2 is funnier than Mark 1. This is neither a good nor a bad thing. This new series is good. The acting, writing and direction are strong and assured and the production values are slick and satisfying. The first one did funny too, but managed to be serious without being earnest, genuine and self-aware without being ironic – the province of a post social media generation and a popular culture that is unavoidably in conversation today with shows like, Sex Education, Shameless, Glee and Never Have I Ever. All self-referential, socially switched on, irreverent and smart. Also, the writing is good and young actors are just getting better and better. Sure, twenty years ago the teenagers in Heartbreak High were also agonising about sex and relationships, the pressures of parents and peer groups, but there was also more emphasis on the class and structural disadvantage at the heart of the earlier series. Teachers in the early days at Hartley High talked about needing new computers and underfunding and engaged in realistic staffroom argy bargy. Today’s Hartley High is cleaner and brighter, and it is identity politics rather than class politics being played out.
Fun fact, or maybe a depressing one depending on how much royal coverage you uncritically consumed last week: In 1994, Should Australia become a republic? was the topic for Hartley High’s first foray into the posh Anglo private school world of debating. Hartley won the debate of course.
Saturday 24th September 2022 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/24/i-died-in-the-original-heartbreak-high-now-with-the-netflix-reboot-people-are-asking-for-my-autograph-in-barber-shops