TV Tonight meets three cast members from new Disney+ drama Last Days of the Space Age, Rhada Mitchell (Judy Bissett), French actress Linh-Dan Pham (Sandy Bui) and Jesse Spencer (Tony Bissett) as Skylab hovers over Perth in 1979.
What drew you to the project?
RM: It’s a beautifully written piece, and it causes us to reflect on the Australian identity. Who we are now, as opposed to who we were before, and who we thought we were. It was an invitation to come home and go back to the 1970s and dress up. So there was a lot about it that was appealing,
JS: I’ve always loved period pieces. I’d do them all the time, if I could. But this had family dynamics, the humour in it, the despair and hope and all these themes that run through were universal things. So I thought it had a nice appeal that people should really be able to enjoy.
I’d been looking for a project to come home. I know actors are always looking to go back and do something at home, because it’s absolutely a global industry now, that when you have a chance to go home and do something, you tend to grab it.
I was on network TV, so it was very difficult to actually make anything work. Now I have a little more time and then this came across my desk, and I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s go!’
L-DP: I love doing projects abroad. It forces you to be in the bubble, because, I’m not with my family, not in my country. I think that what was special, apart from of course the ‘ 70s, Sydney and an amazing script, was that it was a specifically Vietnamese family, and that’s very rare. Coming from France I’ve not had any specifically Vietnamese family in TV or in a project.
Because of the circumstances of the Bui family, I got to reconnect with my roots and talk to some of members of my family who had gone through that.
The character of Judy is mother in a family of three strong females, railing against expectations and conventions. Was that fun to play?
RM: Recently I made a movie called Blueback, and there were some fairly emancipated, female characters in that story. You kind of look for that, I guess. In this case, I’m playing a housewife with the apron, who is forced to take it off and enter the workforce, kind of reluctantly …realising that it was going to create a lot of trouble at home in terms of her relationship. The whole thing was going to be a revolution on the home front, and at the same time, raising two rebellious girls -one who’s just sort of off rails a little, and the other, who’s feeling very isolated, having these ideas about what she wants to do in the future that other people are undermining. How do you raise women, like what do you say? Do you limit them? Do you put the glass ceiling there? Do you keep this sense of optimism and opportunity knowing that it’s a kind of sexist culture? But I don’t even think that Judy has much of a kind of a sociological perspective on her situation. She’s sort of discovering her point of view by just changing her circumstance and discovering herself, I guess, …. It’s a mystery to her where she’s going and I think that probably equips her better as a parent.
JS: That’s what makes it interesting, I think. She didn’t set out to be in that position. Yes it is thrust upon her and that’s what makes it really interesting and kind of devastating for the male ego… the breadwinner -so the tables turn and that makes it really fun.
RM: The whole thing is sticky. They love each other. Egos are involved. And I’m sure there’s a competitive element. Nobody wants their man to be unmasculine. So there’s just stuff going on, and I think they go through it sort of elegantly, as a family,
They’re all affecting each other in some way as well. So there’s that. But there’s a bit of retribution. There’s a bit of satisfaction if you’ve got a bad guy in mind.
JS: I love a bad guy. They’re really fun roles!
‘Sandy’ is searching for her son while her husband has pride and the fear of disappointment. How does she deal with this kind of ‘push-pull?’
L-DP: They are really on a different perspective, in the sense that they’re starting from scratch. He’s really just looking forward to the future, trying to build a new life being happy with what he had. Because he was actually a scientist, someone in the middle class,, and now he’s doing fish and chips and some noodle soups. But he’s probably , trying to make the best out of it. She is very determined to still know where she comes from, and not forget the past and try, because she’s convinced now that her son is still around.
So it’s this dynamic. And in the middle of that is (son) Jono, who is Aussie basically. Yes, he’s Vietnamese origin, but he’s an Aussie teenager wanting to be an artist when everyone wants him to be an astronaut or a scientist.
Last Days of the Space Age premieres Wednesday October 2 on Disney+
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