Monday’s Australian Story “The Two of Us” profiles actor Yael Stone and partner Jack Manning Bancroft.
With a starring role in hit TV show Orange Is the New Black, Australian actor Yael Stone had a green card and Hollywood at her feet.
“It’s a passport to so much opportunity. She could have done anything at that point, for sure,” Orange co-star Uzo Aduba says.
But then she very publicly and dramatically declared she would tear it up.
“I thought, wow, that’s a very bold statement. Did she need to say it so publicly? Because maybe she’ll just want to go back on that,” friend and actor Claudia Karvan says.
While some thought it was self-sabotage, the one person who immediately backed her was childhood schoolmate-turned-partner Jack Manning Bancroft.
The pair first met as five-year-olds, but a chance encounter 25 years later blossomed into a partnership of purpose.
“I’ve never felt like an idea was too big with Yael. And I never felt crazy, I think that’s probably the magic that unites us as a couple,” Jack Manning Bancroft says.
Jack is no stranger to risking everything – in his role as CEO of Indigenous not-for-profit AIME, he pushed himself to the point of hospitalisation trying to expand globally.
“He collapsed at an event … and it was like, ‘Oh my God, is my son going to actually die here?’,” says Jack’s mother, artist Bronwyn Bancroft.
The dynamic pair now juggle parenting two young daughters while pursuing separate passion projects – Yael working in climate change and Jack further expanding AIME’s purpose – but with a shared mission to make the world a better place.
8pm Monday on ABC.
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