Nostalgia Week: Nadine Garner remembers The Henderson Kids as fearless, a bunch of misfits, and ‘a little loose’ on set

Melbourne 1984. Kylie Minogue, Mark Hennessy, Nadine Garner, Brad Kirkpatrick, Paul Smith, Ben Mendelsohn.

EXCLUSIVE:

Nadine Garner never had any real aspirations to be a dramatic actor.

As a plucky teenager, arguably years older than her actual 13 years, she had her eye on singing and dancing. Ferntree Gully High School, considered ‘alternative’ education in the 1980s, where kids could express themselves in musicals, eisteddfods and drama class.

Garner’s mother was equally supportive of her 3 kids’ talents, regularly driving Nadine to extra-curricular drama classes where a teacher recommended her students sign up for a Crawford Productions general audition.

Garner did just that and within weeks found herself auditioning for a new TV drama, The Henderson Kids in 1984.

“I had a scene from the show that I had to learn and I remember just being myself. I don’t think I was particularly nervous, because I had nothing invested. I was 13 years old, but I was such a high-functioning child,” she tells TV Tonight.

“I was match-fit to take direction”

“But when I walked into that audition, I was match-fit to take direction, to kind of be present, be available. I knew how to communicate, I suppose, because I’d been in song and dance for so long.

“I was just in the moment, which is what children should be. There’s a lot of kids who are shy at that age, and I think I was just playing the same in the role. She was available, bright, playful and present.”

It won her the role of Tamara Henderson, who with sibling Steve (Paul Smith) sadly learned of the death of their mother in the first episode, only to be whisked away to Haven Bay. There local cop and uncle Mike (Nicholas Eadie) suddenly became guardian for a nephew and niece he never knew.”

Birregurra, west of Geelong, doubled as the fictional town, with cast and crew accommodated in Colac. In the 1980s, filming on location with children followed its own rules.

“We would go down there for weeks on end and travel half an hour to the location. It was as you’d imagine, for a kid my age, just a big adventure, like being away on camp, but you’re actually working really quite hard. I was one of those kids that it didn’t really feel like work,” she suggests.

“I remember being lonely sometimes down there”

“I remember being lonely sometimes down there, because you’d have weekends. It’s all a bit strange to think about a kid being down there without a chaperone. It was a different time, what can I say? It would certainly not be happening that way these days.

“Can I say it was a little ‘loose’ … we had a lovely group of kids in it and we had a couple of tutors, but we certainly weren’t closely chaperoned.”

But Garner worked hard, acquiring screen skills that would set her for life. The series was given a primetime timeslot on Channel 10 with Tamara proving instantly popular with the audience.

“She kind of was the heroic character because she was a little bit ‘tomboyish’ – not an acceptable expression anymore,” she continues.

“She was a modern take on what it was to be an independent, young woman”

“But she was orphaned, she had an older brother, she was kind of fearless and courageous and in some ways, she was a modern version of a young girl. She was a modern take on what it was to be an independent, young woman spirited, unafraid, having to deal with some terrible things -like the sudden loss of a mother, being wrenched out of her home and then taken to the country. She was fearless and under pressure and was able to kind of make lemonade out of lemons. And I think people loved that.

“Who was it that said what you need to do with a lead character is throw them up a tree and then hurl rocks at them?”

In 1985, the two teens were forced to start life anew, befriending locals Ted Morgan (Ben Mendelsohn), Colin “Cowboy” Clarke (Mark Hennessy), Charlotte “Char” Kernow (Kylie Minogue) and Brian “Brains” Buchanan (Bradley Kilpatrick).

“Kylie was hard-working and really determined to be a singer… Ben Mendelsohn was always determined to be a serious film actor.”

“Kylie Minogue playing Char, who was really quite an eccentric little character too. Audiences love a bunch of misfits that are getting on in the world. Kylie was hard-working and really determined to be a singer. I think the acting thing was never where she saw herself. She wanted to be a singer and, similar to Ben, there was nothing stopping her from being a singer,” Garner recalls.

“Ben Mendelsohn was always determined to be a serious film actor. I met him at 15 and he was an angry young boy, extremely bright, precocious, very cerebral, very unhappy and sort of hungry. I think he was finding his feet, obviously having a taste of what this acting thing was. Clearly he had something really kind of dangerous and wild about him as an actor.”

Nicholas Eadie, whose star was on the rise from Cop Shop, was always supportive despite the show’s focus being on the teens.

“He was there with good grace, but I don’t think he was deeply invested in the project or anything. He was sweet and funny and kind but his head was elsewhere for sure. But we were very, very fond of each other and and we worked together years later in Taming of the Shrew. He played Petruchio to my Kate back in the late ’90s.”

Paul Smith, who played brother Steve, was older than Garner and enjoying the freedoms that came with filming on location.

“He was 16 but he was kind of going on 20. He’d seen a lot in his short life, and he was down from Sydney, living a different kind of life than what I was living.”

For The Henderson Kids 2, Garner’s character became the series’ focus as it relocated back to the city and new cast included Alex Papps, Anita Cerdic, Nathan Croft.

Meanwhile a new soap was filming in Seven’s South Melbourne studios, which would soon move to Channel 10 and make stars out of Jason Donovan, Kylie Minogue, Guy Pearce and more.

Neighbours’ (in which she would briefly appear as Rachel Burns) fandom exploded in ways that had never visited Henderson Kids.

“I always think of the show as more of a boutique television act”

“I always think of the show as more of a boutique television act.…. Yes, we were well regarded and people were very, very sentimental about that show. People still want to talk to me about it, they feel very deeply about it. But it didn’t have mass hysteria. It didn’t have mass fandom,” she states.

“There were some fan cards that I would sign and I would answer the letters that came in. Maybe not all of them, but I tried really hard. I would do the odd interview with TV Week or New Idea or something. But that was about it.”

Other roles continued in her late teens, expanding to film and stage. By 1988 Garner even won the AFI Best Actress award for Mull, joining the ranks of Judy Davis, Angela Punch-McGregor, Noni Hazlehurst and Wendy Hughes (Meryl Streep would follow a year later).

“What has actually happened to me over the last six years?”

She studied Year 12 at night and undertook an Arts degree at Swinburne. But the pace began to take its toll mentally.

“I was studying at night. I would work on shoots through the day, I would do a play, and I was you know 16, 17, 18…. I think by the time I was 19 the work slowed down for a little bit and I kind of had to go ‘What has actually happened to me over the last six years?’ It was all a bit of a whirlwind and I had to make decisions about whether I was going to double down as an actor.”

She did just that, with a role in ABC drama House Rules, filmed at Ripponlea studios.

“House Rules was a gorgeous family drama about an independent politician played by Jackie Weaver, husband played by Gil Tucker, Matt Day played my brother, Jacob Kino played my youngest brother. It was a really clever family drama set around politics. Jacki was adorable,” Garner remembers.

In the same studios she would play Zelda, in RAW FM, a bold experimental drama with emerging writers and directors, set around a community radio station. The cast included Dominic Purcell, Ella Mendalis, Matt Dyktynski, Dan Spielman.

“Each episode was sort of thought of as its own little feature film and each director was encouraged to get quite idiosyncratic with how they wanted to shoot it. I played a blind character, which you wouldn’t probably do these days you would, you would cast a blind actor. But at the time, we didn’t think that way. I really enjoyed the challenge of playing Zelda. It was fantastic.”

By 2005  she featured as Deborah Callum in two seasons of Blue Water High, filmed in Bilgola Beach. As the adult to teen surfers played by Khan Chittenden, Ryan Corr, Tahyna Tozzi, Kate Bell, Lochie Daddo, Rebecca Breeds, Sophie Luck, it had become time to pass on the baton.

“I’m now playing an adult in a kid’s drama”

“I was very aware of that. Like, ‘Oh, I’m now playing an adult in a kid’s drama. It’s gonna happen eventually!’ But I was quite mystified at how well that show did. People still want to talk about Blue Water High.”

From 2007 she began a long run as Det. Jennifer Mapplethorpe on hit Seven drama City Homicide at the same tine that Garner was starting her own family.

“I had wanted to play a police woman for a long time. I really wanted to do that kind of procedural television. There’s a lot of discipline that goes in learning those scripts and the details. The pace and the rhythm of those shows is really important and you can’t just kind of turn up and learn it in the makeup chair. There’s dates, places, times -all that stuff. It’s a bit like doing legal or medical dramas,” she continues.

“I used to hate the crime scene days.”

“But I used to hate the crime scene days. We always shot them first thing on Monday morning and the crime scenes were grisly. They were awful, violent. By the end of the fifth year I remember I really was struggling… just the content of the show and the darkness of the crimes. As much as I was loving being in a successful show.”

She would find another new audience, and a dynamic working relationship, alongside Craig McLachlan on ABC’s The Doctor Blake Mysteries. Garner is particularly complimentary of the world built by writer George Adams and the attention to detail by the production team.

“I literally felt like when I stepped into that house, that beautiful set, which they created we were in 1959. There was absolutely no doubt about it.”

“I think it was foolhardy of them to not stand by our show.”

But it pained the team that ABC did little to promote the show, seen as old-fashioned Friday night drama, when it was breaking new ground with shows like Redfern Now.

“They literally said, ‘We don’t really want to be tied to the image of that show.’ Who did they think was watching the ABC? I still have this ongoing problem with where the ABC thinks their audience is and what they’re trying to get.

“I think the ABC is, and wants to be, a broad church, and I think it was foolhardy of them to not stand by our show. Because of course there’s room for all the young, modern progressive storytelling that comes through the ABC and I applaud it and would love to be part of it,” insists Garner.

“But you can’t throw something as solid as Blake under a bus for it. It was foolhardy, and I hope they think back on it regretfully. Because it was stupid.”

Doctor Blake infamously ended with allegations levelled at Craig McLachlan in stage musical, The Rocky Horror Show. Although Garner, and Network Seven, attempted to pivot Jean into the telemovie The Blake Mysteries, there was also little room for her to reflect on the show’s achievements.

“I absolutely adored what we created together”

“What I would love to say, and I don’t think I’ve had enough of a chance to say, is that I absolutely adored what Craig did with the character of Lucien Blake and I absolutely adored what we created together with those two characters that just came out of George Adams’ brain. He came up with this wayward Doctor and his housekeeper. On paper, there wasn’t a lot more to it than that. It was really what George allowed us to breathe life into.”

Garner has recently finished stage plays with the Melbourne Theatre Company, 45 Downstairs, and will appear at the Sydney Opera House in Pride & Prejudice in August.

She juggles it all with her offscreen role as a well-being expert / dramaturg on Neighbours. In some ways, she has come full circle.

“I do work with the actors on some text, stuff that they want to work on or I’ll help do some world-building with new characters that are coming in. But I also work as a person that the cast can talk to….I’m a bit like the producer’s blotting paper, because I understand what it is to be on a television show, I get the minutiae of the problem. I think the cast enjoy coming in and kind of offloading to me about stuff that only actors can offload to about each other,” she reveals.

“Sometimes I feel like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew because with a cast of 25 everyone’s lives are complicated… but I love that I don’t have to perform. I just I love not performing. It’s just a very nice Lo-Fi way to make a buck and to feel like you’re bringing some solace and comfort to people who are working really hard.”

“I’m at a point where I want to craft the rest of my career.”

Yet she also admits to breakthroughs in more recent years, that give her new perspective on her teen years and approach to work.

“It’s always a journey being an actor, and in some ways too I’m at a point where I want to craft the rest of my career. I don’t just want to be a jobbing actor actually. I don’t want to just be the guy who’s picking up the phone to every job that comes through. I feel more picky about what I want to do. I’m just a little bit more thoughtful about where I place my energy and how that’s going to play out on me and the people who I love,” she reflects.

“I think that’s fair enough after 40 years.”

TOMORROW: An Actor / Director whose work spans decades.

Photos: © Bill Bachman, ABC Archives.