Maxine Peake has explained why she doesn’t use an Australian accent in new Apple TV thriller Last Seen. The series has just premiered today, and follows former police officer Ian Ridley (Patrick Brammall), whose young daughter disappeared years ago.
However, when he receives a distress call from a teenage girl years later, he is convinced it is his child Maggie, though he learns that she is the daughter of a reclusive couple called Jenna (Peake) and Henry (Brendan Cowell).
Despite the setting Down Under, Peake uses her normal accent in the series, with the star explaining to Radio Times that those above her on the show suggested that she not do an Australian voice.
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“I was going to do the Brit who’d lived in Australia for a while, with the inflection, and they went, ‘No, everyone will just think you’re doing a really bad Australian accent. Just stick to what you know, Peake,'” she recalled.
Talking about how a Mancunian would end up in the country, she shared: “There was a tentative story in the script, originally, about [how] we inherited the house from one of my relatives. A relative who’d gone out there, maybe [Jenna] followed in their footsteps…
“I just felt that she was running away from her family, as Henry was running away from his family, and that’s where I think the connection came from.”
Speaking further about her character, Peake said: “I think these two very damaged people, not quite knowing how to live and trying to thrash it out, have created this idyll that is very fragile in many ways.”
“But they don’t see that. There’s obviously outside forces that are constantly pressing on it that they have managed to push to the periphery,” she added.
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Speaking to the Royal Television Society earlier this month, Peake described her character as “a complicated woman [who] has been through a lot of trauma”.
“Some of the choices she makes are difficult and problematic. The main issue was trying to make sense of that and how she was trying to heal herself, but also trying to make it relatable and believable,” she explained.
Last Seen premieres today on Apple TV.
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Sam is a freelance reporter and sub-editor who has a particular interest in movies, TV and music. After completing a journalism Masters at City University, London, Sam joined Digital Spy as a reporter, and has also freelanced for publications such as NME and Screen International. Sam, who also has a degree in Film, can wax lyrical about everything from Lord of the Rings to Love Is Blind, and is equally in his element crossing every ‘t’ and dotting every ‘i’ as a sub-editor.