Within the first 10 minutes of My Brilliant Career, Netflix\u2019s new adaptation of the classic Australian novel by Miles Franklin, there\u2019s smutty performance poetry and a Divinyls needle drop that suggests it\u2019s not going to be your standard turn-of-the-century period drama. By the end of the first episode \u2013 in which our teen heroine, Sybylla Melvin, pops a squat for a bush wee and flashes her knickers at a drawing room full of toffs while dancing to a Rod Stewart cover \u2013 you sense that anything could happen. And yet somehow, the alfresco fingerbang later in the series still surprises.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s bonkers,\u201d admits the show\u2019s star Philippa Northeast, who plays Sybylla. \u201cYou really see this world through a teenage lens \u2013 which is true to Sybylla\u2019s spirit and Miles\u2019 age at the time she wrote the book \u2026 it reads like a teenager\u2019s diary entry, pretty much.\u201d<\/p>\n
We\u2019re talking in the Sir William Dixon Research Library within the State Library of New South Wales, where Northeast came to research for the role. Her preparations included reading Franklin\u2019s diaries to get a closer sense of the woman behind the story that \u2013 despite the author\u2019s protestations \u2013 was substantially inspired by her own life.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Netflix\u2019s series is the latest in a string of adaptations of Franklin\u2019s novel, which she wrote as a teenager and published in 1901 when she was just 21 years old. These include Gillian Armstrong\u2019s internationally acclaimed 1979 film<\/a>, starring a young Judy Davis and Sam Neill, and stage<\/a> and musical versions<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a timeless story; everything it speaks to is still relevant,\u201d says Northeast, who follows in Davis\u2019s weighty footsteps in portraying Sybylla, a budding bush poet and aspiring author. In Franklin\u2019s book, she narrates her journey from an impoverished life of drudgery on the land towards artistic fulfilment and financial independence, by way of a string of torturous match-making attempts and marriage proposals.<\/p>\n \u2018Stepping into that teenage spirit again was probably the biggest challenge, after being conditioned by society, as a woman, to be polite and proper,\u2019 Northeast says.This adaptation of Franklin\u2019s classic novel is easily the most ambitious to date. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s about being a woman and trying to forge a creative life, and contending with society\u2019s expectations,\u201d says Northeast, who first encountered the book as a child and found it highly relatable when she rediscovered it as an adult. Having made her name with girl-next-door roles on shows including Home and Away, she struggled for years to land more complex parts. \u201cWhen the way you feel rebels against those expectations, trying to carve a way forward can be incredibly frustrating \u2013 but also essential to your own survival.\u201d<\/p>\n A rebellious spirit is the driving force of Netflix\u2019s adaptation, created by an all-female team of writers, producers and directors. Their version of Sybylla dances with demon energy, falls flat on her face, screams at the open sky with frustration, goes goblin mode in her bedroom when confronted by a marriage ultimatum, and experiences her first oyster and orgasm as epiphanies. She\u2019s wild, passionate and indomitable.<\/p>\n Genevieve O\u2019Reilly and Northeast on set Photograph: Ian Routledge\/Netflix<\/p>\n The soundtrack is an appropriately boisterous mix of female folk pop, glam rock and indie ranging from Wet Leg<\/a> and Ecca Vandal<\/a> tracks to in-scene covers performed by the likes of Thelma Plum<\/a> and Isabella Manfredi<\/a>, along with original tracks by Kate Miller-Heidke<\/a> and Beckah Amani<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWe thought, we\u2019re unashamedly going to make a show that is intended for women,\u201d says Liz Doran, the show\u2019s creator and lead writer.<\/p>\n Northeast, the engine of the series and barely off screen across its six episodes, gives a full-throttle performance, and embodies the messiness and awkwardness of teen girldom so convincingly that it\u2019s hard to believe she is 31.<\/p>\n \u201cStepping into that teenage spirit again was probably the biggest challenge, after being conditioned by society, as a woman, to be polite and proper,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I was very much encouraged and supported to rip into that and make the performance as messy as I thought it should be.\u201d<\/p>\n Christopher Chung as Harry. Photograph: Ian Routledge\/Netflix<\/p>\n This adaptation is easily the most ambitious to date; while it stays true to the marrow of the novel, it reimagines Sybylla\u2019s main love interest, Harry Beecham, as Chinese-Australian (played by the extremely buff Slow Horses star Christopher Chung), and expands the story to include First Nations characters and storylines, and a gay subplot.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I read the book for the first time, all these thoughts just occurred quite naturally to me,\u201d Doran says. \u201cI was like, \u2018Well, [this character] is gay.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n When adding new characters, such as the ambitious Aboriginal stockwoman Nell (played by Sherry-Lee Watson), or significantly changing an existing character\u2019s identity, as with Harry, the show\u2019s diverse writers room \u201capproached it from the perspective of: who is in this world; who is living in Australia in 1900, who wasn\u2019t represented in the book\u201d, Doran says. They then fleshed those characters out, giving them \u201cstory, agency, a life\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cIn Miles\u2019s story, Harry\u2019s a straight-up blokey member of the squattocracy. He\u2019s not a very complex character. But we thought, what if Harry\u2019s dad had married a Chinese woman? And Harry has grown up with all the trappings of being the wealthiest man in the district but he\u2019s only accepted because he\u2019s rich \u2013 once he loses all of that, he\u2019s going to lose all his social currency. What does that mean for him? It makes him an interesting person for Sybylla to fall in love with, too.\u201d<\/p>\n Jake Dunn, Kate Mulvany, Alexander England and Anna Chancellor. Photograph: Ian Routledge\/Netflix<\/p>\n Chung says reading the script for the first time, he was struck by how \u201cforward-thinking\u201d it was. \u201cIt\u2019s not colour-blind casting \u2026 and it\u2019s not tokenism.\u201d<\/p>\n We meet Harry in the first episode but it\u2019s not until the second that his Chinese heritage is revealed, when Sybylla visits his home and his Aunt Augusta (Kate Mulvany) asks her to take her shoes off, to honour the house rules of his late Chinese mother. \u201cIt\u2019s so true,\u201d Chung says of this moment. \u201cEvery time I would go to my grandmother\u2019s house, it was like, \u2018Shoes off at the door.\u2019 It\u2019s just those little touches Liz managed to put so delicately through the script; nods to the heritage, but without making a point of othering him.\u201d<\/p>\n