{"id":110697,"date":"2025-10-31T13:20:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T13:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/110697\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T13:20:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T13:20:14","slug":"return-to-paradises-anna-samson-justice-is-rare-in-this-world-our-show-offers-escapism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/110697\/","title":{"rendered":"Return to Paradise\u2019s Anna Samson: \u2018Justice is rare in this world \u2013 our show offers escapism\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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You might not immediately recognise Anna Samson without her sun-soaked, sandy backdrop and her signature waistcoat. The 35-year-old actor made her British primetime telly debut last year<\/a> as the stony-faced sleuth Mackenzie Clarke, who solves murders in the Death in Paradise<\/a> spin-off Return to Paradise. Like the original cosy crime series, her show \u2013 set down-under in Australia\u2019s fictional Dolphin Cove \u2013 garnered millions of viewers for the BBC and cemented Samson as a \u201cParaverse\u201d star, as well as its first leading lady. \u201cA female lead hasn\u2019t changed the DNA of the show at all,\u201d she affirms, as the mystery series gears up for its second instalment. \u201cAnd it hasn\u2019t lost us viewership, thank goodness. Death in Paradise viewers are sophisticated.\u201d<\/p>\n

They are also deeply devoted. Death in Paradise has been running for 14 seasons and counting, and has also spawned another spin-off, Beyond Paradise. Some have criticised the franchise for its predictable plot lines, but it might be precisely because of its formulaic, easy-watching nature that it is so loved. \u201cYou see, a lot of people say that the programme is like escapism for them,\u201d Samson reflects of Return to Paradise\u2019s popularity. \u201cIn the world at the moment, it\u2019s quite rare that justice is served; that the bad guys get got \u2013 Mackenzie\u2019s always going to get her baddie and there\u2019s something comforting in that, in a world that doesn\u2019t offer us much ease of justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

The inaugural Return to Paradise series saw Samson\u2019s DI Clarke return to her hometown in Oz after she was suspended by The Met for allegedly tampering with evidence. After flying back to Dolphin Cove, DI Clarke looks longingly at a weathercam of grey and windy London, feeling like a misfit in the picturesque beach town she grew up in. British-born Samson recognises this sense of displacement, having spent her early years living between West Sussex and Nigeria, where her father relocated for work, before eventually moving to Australia aged 11. \u201cI\u2019m not going to say I never recovered because that sounds so dramatic,\u201d she says of her family\u2019s choice to leave the UK for Sydney. \u201cBut I\u2019ve never stopped calling England home. I find that a very relatable part of the script.\u201d<\/p>\n

We chat on a rainy Thursday morning over Zoom as London has been plagued by tube strikes. Samson makes sure she visits the city once a year and has lost the TFL lottery with the timing of this year\u2019s trip. The night before we speak, she went for dinner with two of her franchise co-stars \u2013 Lloyd Griffith, who plays the kind-hearted detective sergeant Colin Cartwright, and Tai Hara, who stars as Clarke\u2019s ex-fianc\u00e9 and pathologist Glenn Strong, whom the DI jilted at the altar before fleeing to the opposite hemisphere. In the absence of underground trains or any available taxis, the trio were almost forced to hop in a fairylight-adorned pedicab home from central London. Instead, they summoned an Uber. \u201cI was like, look, that\u2019s half my yearly wage, whatever,\u201d jokes Samson in a lilting accent, her Aussie twang giving an edge to her long English vowels.<\/p>\n

Just as Samson grounds herself with yearly trips back to the UK, Clarke keeps her connection to The Met going through regular exasperated phone calls to Death in Paradise\u2019s former lead detective DI Jack Mooney, played by Ardal O\u2019Hanlon \u2013 a Paraverse darling, who\u2019ll also appear in season two of the spinoff. \u201cHis character starts to function slightly like a fairy godmother,\u201d Samson says. \u201cWithout his gentle intervention, Mackenzie\u2019s life would take a different path. Very subtly, he\u2019s trying to push her towards being her best self,\u201d she explains of the inspector\u2019s input. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t look like that on the surface, it\u2019s just her boss telling her what to do. But Ardal is so beloved and he has this sparkle to him, just as a human, so he brings a little bit of magic to the show.\u201d <\/p>\n

Filming as a lead detective in the Paraverse is hard work. While actors with minor parts get to kick back, have a cocktail and chill out in the sun when cameras aren\u2019t rolling, the star of the show spends all of their downtime learning their extensive lines. O\u2019Hanlon previously complained<\/a> about working his \u201ca*** off\u201d for \u201c12 hours a day, six days a week\u201d during his time fronting Death in Paradise from 2017 to 2020, but Samson seems unphased by the workload. \u201cI don\u2019t find it hard to remind myself that I work hard but I\u2019m incredibly lucky and this is a beautiful life I\u2019m living,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

For each series of Return to Paradise, the star \u2013 who started her career on the stage in plays including Simon Stephen\u2019s Birdland and David Hare\u2019s Skylight \u2013 spends four months living on location in Illawarra, New South Wales. She films all the day and learns her lines all night. The biggest challenge with every episode\u2019s script is the multi-page monologue where DI Clarke reveals the episode\u2019s killer in an Agatha Christie-style gotcha spiel. \u201cIf I get any downtime, I\u2019ll be learning one of them,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m quite rigorous about my homework. I study the script. Follow the text. In theatre, the script is sort of like the bible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Anna<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Anna Samson as Mackenzie Clarke in \u2018Return to Paradise\u2019 (Red Planet \/ BBC Studios \/ John Platt)<\/p>\n

The cast of other popular tropical on-location programmes, such as HBO\u2019s The White Lotus, have said that similarly immersive shoots caused them to go full meta for a chunk of filming. Does Samson ever blur the lines of fiction and reality? \u201cThere\u2019s an obsessiveness to Mackenzie that is absolutely alive in Anna,\u201d she says of her similarities with her character. \u201cIt\u2019s an all-consuming period. But I don\u2019t suddenly wake up and think I\u2019m a detective solving crimes around Sydney.\u201d<\/p>\n

For inspiration on how to play a good detective, Samson has looked to Martin Freeman\u2019s portrayal of sidekick Dr John Watson in the BBC\u2019s Sherlock. \u201cI think Martin Freeman is an intelligent, transformational actor,\u201d she says. \u201cHe\u2019s one of the most remarkable actors we have.\u201dSamson also observed her fellow Paraverse detectives before filming Return to Paradise\u2019s first season, and noted just how far they push the edges of the crime genre in their performances. \u201cIt\u2019s not a farce, it\u2019s not a parody, but it is slightly hypercolour and comedic,\u201d she says. \u201cThe show doesn\u2019t take itself seriously \u2013 but it does take its audience seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mackenzie Clarke \u2013 emotionally avoidant, shrewdly intelligent and quietly proud \u2013 is certainly serious about what she does. \u201cIt\u2019s quite a rare thing to play a character who\u2019s not only good at their job, but they know it,\u201d Samson reflects. \u201cShe loves a compliment. It\u2019s very human. It\u2019s one of the things I love about playing her because you don\u2019t see that in women on screen very often\u2026 She can be spiky, and she isn\u2019t particularly concerned with being liked, but she is also human and is concerned with being loved. I think she believes the world doesn\u2019t want her, so she rejects the world first. She believes she doesn\u2019t need community, romance or friendship. That\u2019s incorrect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Samson<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Samson accepts Logie Award for Best Drama Program for ‘Return to Paradise’ season one (Getty Images for TV WEEK Logie A)<\/p>\n

These assumptions will be challenged in Return to Paradise season two as Clarke\u2019s historic feelings for Glenn continue to bubble at the surface, and her friendship with her DS Colin deepens. \u201cMackenzie would never say this, and doesn\u2019t realise it, but Colin is her best friend \u2013 and she has no idea,\u201d Samson says. \u201cShe would say, \u2018It\u2019s just that annoying guy I work with.\u2019 But in the way they behave, in the way they care for each other, they are functioning as best friends in the world. Our show is very kind. It has a lot of love at its centre. Despite Mackenzie\u2019s wish to be removed and cold, she cares about these people and they care about her. There are some beautiful, vulnerable scenes.\u201d <\/p>\n

Samson has similarly found kindness in the Paraverse fandom. The actor left her previous role as Mia Anderson in Home and Away in 2022 after one year, having been subjected to cruel body shaming by fans of the show. \u201cPeople still feel they have the right to shame, comment on and harass women about their appearance,\u201d she wrote to trolls on social media at the time. \u201cIt\u2019s part of a culture of cowardice. Cruelly commenting on our weight loss or gain, our faces, our choices, our voices.\u201d Thankfully, viewer responses to the first female detective in the Paraverse were quite different.<\/p>\n

\u201cYoung women, from the age of 10 or younger, right up to 15 or 16 are saying they love the show and they love Mackenzie because they too feel on the outside. They\u2019re not sure they belong. They\u2019re figuring out how to have friends and boyfriends,\u201d Samson says of the overwhelmingly positive feedback from Return to Paradise viewers. \u201cI think having a female protagonist who doesn\u2019t always have to be palatable and pleasant or polite and presentable has made people feel less alone in the world, certainly young women, and I didn\u2019t expect that response. I didn\u2019t think it would happen,\u201d she reflects. \u201cIt makes going to work and putting that waistcoat on every day very much worthwhile.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-110697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}