Actress Rebecca Gibney stars in The Killing Field.
Actress Rebecca Gibney stars in The Killing Field.
Rebecca Gibney is taking charge as a flawed detective in her latest screen drama. She talks to Lydia Jenkin.
Having finished Packed to the Rafters in 2013, Rebecca Gibney was looking for a new challenge. As a fan of murder mysteries and cop shows, the notion of playing a steely detective appealed to the expatriate Kiwi who been a star on Australian television for thirty years.
"I love Broadchurch and The Bridge and The Killing, all the Scandi-noir, and I loved Prime Suspect in its day. I love a good crime thriller. We all like to be the armchair detective who sits at home and muses on who really did it, and whether they're going after the right person, and trying to stay a step ahead, and pick up the clues. I love a bit of creepiness."
So along with her husband Richard Bell, a production designer, she decided to develop a detective-based show. It was in its early stages when Australia's Seven Network called her for discussions about what she'd like to do next.
"We'd got the character nutted out and were working on a treatment for how we saw it. But the network was very keen to get something happening straight away, and they presented me with this script.
The network's proposal had four detectives, but its basic premise and plot was similar. Gibney met its writers, Sarah Smith and Michaeley O'Brien to discuss the characters and her role.
"We talked about making the character more suitable for me to play, and worked on her quite a bit, and then I realised that it would work."
So the ideas converged and The Killing Field was born.
Gibney plays Eve Winter, a high-ranking detective who has had enough of traumatic cases, and has taken an administrative role.
But she's pulled back by her former partner - and flame - Detective Inspector Lachlan McKenzie, to help solve a missing persons case which has snowballed into a serial murder investigation in the small country town of Mingara, a place with a dark underbelly.
There are similarities between Winter and Gibney's previous role as Jane Halifax in Halifax f.p, but Gibney took her inspiration from another favourite television character.
Rebecca Gibney and Peter O'Brien star in The Killing Field.
"I've always held up Helen Mirren's character Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect, I always found her character incredibly intriguing and very complex, and I just wanted to make sure that Eve was given a mysterious aspect. But also the reality is that while this woman is independent and strong and forging ahead in a predominantly male environment, she also has to be flawed and have vulnerabilities and weaknesses, so it was very important to create a rounded individual."
Gibney was keen to do more than just act this time around - she wanted to be involved across the production. "I wanted to be involved from a producer point of view as well, and have input into the casting and the script, and the crew and the music. I didn't necessarily want to be in control, but I wanted to be one of the voices in the room, and they were very open to that.
"I felt like, my husband and I will often sit and watch shows and go 'Oh if only they'd cast that person', or 'if only the music was more of this, or less of that' and we finally went, 'you know what? we need to do this.
"We can't just sit around being critics from our living room, we should get off our bums and go and create these shows ourselves, and put ourselves on the line'.
"So that's why it was important for me to be so involved with this. I don't want to stand on the sidelines and say 'Oh if only' later on."
Of course, being involved in the casting was an interesting insight for 50-year-old Gibney, but it did mean she got to bring in her long-time friend and previous co-star Peter O'Brien, with whom she shared the screen in The Flying Doctors and Halifax f.p, to play Lachlan McKenzie.
The cast of The Killing Field.
"He and I are great mates, and we've known each other an awfully long time, and it was just like pulling on a pair of comfy ugg boots, you know.
"I think I was 21 when I first met Peter, so it has been a long friendship - he doesn't like being reminded how long it's been. But of course it means we have a shorthand, and it was very easy stepping back into those roles, and it's always great to work with him because we can be very open and honest with each other. We've got a great rapport and a great trust."
Their natural chemistry seems to have helped The Killing Field go beyond its initial television movie with Seven greenlighting an ongoing series based around the characters.
The series will be called Winter and it will be set in a small coastal fishing village not far from Sydney.
Gibney and O'Brien will be joined by new co-stars Matt Nable, and Antonia Prebble; the programme will screen on TV One later this year.
Making a whole murder mystery series is a different challenge to a one-off feature though, and Gibney was conscious it can be tricky to do something new with the genre. "There's a lot of discussion about that. I mean the writers might throw up a scenario, but then someone else will go 'Oh no I saw that on Criminal Minds' or 'I saw something similar in such and such'. You think of every crime - without going too perverse - and of course they've all been committed and a lot of them have been on TV, so yes, it's tricky.
"I think with The Killing Field, we managed to make it so that you don't see it coming, you don't see the twist - or at least I didn't when I was reading it."
Who: Rebecca Gibney What: Australian TV feature The Killing Field Where and when: Screening on TV One, Sunday April 19, 8.30pm Also: The spin-off series Winter will be coming to TV One later this year.
