In Asher Keddie’s new thriller series Fake, her very familiar face does some very unfamiliar things. Like not saying what she’s thinking, just letting her expressions do the talking. The series, about a woman falling for a man whose well-heeled life turns out to be an elaborate fabrication, spends a lot of time with its camera on Keddie’s eyes and face as her character, Birdie, wrestles with the truth – or what she is hoping is true.
It’s a different kind of role for Keddie, best known as Offspring’s neurotic obstetrician Nina Proudman in the dysfunctional family drama that was a prime-time fixture on both sides of the Tasman for seven seasons from 2010.
“God, every character I play just doesn’t draw breath,” says Keddie about the contrast between the taciturn Birdie and her talkative past roles, via Zoom from her home in St Kilda, Melbourne.
“I really enjoyed just isolating myself to make it as much of an experiential journey for the audience as I could. And to do that, I felt less words was more, and so we stripped back and stripped back and stripped back every scene that we shot every day. If I didn’t feel we needed to say this, then let’s not say it.”
And Keddie had a big say in the making of Fake, even before the cameras rolled. It’s her second time as a producer on a show she’s starred in after Strife, the comedy-drama based on the memoir by Mia Freedman, the founder of Australian women’s digital media company Mamamia. A second season of Strife is currently in post-production and due to screen in the New Year.
Fake is an adaptation of another book by a journalist.
In 2019, Sydney features writer Stephanie Wood published the acclaimed Fake: A Startling True Story of Love in a World of Liars, Cheats, Narcissists, Fantasists and Phonies. It was centred on how she had been taken in by a man named Joe she met via a dating app and who told her he was a wealthy former architect-turned-sheep farmer but also explored why, in her 40s, single and lonely, she had been susceptible to his charms. So began a 15-month relationship before Wood ended the relationship and investigated his deceptions, then wrote the book.
The screen rights were bought by producer Imogen Banks, whose credits include Offspring. Keddie read it. She was in.
“It was the story itself and the possibility of exploring it through the female point of view and really trying to understand the female psyche, it was that that galvanised us – as opposed to watching a con man series that we’ve seen before. It was the challenge of exploring the experience in that way, more than anything.”
With a script by Anya Beyersdorf in the works, the producing partners had one name in mind for the character of Joe – David Wenham. “Everything he’s done, you just don’t not believe him for a second and that’s what it’s like working with him as well. He’s just mesmerising in that way.”
The series changes quite a bit from Wood’s story.
“We obviously consulted Stephanie after we bought the rights to the book. It was always that understanding between us all that we were going to be inspired by her story, which is, obviously really interesting and very layered, but that we needed to create our own world of characters, as opposed to it being a biopic.
“It was good for me to be able to just play a woman and to me, Birdie is the everywoman.”
The series gained critical plaudits when it debuted on Australian streaming service Paramount+ earlier this year. The Sydney Morning Herald called it “the best Australian drama in years”. For Keddie, the show has allowed her to flex her acting muscles and her growing producer skills.
“I started really feeling the itch to [produce] towards the end of Offspring, and I knew that I would, at some point. My brain just works like a producer’s. I want to produce things. I knew it would be a natural progression. I just didn’t know when it would happen.”
She looks back at Offspring with affection. It gave her a huge profile in Australia just as that sort of show – the multi-season prime-time family drama – became largely obsolete in the age of streaming.
“Now, I’m so grateful for that. I never would have thought that we’d do Offspring for that long, but it was just loved. It was so embraced, and people wanted it, and I really loved making it.
“It was so beneficial to me in so many ways, just as an actor, to work like that, day in, day out, in every scene.”
It was fun and rewarding while it lasted but Keddie, 50, doesn’t see the Offspring era as the peak of her career.
“As much as I loved Offspring, I’m just so thrilled that it’s endured and it’s so loved, I’m right in the thick of it now. I feel like I’m just mid-flight at the moment, and I feel like this is absolutely where I imagined I would be, making productions myself, finding the stories myself. I just feel like I’m, I’m exactly where I should be.”
Fake is on ThreeNow from Sunday, December 8.
