How did you come to play the role of Pattie Grey?

I had previously worked with Curio Pictures Producer Rachel Gardner and also with the director Jonathan Brough, so I suspect I was cast because they knew me and it sort of came out of left field which was lovely.  I certainly wasn’t expecting to be in Australia working right before Christmas. I thought the script was terrific. It was really, really good, a real page turner that leaves you in suspense, and my character Pattie was very unusual, so when I read the script, I thought, let’s go for it.

How would you describe your character Pattie?

Pattie is originally from Britain and got together with Bob in Britain, but then they came to Australia in the 1970s because of his job and they lived a small town, had a family and had their daughter (who’s the main focus of the story), Joni.

Pattie, felt a bit trapped by motherhood in this quite small community, she felt like a bit of an alien as she was quite a hippie type of person with quite spiritual ideas. She’s a practitioner of tarot readings.  She’s into dope smoking and is a free wheeler.

 Pattie is always a bit torn because she’s hanging on to her personality in an unfamiliar place. She’s trying to hold on to a bit of herself, while also trying to be a good mother. She’s quite conflicted, but she’s found her way through. Part of that way is to sometimes make light of serious things. She knows that her daughter went through quite a traumatic time as a teenager and Pattie dealt with that in her own particular way, which was to slightly skate over it . She’s made some choices that she’s not 100% been right about. But what mother hasn’t, you know?

How would you describe the series?

Playing Gracie Darling is part family drama, part ghost story and part crime mystery. It’s intriguing, haunting and relatable

Describe Patties’ journey in the series?

The story opens up some of these old difficulties between Pattie and her daughter Joni and that makes the relationship very interesting. It’s not a cut and dried relationship. It’s very on the move all the time, which is what appealed to me. Pattie’s journey happens in two different time periods; when Joni was a teenager and in the modern day, and it deals with Pattie’s philosophy, which is very specific. She believes in internal intuition as she herself is very intuitive. However, back at the time she wasn’t able to deal with a 15-year old’s problems with her school friends. Pattie dealt with the exterior problem, she tried to give Joni a solution by taking her to live up in town and trying to help Joni through her problems by taking her to counselors and to therapy. But you know, it’s like a lot of parental choices for a child.  Pattie meant well but she didn’t really listen to what her daughter needed. That cuts both ways because we as daughters don’t listen to our mothers. When we’re children, it’s all about us and we forget that our mothers have their own set of problems and that they’re not this fixture that’s there for you all the time. I think everybody makes that mistake, including me. My mother has passed on now, and I wish I had realized better that she had her own set of problems, that she had her own life and that of course she didn’t make the right decisions all the time.

Your character Pattie reads tarot cards – have you ever had your tarot cards read?

I had a period when I used to visit two of my friends who were good at Tarot. I think it doesn’t matter what the medium is; I ching or palm-reading or whatever, there are people who just have access to a deeper sense who can sometimes get things you are thinking uncannily right. 

I feel these friends were very helpful to me in my middle years when I didn’t quite know where I was going, or whether I was romantically involved with the right person and I was looking for guidance.  You tend to take from the reading what you need, it teaches you something about yourself and gives you insight.

Have you ever played with a Ouija board or had a supernatural experience?

When I was a school kid, I played with a Ouija board, and then I never played with it again, there is that strange group energy that comes about. This thing is undeniably moving but no one thinks it is them that is moving it. 

However, I’m skeptical about these things in that I don’t really believe there’s some spirit out there who has come to guide my fingers and tell me their name. I don’t think that, but there are people who do believe and there are certainly instances one hears of that cannot be easily dismissed or explained.

My mother for example, was quite “sensitive” as they say.  She had experience with the Ouija board after which she never wanted to do it again. She felt she really had found something. An energy was in the room and it spooked her and everyone around her.

So, I feel one would be stupid to totally believe it, and one would be stupid to completely dismiss it. My way is to steer a middle course in such things. I’ve sensed ghosts definitely, but I haven’t seen anything, and I think sensing is actually as spooky as it gets anyway, when you just walk into a room and you know you don’t like it and you think I can’t breathe, or I want to get out, that kind of feeling, that the air has gone very cold.