Their love was forged in friendship and a shared loss, and for actress and author Tasma Walton husband Rove McManus has brought her a happiness she never knew, she tells Larry Writer.
In her new novel, Heartless, Tasma Walton’s heroine’s heart is broken again and again. Her father abandons her. She is emotionally and physically abused. She falls in love, but dumps her man because, her heart in shreds, she feels unworthy of him. Happily, Heartless is no roman à clef. “It’s all imagined,” says the writer, actor and new wife of Rove McManus. “My life is good, very good.”
As Tasma counts her blessings over a peppermint tea on a clear and icy Melbourne morning, we believe her. There’s Rove, of course, the imminent publication of Heartless, her role as Detective Senior Sergeant Claudia Leigh in the Seven Network’s City Homicide, a new movie, Blessed, her return to health after a battle with asthma and, as a board member of Flora & Fauna International (FFI), she’s doing her bit for the planet.
“I’m happy,” Tasma says, “because I’m fulfilled in love and work.”
Marriage to talk-show host Rove is one huge reason the diminutive Tasma, 35, is standing tall. “It spins me out to call him my husband,” she says, with a smile that illuminates the room.
“Sometimes, for an instant, I forget we’re married and refer to Rove as my boyfriend, and then I remember in a rush and I feel, ‘Wow!’ It’s unbelievable waking up beside him every day.
“He’s kind, intelligent, generous. And he’s funny, so joyous and playful, and he brings that out in me. We still behave like schoolchildren. We laugh a lot – little things, like when he puts on his cap and his ears stick out.”
Tasma loves it, too, that her man is strong, that he endured the cruel death from cancer of his first wife, Belinda Emmett, and didn’t give up. “The upbeat Rove you see is grounded on a base note that is deep and profound,” she says. “He has strength and wisdom forged through experiences that required him to draw on a well of courage.”
Rove, says Tasma, “understands that only consistent, hard work brings success. He’s the Energizer bunny. He’s only 35 and look what he has achieved.”
Read the rest of this story in the October issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly with Tracy Grimshaw on the cover.
*Tasma wears Gorman dress and Jamin Puech necklace from Belinda.
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