Magda Szubanski loves a good water-balloon fight. She laughs as she talks about shooting the scene in this week’s episode of After The Verdict where her character Margie, wearing a shower cap, pelts a couple of kids with water balloons and gets pelted back.
“I really got into it, like a bit too much, because it was with kids,” Magda, 61, tells TV WEEK, speaking from her car parked on the side of the road in Melbourne. “Oh my God, I regressed! I thought I was the same age as them, but I’m not.”
After The Verdict has been a joy for Magda’s many fans, putting the beloved funny woman in a starring role in a primetime series. It’s been a joy for Magda too.
The role of Margie – a butcher planning her wedding to another woman, while on the trail of a killer – was written with her in mind. It’s a role a very young Magda could never have imagined.
“If you’d told me when I was 12 years old, realising I was gay, that one day I would be an advocate for same-sex marriage, and on television playing a lesbian, planning to get married, it would have bloody changed my life.”
(Image: Peter Brew Bevan)“If you’d told me when I was 12 years old, realising I was gay, that one day I would be an advocate for same-sex marriage, and on television playing a lesbian, planning to get married, it would have bloody changed my life,” she says.
Along with the water-balloon fights, and the chance to play a gay woman in a stable relationship, Magda has loved being able to work her “dramatic muscles” as Margie. The last few episodes of the season see her character’s storyline touch on some serious topics, including her relationship with her seriously ill mother.
Margie is seen sitting at her mother’s bedside, holding her hand and talking to her, even though she’s not responding. It felt very familiar for Magda, who was primary carer for her mother Margaret before her death in 2017.
Magda stars as Margie in After The Verdict.
(Image: Nine)“Although she was in an aged-care facility, I was the one who was there most days,” Magda explains. “Women, we do that stuff, don’t we?”
Filming the storyline about Margie’s mother was “emotional” for her.
“But I think there’s something a bit cathartic about doing that stuff too,” she adds. “It was really nice to be able to play a character that so many people would relate to, that role of the carer who has a fraught relationship with the person they’re caring for. That’s really poignant.”
Magda has been making Australians laugh – and think – since the 1980s, when she and a group of other Melbourne University students, including Rob Sitch and Tom Gleisner, were given their own TV show, The D-Generation.
Nearly four decades later, she’s having one of her busiest years yet. As well as After The Verdict, she can be seen as God in the Netflix series God’s Favorite Idiot alongside Melissa McCarthy and her husband Ben Falcone (“they are the loveliest people”).
WATCH:We speak to Magda Szubanksi on the 2022 TV WEEK Logie Awards Red Carpet. Article continues after video
She’s also recorded the Kath & Kim 20th anniversary special, revisiting the iconic Aussie comedy where she played Sharon Strzelecki, alongside Jane Turner as Kath and Gina Riley as Kim.
“I love that it’s not too much, it’s just enough,” Magda says of the special. “There’s some really funny stuff. It was so fun to get back together and all play together again.
“One thing we were saying is, ‘Who would have thought that people would still be watching it?’ It’s 11 years since the film, but it’s 15 years since the last series went to air. But what’s weird is it’s almost more relevant now. There wasn’t the whole social media thing then, but Kim is completely part of that milieu.”
When it comes to social media, Magda is pretty big herself, with hundreds of thousands of followers. But she’s sometimes been the target of horrific abuse, over everything from her support for mask-wearing to her political views.
“Look, when they do pile-ons, that’s coordinated,” she explains. “It’s called brigading. It’s just an attempt to silence you, and it can be full-on, but you get better at it. You develop a thicker skin and can see the patterns of it.
“But also, there are some hilarious things on social media. People are so funny, just the random stuff that comes up. And there’s some really kind-hearted stuff.”
Magda famously played Sharon Strzelecki in Kath & Kim.
(Image: ABC)Despite the pile-ons, Magda is planning to keep voicing her opinions.
“Sometimes it’s a bit scary and other times you’re just like, ‘Whatever.’ But, you know, I’m 61, and you think, ‘If you can’t voice your opinion at this age, when can you?'”
Magda’s social media has occasionally given glimpses of the children that are a big part of her life: her “gorgeous, gorgeous” great-nephews, and singer David Campbell’s three kids, including Magda’s god-daughter Betty. She hasn’t spent as much time with the children recently as she’d like to.
“COVID has made things really difficult in the last few years, to be honest,” she explains. “But yeah, playing with kids is one of the great joys of life. There have been lots of hilarious noodle races in the pool at the Campbells’ house, and the kids do love the dress-ups.”
Health has been on Magda’s mind lately – not just because of COVID, but because she’s been working on a new three-part series for the ABC, Magda’s Big Health Check.
“I’m not saying I’m old, but my generation is getting older and you’ve got all the consequent things that come – you know, more people with disease and death,” she says. “That’s the reality.
“That said, though, I’m the most happy and content I think I’ve ever been in life.”
After The Verdict airs Wednesday 8.40pm, Nine Network
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