There’s a scene in Bump – A Christmas Film, in which Claudia Karvan’s character is patting a small baby aboard a plane. The baby is a fake, but the plane ride, somewhat surprisingly, is not.
“The passengers on the plane were going, ‘This is a bit weird. Why are you carrying that fake doll? What’s going on here?’” Claudia, 53, tells TV WEEK.
The Bump actress and co-creator will go to great lengths to bring the series – and her character – back to life, including, it would seem, guerilla-style filming.
When season five of Bump wrapped up in December last year, many fans thought it was the end of the hit Aussie series; certainly it was assumed we’d seen the last of Claudia’s beloved character Angie, who tragically lost her battle with cancer and died at the end of season five, episode nine.
Stan had wanted to do a Christmas film for ages, but Claudia says it was always deemed to be too difficult to interrupt the sequence of storytelling. When the show finished, however, they saw an opportunity to tell a Christmas story that wouldn’t “feel too cynical or opportunistic”.
“It felt like the best possible way to say goodbye to Angie,” Claudia says. “We were able to revisit the last Christmas that the family had together.”
It was when Claudia and co-star Nathalie Morris, who plays Angie’s daughter Oly, were at an event at the Sydney Opera House and spied a huge cruise ship docked nearby that the pieces of the Bump puzzle fell into place. The idea of a one-off Bump Christmas movie set aboard a cruise in Colombia, South America was born, celebrating the vibrancy and colour of Colombia.
“We were also able to include some fantastic Colombian landscapes and traditions and really pay homage to our South American cast, who are integral to the Bump world,” Claudia says.
Throughout five wildly entertaining seasons, Bump showcased the messy, complicated and love-filled lives of the Chalmers-Davis clan. At its heart was Angie and Oly’s rollercoaster relationship.
But by the end, the series had taken a toll on Claudia.
“At the end of season five, I felt pretty hollowed out,” she says, “and it felt a really sad way to leave the family… to end this five-year world that we were all living in together.”
Clearly, Bump struck a chord. Claudia says she’s often approached by fans of the series.
“Sometimes it’s daughters who are actually even estranged from their mothers or trying to get through challenging times with their mothers,” she says, “and Bump has brought them back together – it’s something that they watch together.
“And I get lots of messages from people who have either terminal cancer or are still learning to live with cancer. I get wonderful messages from them saying thank you for humanising the story and not making us just patients, just people carrying an illness and bringing nuance to those stories.”
Bump: A Christmas Film takes place between episodes nine and 10 of season five. Angie is very much alive and embracing whatever time she has with her loved ones.
“I had a friend who had a brain tumour, the same brain tumour which had taken her father’s life,” Claudia explains. “When she survived that, she was like Angie in Colombia. She was just alive to all the colours and the textures, and it was amazing to be around her.
“So, I used her as inspiration for the state of mind that Angie was in; just so happy to be alive.”
As the family sets off on a South American adventure, Santi (Carlos Sanson Jr) and Oly’s second baby Angelo is just eight weeks old. Rosa (Paula Garcia) has planned a Colombian Christmas, with much dancing and partying. However, a broken mirror and a missing baby Jesus have her believing their cruise might be cursed.
While the Bump budget didn’t extend to shifting production to South America, Sydney doubled as Colombia. But to give the film a proper Colombian flavour, Claudia and co-star Carlos zipped off to Colombia late last year and “filmed all the lights” and “soaked up all the festivities and the unique atmosphere and unique celebrations that happen over Christmas in Colombia”.
Then, she went back with daughter Audrey and her boyfriend and met up with co-star Paula and they brought back costumes and souvenirs and authentically Colombian stories to weave into the tapestry of the Christmas film.
And Claudia is no stranger to cruising in South America, revealing she and a friend saw the San Rafael Glacier, in southern Chile, where they chipped a bit of ice off the iceberg and put it in a little whisky glass. “I’m pretty sure there was some dinosaur cells in that bit of iceberg that I drank,” she says, smiling. “I don’t know if I should admit that.”
So, this is it. The last chapter of Bump. Or is it the end at all? Claudia jokes there could be more.
“I think we definitely need to make Bump the musical and Bump the horror movie,” she laughs.
In the past few years, we’ve seen Claudia branch out into factual television, tracing her family history in SBS’ Who Do You Think You Are? and discussing her upbringing on ABC’s Australian Story. But as someone with a resume which includes iconic TV series such as The Secret Life of Us and Love My Way, it’s interesting to know Bump, for Claudia, is top of the tree.
“It’s a peak and I sadly feel like it might not be something I’ll ever be able to repeat again in my career,” she says. “It’s a one-off. I’ve never done five series of anything and then to top it off with a movie… It’s a very, very unusual piece. The longevity of it and the support of the fanbase, I don’t know where to go from here.”
But she is working on a new series. Another audience favourite perhaps?
“I’m just going to build another great team and have another shot at the title,” she says.
You can watch Bump: A Christmas Film on Stan.
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