It’s a cold day in the Tasmanian west coast town of Zeehan and Marta Dusseldorp is sitting inside the Gaiety Theatre, a beautiful old building that Bay Of Fires fans will instantly recognise. Marta is deep into filming the hit drama’s second season and, because she’s co-creator and producer as well as star, she’s thrown herself into it completely.
“I hadn’t seen [my daughter] Maggie for a month when she walked up on set today,” Marta tells TV WEEK. “It brings me to tears. Four weeks. It’s the longest I’ve ever been apart from her, because she’s now at the age with school that you can’t just go, ‘Come on.’ She’s got, like, serious pressures.
“So [a project has] got to be worth that. And this really is, to me.”
Marta moved to Tasmania in 2018 with her actor husband, Ben Winspear, and their daughters, Grace, now 18, and Maggie, now 15. Inspired to create a crime thriller set in the wild west of the state, Marta came up with Bay Of Fires. The popularity of the first season took the ABC – and Marta – by surprise.
“They kept messaging me after the numbers came out, going, ‘This is quite unusual. This is great.’ And I’m asking: ‘What? Really? Really?’ I think I even asked them to check it.”
The first season was also a hit with the Zeehan locals, with the first two episodes being screened in the old theatre where Marta is now speaking to TV WEEK.
“This was entirely full of locals who were all in the show, and I was more nervous about that than I was the Sydney Film Festival premiere that we did,” Marta remembers. “And I was sitting here, up the back, thinking, ‘Oh my God,’ but they were laughing and calling out each other’s names when they came on screen.
“And, right at the end, they all just turned around, looked up, and they were like, ‘Good on ya, Marta!’”
Even before the first season went to air, Marta and her co-creators were at work on a second. While the first season was all about survival for high-powered businesswoman Stella, as she escaped assassins by fleeing to a remote Tasmanian town with her two children, the second is about freedom and redemption.
“We’ve all done things in our past that we’re not proud of,” Marta says. “How do you make amends? That is a huge burden for her.”
Nearly all the cast and crew have returned for season two, including Marta’s older daughter, Grace, who plays Rebecca. This season, it’s a much bigger role.
“She’s so good,” Marta says. “I’m really super, super impressed. And she’s spent so many years on set, so the pressure just doesn’t get to her. She does want to be an actor, otherwise I wouldn’t give her an opportunity that someone else could have, who genuinely wants to do it. Because it’s a serious business, it’s a great career, and I think it could be possible for her.
“And… it’s nice to have a sleepover with your daughter!”
Marta’s real-life experiences as a mother have found their way into the show, where Stella is mum to Otis (Imi Mbedla) and Iris (Ava Caryofyllis). Teenager Otis got himself into a lot of trouble last season, but Marta didn’t want to simply repeat that this season.
“It’s more about the idea that they need us to do practical things for them, like teach them how to drive,” she says. “My husband’s just actually taught our eldest to drive, and so I was watching that quite closely. There’s a little bit of that in there.”
The huge success of the show’s first season – it has devoted fans in the UK as well as in Australia – puts pressure on Marta and the rest of the team to make an equally strong second season. For Marta, there’s no option other than to lean in.
“Because, otherwise, what are you doing?” she asks. “I mean, I do miss being a jobbing actor – you know, just getting a beautiful script. But I’m 52 now and so happy to be with all these genius people at the top of their game, having really great conversations and making the [show’s] world… I feel very lucky.”
Marta has certainly had plenty of beautiful scripts in her career. She has starred in shows such as Crownies and its spin-off, Janet King, in which she played the title character, as well as A Place To Call Home, Wentworth and The Twelve, the jury drama commissioned by Foxtel executive Brian Walsh not long before he died.
“The Twelve is meaningful for me, because Brian asked me to do that,” Marta says. “So it’ll always have a very special place in my heart, because I remember saying to him, ‘I can’t do that – I’ve played a lawyer!’
He just said: ‘Please.’ So, I was like: ‘OK. For you, Brian, I do anything.’ And I remember looking over and he’d be in the doorway when we were filming. It was not the last time I saw him, but nearly.”
Marta says it is her ‘life privilege’ to tell Australian stories.
“People say, ‘Why haven’t you gone overseas?’ I feel, why would you? It’s all here. It’s good, it’s beautiful, and Janet King taught me to believe that I could… it’s a funny word, ‘lead’, because you’re not doing that. You’re there with fabulous people.”
For Marta, Bay Of Fires is a celebration of community, but it’s something more, too.
“It was an ode to motherhood, because I was often asked, ‘Do you feel guilty?’ It just should never be asked of anyone, and it shouldn’t be a question in your mind.
“And now my daughters are old enough to give me feedback, and they say, ‘Thank you so much for showing us what was possible.’”
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