Katrina Milosevic won plenty of fans by playing erratic yet well-meaning inmate Sue “Boomer” Jenkins in all 100 episodes of the iconic prison drama Wentworth. Her fan-favourite turn as the fiercely loyal repeat offender may have earned her a place in viewers’ hearts – but Katrina’s alter ego might not be so impressed with her newest role as a cop in the new Stan original series Population 11.
“Now that I think about it, I’ve played a cop before – in SeaChange – and I sort of played a cop in Stingers too… why do I keep doing these ‘policey’ kind of roles? That’s bizarre,” Katrina, 47, tells TV WEEK with a laugh. “And if I’m not the police, I’m a prisoner. I’m not sure what that says about me!”
(Image: Supplied)
Population 11, created by former The Moodys writer Phil Lloyd, follows a suburban American bank teller named Andy (Ben Feldman), who flies to Australia to look for his estranged father, Hugo (Darren Gilshenan), in the tiny fictional town of Bidgeegud, only to discover Hugo has gone missing. And when we say tiny, we mean tiny – population 11, in fact.
Based loosely on the real-life disappearance of Paddy Moriarty from the tiny Northern Territory town of Larrimah in 2017, the mystery comedy series is in equal parts edge-of-your-seat mysterious and laugh-out-loud funny.
“It just hits the ground running and you don’t really get a chance to get your head around anything,” Katrina says of Population 11. “It’s one thing after another and one crazy person after another.”
One of the first locals Andy meets as he drives into town is Katrina’s character, Sergeant Geraldine Walters – an unorthodox, rule-bending policewoman who makes a memorable first impression.
(Image: Stan)
“There’s something delicious about having ultimate power, and having no power at all,” Katrina says of her role in Population 11 compared to Wentworth. “It’s interesting to find the opposite in the character that you think has power, and the opposite in the character that you think actually has no power.”
Filming took place in Derby, in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Katrina, who was born in the Queensland mining town of Mount Isa, was on location for about four months.
“Our day often hinged around excitement about getting people together to get a car to go to Woolworths, or to the chemist,” she says with a laugh. “I didn’t expect for it to be such a memorable, fun, heart-warming experience. I don’t know what the show will be like, but damn, I had some fun!”
Katrina says she was so keen to be involved in Population 11 after reading the script she auditioned for several roles in the series. Ultimately, she landed the part she “really wanted”.
(Image: Stan)
“I really liked [Geraldine’s] timing,” Katrina says. “I liked her irreverence. She’s a woman who just really loves her job – like, loves it.”
Like Boomer in Wentworth, Geraldine is pretty out there – which Katrina insists she’s not in real life.
“I’m not ‘larger than life’ – I’m so boring, it’s not funny,” she says with a laugh. “I’m an introvert and a homebody. Maybe that’s why I like those characters. I love the complexity in people… their take on things and reasoning for doing things.”
Despite their very different lives, Katrina actually thinks inmate Boomer and policewoman Geraldine might just hit it off.
“I think they’d get on to a certain degree,” she muses. “Actually, that’s a weird thought, those two together!”
