Things got a bit weird for Anna Torv when she was shooting the third season of The Newsreader. One week she was Helen Norville, getting all dressed up for the 1989 TV WEEK Logie Awards, and the next week, she was doing something very similar in real life.
“It was very meta,” she tells TV WEEK with a laugh. “We went to the AACTAs the week after we’d shot the Logies stuff. That was very funny, like, ‘Am I in life or am I shooting? What’s happening?’”
Anna has won both AACTA and Logie awards for her portrayal of Helen, but back in 1989, the year that the third and final season of The Newsreader is set, she was just a nine-year-old girl, growing up in Queensland, who loved Neighbours.
“I clearly, clearly can remember that starting and wanting to watch that,” she says.
By the early 2000s, Anna was making a name for herself in TV, with roles in Young Lions, The Secret Life Of Us and McLeod’s Daughters, where she played Tess’s (Bridie Carter) cousin Jasmine, who had a brief romance with Alex (Aaron Jeffery).
“I remember really getting on with Bridie, and I remember learning to ride,” Anna says. “And Aaron Jeffery, I think, is just a really gorgeous guy and a great actor.”
Anna’s career has had lows as well as highs. When she went to the UK, she struggled to find work, taking a “tiny, tiny job” as a nurse in the telemovie Frankenstein.
“It was the only job I could get in London,” she remembers. “And then I got Mistresses when I was on that set, and I was like, ‘Okay, phew, I can pay my rent.’”
In 2008, Anna began starring in US sci-fi series Fringe. It ran for five seasons.
“It took me quite a while to get over it, to be honest,” she admits. “We would shoot, like, 22 episodes [a season], so it was all-consuming. The hours are just excruciating. We did a 23-hour camera day once. It’s like, how do you function?”
Anna, who was briefly married to her Fringe co-star Mark Valley, went on to star in the Netflix series Mindhunter. Then, after COVID-19 shut things down in LA, she returned to Australia. Since then, she’s had some “really good jobs” – including, of course, The Newsreader.
“I just adore Helen, but I’ve also just loved being part of the creative team,” she explains.
Anna has been able to have a say in what’s happened to her character, which is exactly the way she likes to work.
“Oh, I’m really pushy,” she laughs, “but I have an enormous respect for writers. I love story and I’m invested. And so I always try and get in there. But that’s the fun bit. Otherwise you feel like you’re just a puppet.”
Playing the volatile Helen has been a big change for Anna, after spending two seasons as the “constrained” psychologist Wendy Carr in Mindhunter.
“There’s no holding back,” she says. “That was just so freeing.”
She’s also enjoyed the chance to experience what it was like being a female TV presenter in the 1980s, right down to the shoes.
“Trying to take yourself seriously when you can’t even walk in half of the stupid shoes… I loved all of that. You have to lean into that.”
Anna is still open to taking on roles in the US – she played Joel’s (Pedro Pascal) partner Tess in The Last Of Us – but she says being based back in Australia is “beautiful”.
“There’s something really lovely about working on stuff with people you’ve known for a really long time,” she explains. “I never felt like I really had that in America. Whereas I come back here and whatever job I do, there’s some connection to someone. Doing Territory, Robert [Taylor] and I obviously had just done The Newsreader, but Michael [Dorman] and I did Secret Life together years ago, and I remember seeing him in one of his shows when he was still at drama school.
“You feel like you’re a part of something and that you’ve earned your place.”
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