By Stephen Vagg
Tell us about The PM’s Daughter
“It’s a comedy-drama about a teenage activist called Cat, whose world is turned upside down when her mum gets the top job. Now she’s got to go through all the highs and lows of growing up inside the Lodge where one wrong move could lead to national headlines.
“The main target audience is 8-12. But it’s also been engineered as a co-viewing experience that parents can have some fun with too. Anyone aware of the last few decades of politics – and politicians – will recognise a couple of nods. Plus, it plays with stuff like climate change and social media, all good fodder for family chats around the dinner table.”
What happened in Season One and what happens in Season Two?
“Series One centred on the environment and climate change. Extreme forces on either side of the debate were targeting the PM, and Cat worked to stop the humiliation of her mum. To do that, she had to unmask the members of a secretive activist group called The Agitators, and a mole working inside the government itself.
“In Series Two, the federal election campaign is underway. This year we focus in on the tech world, as Cat and her friends all intern at a company called Aletheia. Cat’s decided that she wants to be a journalist like her late father, and as she chases her first story, she realises a series of damaging leaks against her mother are part of a larger conspiracy aimed at corrupting the election outcome. Accidental Lodge parties, elaborate disguises and sword fighting ensue.”
What were the challenges of Season Two?
“For Series Two, we wanted to take a look at things like social media, privacy and everyone’s favourite hot topic of the moment, AI. But just because they’re important, current issues, doesn’t automatically make them television friendly. We had to work really hard to find fun, dramatic, visual ways to weave all these ideas into ten episodes of kid’s TV.
“The other big challenge on the script side was the serialised conspiracy itself – they’re always tricky. You want to create these escalating hook endings for each episode, but it’s always a process of trial and error to figure out how and where to push the story forward.”
Tell us about the cast?
“Cassie [Helmot], Jaga [Yap] and Natalie [English] are brilliant to watch in action. We just heaped reams of dialogue on them, which they nailed, while being utterly charming, on and off camera. Occasionally, we’d even dump flour on their head, or hand them a sword, and tell them to keep acting, which they somehow did. All the while, two of them were also finishing their Year 12 exams.
“The show really has an embarrassment of riches in both the teen and adult halves of the cast – the hardest part was wanting to use them all, all the time. Even Richard Roxburgh managed to pull his weight.”
Tell us about yourself?
“I’ve been a screenwriter for almost ten years, but before that, in my former life, I was a journalist and breakfast TV producer… which might be where Cat’s career aspirations came from.”
Who were the other writers and who directed it?
“Alexandra Cullen pulled double duty as writer and script editor. The rest of our fantastic writing team was made up of Lou Sanz, Hannah Samuel, Craig Irvin, Nikki Tran and Gemma Bird Matheson, who also pulled double duty by keeping our PM safe in the role of Yvette. Julie Kalceff and Lisa Matthews were our wonderful directors.”
Any fun memory (s)?
“Whenever I had a chance to go on set – and not be a tripping hazard for the incredibly hard-working crew – it was amazing to see how they brought everything on the page to life. In the writer’s room we’d casually plot something like ‘and then flour pours down from the ceiling onto her head’, or ‘one of the challenges should be eating an onion’. Next thing you know, fifteen people in a production meeting are very seriously discussing the mechanics of flour dumping, and how to make a realistic fake onion.
“It was also really fun being interrogated by the cast about episode ten’s cliffhanger ending.”
Do you have a favourite episode/moment (s)?
“We had a lot of fun seeding in little things and paying them off episodes later – I really wanted to reward repeat viewers. I won’t be boring by listing off those, so for a whole episode I’ll pick episode six. It’s a massive gear shift in the show, and it was a hard nut to crack in the room, but the writers on that were incredibly patient and ended up really nailing it. At the time, we thought we were going into sci-fi territory, but then the AI boom kicked in. And for a moment, I’d pick Cat and Sadie’s confiding scene in episode eight. This is a show that’s full of politics and hijinks, but that scene of two best friends offering each other just the right kind of support is really the heart of the whole thing.”
Season Two of The PM’s Daughter can currently be seen on ABC iview
