North by Northwest star Antonia Prebble talks to Joanna Wane about playing a kick-ass Hitchcock heroine who's the smartest person on stage
When Alfred Hitchcock cast Eva Marie Saint as the blonde bombshell in North by Northwest, he gave her three pieces of advice: "Lower your voice. Don't use your hands. And look directly into Cary Grant's eyes at all times."
Simon Phillips' stage directions to Antonia Prebble, who plays double-agent Eve Kendall in his clever adaptation of the 1959 film-noir classic, is a little more pragmatic. "At this stage in the rehearsals, my advice would probably be, 'Keep calm and try to dodge the flying furniture,' because we're putting the more physical aspects of the production together up front, to give [the actors] time to be safe by opening night."
Developed for the theatre by Phillips in collaboration with his playwright wife, Carolyn Burns, the show marks the Melbourne-based director's first professional return home in almost 25 years and is predicted to be a smash hit.
Opening in Auckland on October 25, North by Northwest has already toured Australia, Canada and the United States, with one reviewer describing it as striking just the right balance between romantic romp and thrilling tension. A dozen cast members play hundreds of different parts in the show — think car chases played out with office chairs — and special effects recreate climactic moments from what's been called "the first James Bond movie", including the legendary scene where Grant is hounded by a crop-duster plane.
Ryan O'Kane, who played the murderous Dylan on Shortland Street AND his twin brother, steps into Cary Grant's shoes as the charming, pathologically unruffled New York advertising executive Roger O. Thornhill (whose grey, single-breasted suit has claimed its own place in the filmic Hall of Fame).
Prebble is more than his match as the poised, professional spy who's no shrinking violet when it comes to seduction. "It's going to be a long night," she tells Thornhill after their first encounter on an overnight train. "And I don't particularly like the book I'm reading …"
Phillips tells Canvas he'd had his eye on Prebble — "a wonderful actor with a compelling combination of beauty and irony" — since seeing her in the TV series Outrageous Fortune. Prebble says she jumped at the chance to work with the man who took Priscilla, Queen of the Desert to the West End and Broadway, and spent more than a decade as artistic director of the Melbourne Theatre Company. "He's just so beloved and respected. A real theatrical genius."
She's back in Auckland after a recent five-week stint in Melbourne herself, filming Safe Home, a four-part thriller about family violence. It's the first project by Kindling Pictures, the new production company headed by Imogen Banks, who Prebble worked with on the TV drama Sisters a few years ago. Her partner (and Westside co-star) Dan Musgrove and their two children Freddie, 3, and baby Gus went to Australia with her for the shoot.
As it happens, Eva Marie Saint had just given birth to her second child when she worked with Hitchcock on North by Northwest. She was also blonde, like most of his memorable leading ladies, so Prebble will be wearing a wig. The first time she went blonde was for Power Rangers in 2005, playing a sorcerer's apprentice, and last year she had a "kind of platinum-blonde mullet" for an episode of My Life is Murder.
"I really love transforming," says Prebble, whose chameleon looks allow her to inhabit the hard-as-nails matriarch of the Westside crime family just as convincingly as a glamorous femme fatale. "We used to have this joke on Outrageous Fortune when [the stylists] were putting curls in my hair. They'd be, 'Outrageous, Outrageous, Outrageous and … oh God, Pride and Prejudice.' Just one too many curls and it was like I'd stepped out of a Jane Austen story."
In recent years, Hitchcock's problematic relationship with some of his leading ladies has been exposed. A literal ladykiller on screen, he's also been accused of misogyny in how many of his female characters are portrayed. Prebble says her role in North by Northwest — a film still viewed as a cinematic masterpiece — breaks away from those stereotypes. Asked by Canvas to pick her three favourite Hitchcock heroines, it's no surprise who's at the top of her list:
EVE KENDALL, NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959)
In 1954, newcomer Eva Marie Saint won Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards for On the Waterfront with Marlon Brando. When Hitchcock was considering her for North by Northwest, Saint's mother told her he loved casting women who wore beige clothing and white gloves — advice she credited with helping her land the role.
"Eve is a wonderful example of a Hitchcock heroine because she really is a heroine, meaning she does heroic things in the story. She's portrayed as this beautiful blonde bombshell and that's part of her allure and mystique, but she's so much more than that.
"As a double agent, she's a professional woman who's highly competent at her job and whip-smart. She holds the power and gets Roger [Cary Grant] to do exactly what she wants him to do. She's also dedicated and loyal right to the end, despite the danger, which shows huge strength of character.
"On the other side, I think there's a lot of sadness to Eve, and we get a couple of hints at that. When Roger asks why she's not married, she says, 'Well, men like you never want to get married,' which suggests some heartbreak in her life. Perhaps she doesn't trust love because she's been hurt.
"The other thing that's quite revealing is when Eve tells Roger she became a spy because it was the first time anyone had asked her to do anything worthwhile. So I feel there was a bit of emptiness and a lack of purpose in her life because she was pigeonholed as a woman of that time when your role was to be a good wife. Eve is a very complex character. There are lots of layers to her and that's what drew me to the role."
LINA McLAIDLAW, SUSPICION (1941)
Joan Fontaine won the Academy Award for Best Actress playing opposite Cary Grant in this romantic psychological film noir, based on a Francis Iles novel, Before the Fact. It's the only Oscar-winning performance in a Hitchcock film.
"Hitchcock is a controversial character these days. He's been called a misogynist because his films are often about hurting or killing the damsel in distress. Here, the story is told from Lina's point of view, so it's a female gaze as opposed to a male one.
"This is Joan Fontaine, so she's beautiful, of course, but playing a shy, inexperienced woman who falls in love with a playboy kind of a guy. They get married and then she realises he's not who he purported to be and she starts to worry his plan might be to kill her for the life insurance money.
"So she's wrestling with two very basic human needs: to love and be loved, but also to feel safe. And which of those primal needs is more important — to feel safe or to follow your heart? She really loves him, but at the same time, she doesn't know if the relationship is good for her, or even if she'll survive it. I think we can all relate to that on some level, being in a relationship and not knowing if that's ultimately the right thing.
"The role has a lot of emotional depth and complexity. Lina is portrayed quite sympathetically and as a woman with agency, as opposed to just being a victim of circumstance. And Hitchcock is the master of suspense so right until the end, you're not quite sure how it will turn out."
JO McKENNA, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1956)
When Doris Day died in 2019, at the age of 97, she was described in one obituary as 'a versatile performer who had savvy, spunk and sorrow, which made her a mould-breaking Hitchcock heroine'. In this suspense thriller co-starring James Stewart, she performs what would become her signature song, 'Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)'.
"Dear old Doris Day. She's fabulous in this film and not your typical femme fatale because her looks are not what the character rests on, which is refreshing. Instead, she leads with her brain.
"Jo McKenna is a famous, talented singer who's given it all up to support her husband's career as a doctor and to bring up their son, which is an interesting issue that women had to face — and continue to face today. She's also very funny and has some great banter with her husband; they're actually happy together. So we see a real woman with depth and complexity who's also likeable.
"When the couple's son is kidnapped in a ransom situation, it gives Day the opportunity to show a lot of emotional depth and truth. And she doesn't just sit back and let her husband do everything. In fact, in the final climax of the movie, she's the one who saves the day."
North by Northwest is on at Auckland's ASB Waterfront Theatre from October 25 to November 19 (see atc.co.nz).
Photos shot on location at Captain's Bar, Park Hyatt Auckland. Ryan O'Kane wears a suit from Working Style. Antonia Prebble wears an Adrian Hailwood dress. Hair & makeup: Darren Meredith