Up on the roof with Deborah Mailman

By LOUISA CLEAVE

They sure drink a lot on the Australian drama The Secret Life of Us.

Debating screwed-up love lives demands a bottle of wine, a dinner party at least, possibly even two or three. And then there is simply hanging out on the roof-top having a laugh — with a six-pack of Victoria Bitter.

Deborah Mailman, the actress who plays Kelly in the Melbourne-based drama, confesses that the cast is not a bunch of raving alcoholics: none of the alcohol gets past their lips during filming, and they are not allowed to indulge between scenes.

"I started noticing [the alcohol] quite a bit when I was watching [the show]," says Mailman. "There seems to be a six-pack in every scene and they're always on the roof-top with some Lemon Ruski.

"Look, I know when I was 20-something any amount of money you chip in and get some bloody beers. There is a lot of drinking, that's for sure."

Mailman may sound like a fair dinkum Aussie woman, but in fact she has half of her family roots in New Zealand.

Her mother is from the Gisborne area and her father Australian. They married in Tokomaru Bay and moved to Australia to raise a family.

Mailman grew up in the Australian mining town of Mount Isa where, not unexpectedly, she was nicknamed "postie" by her school mates.

She graduated from Queensland's Academy of the Arts in 1992 and until Secret Life had her acting roots mainly in theatre and film, winning an Australian Film Institute best actress award for the movie Radiance.

"The AFI award got me an in-road into the industry and gave me that professional recognition. With Secret Life, it's the other world of people recognition," says Mailman.

Set in St Kilda, Secret Life follows the trials and tribulations of a group of 20-something friends.

Mailman's character, Kelly, lives with Alex, a doctor, and would-be author Evan. Alex had an affair with Jason, who married her best friend Gabrielle. And so the drama goes.

"What I love about playing her is that she will try anything once and deal with the consequences when they come," says Mailman. "That's because her world is quite unstable and she's really trying to find a place of belonging and wants to believe in something. Her search is always about trying to find her ideal man, her ideal workplace and her ideal home.

"As Deb, I'm happy to have all that at the moment. My life is pretty good."

But Mailman, who is filming a second series of the show, does have a desire to be cast outside the funny, lovable female roles like Kelly.

Does she have an ideal character in mind?

"Someone who says: 'just die', someone who doesn't have much of a conscience. Someone who is nasty, bitchy.

"It's hard to place kind of general emotions. I just think I'd like to play something outside the lovable, warm energy that I'm playing — whatever that may be." •