Moral Madam
Australian star Rachel Griffiths discusses her latest role as an ethical brothel owner in New Zealand series Madam, her approach to playing a real person on screen and the enduring popularity of US drama Six Feet Under, which she starred in for five seasons.
While an algorithm might decide what to serve up next on your streaming platform of choice, Australian star Rachel Griffiths also uses one for the acting jobs she chooses to accept.
“How long does it go for? How far away is it? And how much will I get? It’s got to suit that algorithm,” she explains. And it’s been that way ever since her three children were born.
“I have made the decision to pass up opportunities that probably would have been real career-lifters because that algorithm just didn’t work out,” she admits. “I’d be too far away from my family for too long, for not enough money to basically replace me because when I go away, I’ve got to put in that wraparound support.”
But her latest project, Madam, certainly ticked all those boxes. The series was shot in New Zealand, a two-and-a-half-hour flight away that allowed her to return home on weekends, while its half-hour format meant she wouldn’t be committed to a six-month shoot that would have been required if it had hour-long episodes.
The dramedy stars Griffiths as McKenzie ‘Mack’ Leigh, an American living in New Zealand with her family. When she discovers her husband has been cheating on her with escorts and uncovers a mountain of debt, she decides to establish her own ethical brothel in a country where sex work has been decriminalised, with the aim to protect women’s rights, wellbeing and financial independence.
Based on Antonia Murphy’s unpublished memoir, the 10-part series is produced by Tavake and XYZ Films for streamer ThreeNow and broadcaster Three in New Zealand. Fifth Season is distributing the drama, which also stars Rima Te Wiata, Danielle Cormack, Robbie Magasiva, Martin Henderson and Ariāna Osborne.
Griffiths, who is best known for roles in US dramas Six Feet Under and Brothers & Sisters, compares the way she chooses her acting jobs to the situations facing many female sex workers, who are often single parents trying to work while supporting their children.
“They make those same decisions,” she says. “‘How many hours do I work? How far from home and my kids’ school is it? And how much do I get paid?’ Doing sex work, the algorithm is really good if that is something you’re comfortable with doing because you can work 10 hours instead of 70, you can choose your own hours, be there at kids’ pick up and drop off.”
When she first learned about the project, Griffiths could immediately see the hook behind the story. “I could see the poster,” she says. Having played American characters on screen before, she was also interested in the American fish-out-of-water aspect to the story, and became invested in playing Mack, a mother supporting a child with additional needs.
“I’ve got friends who are in that position, and it’s an even more difficult load to manage and often more falls on the woman. So that was really interesting,” she continues. “And I like the idea of a well-educated, nice white lady coming up with this idea for this woke brothel and then slamming into the reality [of it] because she’s like, ‘Oh, we don’t serve [while] drunk and we don’t serve as people on drugs. And no, we’re not advertising on this site, because it is sexist and exploitative,’ and then they don’t get any customers because they’re not on the main site. So I have to eat humble pie because the girls are actually much more practical. It’s like wokeness meets the practicalities.”
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Before she took on the role, the actor hadn’t come across Murphy’s story, but the pair did meet up for “a very boozy dinner.” In fact, Griffiths felt a lot of responsibility playing a real person, and the show’s focus on ethical behaviour extended to the way she wanted to portray Murphy.
“In a show about running an ethical business, we had to be ethical, so I just wanted to assure her that I wasn’t going to throw her under the bus, so to speak,” she says. “And then we changed pretty much all the other characters so no one else is representative. They’re all invented.”
Griffiths didn’t even want to create a comparison between the real Murphy and her performance as Mack. “She’s a very well-educated girl but I didn’t want her to be in that rarefied world because I think other shows might do that,” she says.
“I wanted her more relatable, and I was really interested in exploring this perimenopausal woman who’s just so fucking tired and raging about all that she’s carried for so long, while her husband gets to have his thing. We’re all doing everything so daddy can be extraordinary, and he has not actually delivered extraordinary at all. Women, they’re working, they’re doing most of the housework, most of the remembering the birthdays and buying [things] and signing forms, and they call it the mental load. I wanted that to ring really true for the most women possible.
“I made her a little bit more Sheryl Crow; I think she would have been a ‘rock band T-shirt’ chick back in the day. And I’m sure she thought she was going to have a more fabulous life than being in rural New Zealand just feeling worn down by how much her life has shrunk.”
The actor, whose recent credits also include Australian series Total Control, Aftertaste and The Wilds, describes discussing the perimenopause on television as “the great taboo” – but it is a subject she has talked about with friends. “I have noticed there’s this kind of perimenopausal rage, this thing that women get to which is like this last burst of energy to make their life what they want it to be,” she says.
“Sometimes, when you are a young woman, it’s fuelled by hope. Well, in your 50s, if you’re not happy where you live and what you’re doing, you need a fuck-ton of energy to fire that change, so I think the purpose of menopause is really just to give you the shot of adrenaline. Like, ‘This is fucked. It’s my turn. I want a business. You’ve got to pull your weight. I’m over this. I’m doing it all,’ and it can make us difficult to live with.”
As part of her preparation for the series, Griffiths spoke to sex workers and visited a brothel. “I did my research,” she says. She was also able to link up with the “female-dominated, really inclusive” creative team: Madam is co-written by Shoshana McCallum (Inside) and Harry McNaughton (The Pact), and directed by Kacie Anning (Upload) and Madeleine Sami (The Breaker Upperers). Tom Hern and Halaifonua Finau executive produce for Auckland-based Tavake, Aumua Crustal Vaega is a co-executive producer and Belindalee Hope is the producer, while Nick Spicer, Aram Tertzakian and Marci Wiseman are execs for XYZ Films.
The series had its world premiere earlier this year at the Monte-Carlo TV Festival, where it won the award for best creation, and Griffiths believes the show speaks about the representation of women at a time when society is “still obsessed” with women’s bodies.
“Why do we care about what each individual chooses to do with their bodies? What they can show, what they can’t show, who they fuck, when they fuck, how they fuck, how much they get paid to fuck? It’s just like we’ve got really big problems in the world, and I don’t know why there is this endless focus on women’s bodies or why their right to choose whether or not they become mothers is just anybody’s fucking business,” she says. “We just have such big problems, and we are still in many societies fixated on controlling women.
“We talk a lot about respect for women, and that really only works if it’s respect for all women. It can’t be respect for women, but not single mothers. ‘They’re just leeches on society.’ We can’t be, ‘Respect for women except sex workers because they’ve degraded themselves.’ It has to be inclusive. It can’t be privileged feminist women that get to be safe.”
Across the Pacific, Griffiths is known for her role as Brenda Chenowith in Six Feet Under, the HBO series about a family-run LA funeral home that ran for five season between 2001 and 2005. The show is often mentioned among the greatest TV series of all time, and Griffiths describes it as “groundbreaking” for creator Alan Ball’s approach to queer stories, on-screen diversity and the representation of women.
“Equally, where that show landed was so interesting because Alan says Americans are afraid of talking about death and afraid of vulnerability, and so many of the movies of the 2000s and 1990s are based on American aggression, American confidence, American invincibility. There’s no talk about weakness, mortality,” she says. “Then September 11 happened, and suddenly America is like, ‘You can just die? You can just be at the photocopier, just copying something in your office building and a fucking plane comes in and you’re dead. This can happen?’
“It was a huge shock to the American psyche that we too are mortal, we too are vulnerable and everybody then started catching up on that first season because people were like, ‘Oh, you should see this show, Six Feet Under. It’s about death. It’s about how you can be here one minute and the next you’re not,’ and I do think that is probably at the heart of that [enduring popularity].”
It’s been more than a decade since Griffiths last worked in LA, however, in part due to her own algorithm. And while she wouldn’t sign up for another five-year show, she would be interested in working in the US again one day on a limited series. But for now, home is where her heart is.
“I really love American writing. Truly, the writing and the showrunning is really fantastic,” she says. “But I love telling Australian stories, and the content I want to do is really embedded in the Australian psyche and making sense of our history and our psyche as a creative producer. But I love American writing. I just think it leads the world with character and delivering something for an audience that is really satisfying. They’re very audience focused, but that doesn’t mean they make easy work.”
tagged in: Fifth Season, Madam, Rachel Griffiths, Six Feet Under, Tavake, Three, ThreeNow, XYZ Films