Jessica Marais: the next generation of international television

Packed to the Rafters‘ Jessica Marais has been selected by The Hollywood Reporter as one of 3 Australians named on its list of the ‘Next Generation of International Television.’

The list acknowledges just 20 people under-35 who are redefining television internationally.

The other two are FOX8 Creative Director Travis Conneeley and Michele Schofield, Director of Content, AETN All Asia Networks.

Jessica Marais, 24, Actress
A diet of MGM musicals and classic studio films — which she used to watch for up to seven hours a day — gave the South African-born, Perth-raised Marais the acting bug. “If I could be the love child of Charlize Theron and Heath Ledger, with their acting chops and good looks, I’d be very happy,” she says. Well, she’s not far off. The acting dynamo was cast in Oz’s current top-rated drama, “Packed to the Rafters” before she even graduated from Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art in 2007. Two-and-a-half million viewers and one Logie award later, she is now knocking at Hollywood’s door and already has a recurring role on ABC’s “Legend of the Seeker.”

Travis Conneeley, 33, Creative director, Foxtel Owned & Operated Channels
Conneeley literally smashed his way into the TV business. Working as a runner on the Aussie soap “Home and Away,” he crashed the show’s production car on his very first day. “By the end of the day, everyone knew who I was,” he laughs. Fifteen years later, Conneeley is still driving, but only metaphorically: His job is to drive “audiences of all ages into watching television they never originally planned to.” He does that by overseeing not one but 12 separate channels, while serving as executive producer on such programming as Foxtel’s coverage of the Sydney Mardi Gras parade.

Michele Schofield, 34, Director of content, AETN All Asia Networks
After studying TV production in university, Aussie native Schofield took advantage of American parentage and bought a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. She landed a job as a page at Paramount Studios on arrival and spent five years “swimming with the sharks and working for crazy, demanding studio executives” before departing for her current gig as director of content for AETN All Asia. “(I’m) a bigger cog in a smaller wheel,” Schofield says. “(My current role gives) me a bigger sense of ownership about what (I) do.”

Source: Hollywood Reporter