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Lynda La Plante: Razor casting “beyond my believability.”

Prime Suspect writer Lynda La Plante says that Underbelly: Razor should have cast older actresses in the lead roles.

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Eminently-talented screenwriter Lynda La Plante, best known for her Prime Suspect series, was interviewed on Kerri-Anne today.

La Plante said UK television bosses were reluctant to cast Helen Mirren in the role because of her age.

Having also written Widows and The Commander, she was asked about her interest in strong female character roles.

Kerri-Anne noted,”We’re in 2011 and it is still a bit of an issue with age and female role models?”

“Well, again, what you’ve got is the most amazing series on at the moment with the Razor gang, but to me, the two lead females were real old, big women. So it’s beyond my believability to see a very young woman of like 28, owning 45 brothels in that era,” said La Plante.

“But when we see the real women, why glamourise them? Because the real women I think, are by far more interesting.

“But at the same time it’s a great show.”

Interviewed about her new book Bloodline, about Jean Lynn the last woman to hang in Australia in 1951 she spoke about plans to film it with Nicole Kidman. But she also noted  Screen Australia was “plummy and afraid” of it…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E43QxmT79Wg[/youtube]

24 Responses

  5. Typical commerical TV. They stumble across a good thing and then just run it into the ground.

    The only series of Underbelly worth a damn was the first one.

  6. Razor stinks. Tits and arse is all ch 9 rely on. The whole thing should have been maximum 3 episodes long. If not a telemovie. But then where would that leave the desperadoes at 9? More Big Bang anyone?

  7. Australia has a real problem with older actresses on screen in lead roles. 25 year olds play 45 years olds. Why don’t we ever take the lead from the British who cast interesting, real looking woman? They’re stuff leaves ours for dead and mostly it’s coz Australia is obsessed with youth on our tellies. We should all grow up.

  9. Really, if we’re going to start picking scabs off ‘Underbelly – Razor’ we’ll be here all night. The bigger crime than their unrealistic age is the two ladies’ awful acting, worse accents and horrific scripts.
    For mine, they should have picked a couple of old battleaxes with some real screen cred. The show is almost entirely set in brothels anyway, so the requisite eye candy could have been lounging around the salon in virtually every shot.

  11. I think Val Lehman is a bit long in the tooth to have been considered to play Kate Leigh, although I would love to see Val in something, she is a great actress.

  12. If I can remember correctly, the first episode of UB introduced the Tilly character as a 25 yr old and that this was the beginning of a 10 year saga.

    Therefore it makes sense to hire a young actress as it’s easier to make a young woman look older with hair and make up then what it is to make an older woman look younger with the same. The only valid critique here would have been that terrible cockney accent.

    As for a young person being so successful in owning brothels, well if you can consider there were more than 20 in a suburb such as Darlinghurst then business was obviously booming. Keeping in mind this was before the internet and back then communities were alot closer with everyone knowing everyone therefore the discretion of a brothel would have been very appealing to the married men of that time. Plus if Tilly had been a sex worker since she was 16 then by the time she was that age in the series she would have had 10 years ‘experience’ in the field so it’s not that surprising.

  13. In 1927, Tilly Devine was 27 and Kate Leigh was 46 – both actresses look close enough to those ages to me (Danielle Cormack is 40 – a fair bit closer than Val Lehman’s 68!)

    Just because it’s hard to believe a young woman was a successful entrepreneur doesn’t mean it can’t be true… history is full of surprises.

  14. I haven’t seen the Razor series, as it doesn’t interest, but believe the 2 women it’s based on, were both horrifically ugly, so yes they should’ve really cast 2 older, plainer looking female character actors.

  16. I actually think if they had of casted correctly here it would have made the show better. They have plenty of the other types around they could have shown off and written in to give the blokes 30 second of tit….

    I dont mind Razor but i dont tune in every week i find the plot thin and it was more made for a tele movie or two or 3 part series.

    It’s a shame because the first was incredible the rest have been meh if nothing else is on ill watch it.

  19. The Underbelly brand is so distant from the original series which always will be the best. They should have just stripped the latter seasons of the UB branding and made each season into individual shows. Constantly having a new story/subtitle every season is just making the show a joke now.

  20. I haven’t seen Underbelly Razor but as far as I know the lead actors are actually close to the age of the real characters they’re playing, though undoubtedly prettier and more glamorous (well, it is TV). However, the general point she makes about casting older women is on the money.

  23. Bang on the money MuchoTB. Methinks La Plante remembered, or was constantly reminded before going on air, that she was speaking on a Nine show and therefore knew it was poor form to criticise anything on the network. Maybe she’d give a different, more honest answer if she was on The Circle?

    I agree with her point though. Maybe someone like Deborrah Lee Furness, Rachel Ward, Sigrid Thornton or Kerry Armstrong might have been better…but even the most brilliant actress cannot save a sh*t script.

    And Lynda, do not touch Nicole with a barge pole. Please!

  24. The most amazing series of the moment? What a crock.

    Underbelly has and always will be a joke, full of ham acting, bad scripts and historical inaccuracy. As far as Australian dramas go there are much better, which don’t rely on titty shots every two and a half minutes to make up for the lack of a plot.

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