Lockdown dreams of Bay of Fires

1. When Marta Dusseldorp moved to Tasmania six years ago she was captivated by the landscape, especially on the West Coast.

So when the world stopped in March 2020 she seized on an opportunity to get creative, with a phone call to Jack Irish screenwriter, Andrew Knight.

“I was locked in here and he was locked in Melbourne and I rang him and I said, ‘I don’t think that you’re in a bunker in Cuba. Is that right? Would you like to dream with me? I’m living in the most extraordinary place, I think, in the world. It’s unknown to me and I’ve done some exploring… you want to make something together?” she tells TV Tonight.

“He said, ‘Yes.’ He told me later, he just said that to get me off the phone.”

“We pitched it into the ABC who said, ‘We love it!'”

The end result is new 8 part ‘darkly comedic crime thriller, Bay of Fires the pair co-created with writer Max Dann (Spotswood) through long zoom sessions.

“They wrote a pilot over what we discussed and we pitched it into the ABC who said, ‘We love it!’ They put it into full development and so then we had to do it!”

Dusseldorp plays Anika Van Cleef, the Queen of her family’s business empire whose life is upended when attempts on her life results in a stranger providing her with a new name she hates (Stella Heikkinen), and a new home for her and her two kids in ‘Mystery Bay’ -aka Misery Bay.

Former gold rush town Zeehan, on Tasmania’s coast, home to around 200 locals, was the central location. Dusseldorp, who produced with Yvonne Collins, was hands on in addition to undertaking the lead role.

“We had a long chat with the mayor”

“We dropped in and had a long chat with the mayor, Phil Vickers. He said, ‘You are welcome.’, and he just opened it to us. The rest is on screen!” she explains.

“Zeehan is the Main Street, then Strahan is a school and Stella’s house. Queenstown was where we based 150 cast and crew, and did interiors and street stuff. They’re about 40 minutes from each other.

“We did it on time and on budget”

“We did it on time and on budget – really proud of that, actually. More to the point, no-one got hurt. That was the biggest deal for me.”

Having been an Associate Producer on Janet King, Bay of Fires marks a hugely personal step for Dusseldorp. While ‘Stella’ was deep in her DNA by the time cameras rolled, she had to juggle creative roles.

“The producing stuff is really just making sure that everyone’s comfortable and feel safe and happy where they’re working, and all those sorts of things. It’s about being a decent human being, really, because everyone leaves their lives to come, especially when you do a remote shoot like that. So you need to be mindful of what they’ve left behind or what they need,” she explains.

Yet she relished the opportunity to oversee and problem-solve everything from casting to editing, music choices, sound effects and more.

“I particularly enjoyed that part of producing, where you get to really be at the table to see it all come together, or not, if it doesn’t. And then work out a way so it can. The composer, Cornel (Wilczek), did such a great job finding this new sound. Andrew was with us the whole time, he EP’d it, and I just found our edit aesthetic was the same. So that was really delightful,” she continues.

“You come in with your experience and your care, and your heartbeat, and you insert it into the piece. That’s what theatre is all about, being in control. When you walk on stage it’s yours to orchestrate. That’s why I always go back to the stage, because I’m interacting with an audience live. It’s my heartbeat that I’m pushing into the rhythm of the storytelling. You try doing that as an actor on television.”

“It’s a puzzle. A labyrinth that Stella has to stumble through”

Not everything is explained in the opening episode and Dusseldorp says viewers will have to keep watching to learn if Stella is sucked into some sort of witness protection masterplan. Or not.

“We’ve got a long play on it. It’s a mystery. It’s a puzzle. A labyrinth that Stella has to stumble through and we want the audience to understand with her as she belligerently refuses to see the level of danger that she’s in. She’s a fix-it kind of gal, who is way, way out of her depth,” she suggests.

“We didn’t really want a genre. We wanted to create a tone that we loved and that we didn’t necessarily feel like we’d seen that much through Australian stories. We wanted it to be scary, urgent and funny. But situationally funny, not quirky, sending up funny or flat comedy. The way we talked about it was sort of ‘Ozark meets Fargo meets Schitt’s Creek‘ and blending that into our unique tone that is Bay of Fires.”

The series also packs a powerful ensemble including Kerry Fox, Toby Leonard Moore, Yael Stone, Pamela Rabe, Ilai Swindells, Roz Hammond, Tony Barry, Bob Franklin, Stephen Curry, Nicholas Bell, Matt Nable, Nikolai Nikolaeff, Imi Mbedla, Ava Caryofyllis and Heartbreak High‘s Rachel House in a pivotal role as the stranger who disrupts her world.

“This is a smorgasbord of great performance”

“We actually wrote the role for her. So she’s just delightful through the whole thing. This is a smorgasbord of great performance and really fabulous scripts that are written by very experienced television writers who write because they care,” says Dusseldorp.

“They made the characters better than they were written and deeper. It was a treat. We were very lucky having these people.

“I hope people are grabbed and I hope that they fall in love with one of the characters. There’s a lot to choose from, we’ve really written this sort of kaleidoscope of interesting people all with different reasons for being who they are.

“That slowly gets revealed as the series goes on.”

Bay of Fires premieres 8:30pm Sunday on ABC.