Morgana O'Reilly stars in haunting new Aussie series that will hook viewers from the first scene

News.com.au

2 days ago

An eerie new Aussie series is upon us and it will have you hooked from the very first scene.
Paramount+ Australia's original new series Playing Gracie Darling is a haunting tale that follows 14-year-old Joni and her three friends who hold a seance in an abandoned house.
It ends in horrific circumstances when one of the girls, Gracie Darling, suffers a seizure before mysteriously vanishing days later.
Fast-forward 27 years, and another girl has gone missing after a new group of teenagers hold a copycat seance during a spooky 'game' locals call Playing Gracie Darling, whereby they re-enact the ill-fated spiritual gathering from decades ago.
The six-part mystery, starring The White Lotus Season 3's Morgana O'Reilly, is filled with supernatural undertons.
'I love a ghost story, so it was so up my alley. Give me a mystery and a ghost story any day,' O'Reilly tells news.com.au ahead of the series premiere on Paramount+ on August 14.
'I love a ghost story and I love [series creator] Miranda [Nation]'s writing. She's really got the most wonderful mind. She makes such complex female characters that are just loveable and challenging.'
Adds O'Reilly: 'I ask people for their ghost stories. As an actor, you hang out and see a lot while waiting, and that's often one of my icebreakers: 'Tell me your ghost stories', because I feel like there's some kind of intrinsic connection between that mysticism, ghosts and tarot cards and crystals and all that. There is a connection between that and storytelling and being an artist and being creative. So I love that stuff and I unashamedly say so.'
In the series, O'Reilly plays the adult version of Joni, who is now a child psychologist who returns to her sleepy hometown to try to solve the new mystery while confronting her past.
'They're really full-on, big emotions,' she says of playing her character. 'She goes home to try and investigate, but she has to face a lot of demons. She has to face a lot of skeletons in the closet and ghosts, figuratively and literally.'
'It's a total joy to dig deep and play a complex character. She's a kind of mush of contradictions and she's so many things, so I had a lot of fun finding where she lives in my body and where she is similar to me and where she's different to me and getting under her skin.'
Speaking of getting under her skin, not only did New Zealand-born O'Reilly have to adopt the Aussie accent, she also had to get used to the local creepy-crawlies when filming in the Hawkesbury River region in NSW.
'The landscape is stunning. The forest was just really magic and scary – and full of leeches,' she laughs.
'Oh my God, the leeches were so awful. That was the most challenging. At one point, one of our camera operators had the steady cam and we are walking through the bush [in a scene] and then he goes, 'Cut' and pulls off his boot and pulls off this leech. He said he could feel it latch on just before they called action and they had to carry on the shot.'
O'Reilly is no stranger to filming on location. She recently filmed Season 3 of the award-winning series The White Lotus in Thailand along with a stellar ensemble featuring Parker Posey, Jason Isaacs, Leslie Bibb and Patrick Schwarzenegger.
'Hanging out and trying to be social and getting over my own impostor syndrome for the first couple of weeks, that's an important lesson, but now I feel like they're my friends,' she says. 'And then of course, once it comes on air and you get to prove to yourself and everybody like, 'I was in that.' It's amazing. The biggest challenge is just trying to keep convincing myself I had a right to be there.
'Working on set with these amazing actors, there's the professional side and there's the social side, just like being in the presence of these wonderfully epic creatives. Not just the actors, but the producers and the director and the creators. The costume and make-up and design, so working with them was amazing.'
And, of course, O'Reilly has filmed many projects in Australia too. The actress even lived on our shores for eight years, during which she starred in Neighbours from 2013 to 2015, playing the sassy and spoilt Naomi Canning.
The beloved Aussie soap wraps this December after a 40-year run. However, it has been cancelled before so O'Reilly has hope for another resurrection.
'Part of me wouldn't be surprised if somehow it rose from the dead again,' she says. 'It's sad that it's gone. It's profound and it's special. It's like losing a grandparent, I guess inevitable.'
'Nothing lasts forever, but it's important that we remember how special it was and how much it contributed culturally, creatively to the landscape of storytelling in Australia, but also its representation of the LGBTQ+ community of diversity inclusion.
'It really has been a show that has strove to be progressive in the confines of being a really mainstream soap opera. It's done the best it can do. Let's celebrate it.'