Retro Radio: Filipina Australian actress Charlotte Nicdao on life before Mythic Quest
Filipina-Australian actress first performed when she was nine years old with her friends in a playground. Their pop group 'Chocolate'.
Charlotte Nicdao wrote all the music and lyrics to the songs they performed.
She starred in several Australian TV shows before her lead role as 'Poppy' in the US series Mythic Quest.
Charlotte is one of two daughters of Filipino-Australian actor Alfred Nicdao.
LISTEN TO
SBS Filipino
27/06/2025 16:11 Filipino
The Nicdao Family. Growing up Charlotte's parents, Alfred and Louise, surrounded their home with music. Louise would play the piano while Alfred would strum the guitar with his Jingle Songbook Credit: with permission from Alfred Nicdao
When I was three years old, my dad gave me a tape recorder, and I just sat there for ages, taping songs about random things. Ever since, I have never stopped singing. The first song I ever wrote about was about if I were a snail Charlotte Nicdao on how she discovered her love for singing
Charlotte Nicdao recently wrote and directed 'Asian Male, 60s, LEAD' with his father Alfred Nicdao in the lead role. It screened in the recently concluded 2025 St Kilda Film Festival. Credit: with permission from Alfred Nicdao 📢 Where to Catch SBS Filipino 📲 Catch up episodes and stories – Visit sbs.com.au/filipino or stream on Spotify , Apple Podcasts , Youtube Podcasts , and SBS Audio app.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles

News.com.au
3 hours ago
- News.com.au
Katy Perry's dramatic move as Orlando Bloom parties in Italy following reported split
Katy Perry has seemingly taken action to block out the noise as she enjoys some time off in Australia amid claims she and Orlando Bloom have broken up. It's been widely reported that the Roar singer, 40, has been telling her inner circle that their relationship of nearly 10 years is over. The pair share a daughter, Daisy Dove, four. Perry is currently performing her Lifetimes tour in Australia, and eagle-eyed fans have now noticed she's disabled comments on Instagram. Bloom was also spotted in Australia recently, with a source telling People that it was in order to have some 'special dad and daughter time'. 'Daisy's very cute. Orlando was in a great mood and made every outing fun for her,' the insider told the publication. 'He looked like a very caring dad.' Despite being on the exclusive guest list for Lauren Sanchez's hen's party earlier this year, Perry will not be at her star-studded wedding to billionaire Jeff Bezos in Italy this weekend. Bloom, however, has been seen partying with A-listers, including Kim and Khloe Kardashian, Oprah Winfrey, and Leonardo DiCaprio, who are gathered in Venice for the multimillion-dollar nuptials. Speculation about Perry and Bloom's relationship has hit fever pitch in recent days, with The Sun reporting the singer had told friends it was over months ago. 'Katy confided in friends at the start of the year that their relationship was as good as done,' the source said. 'They decided to hold off on announcing anything in case things improved between them, because they are desperate to stay together for the sake of their daughter. 'But they have spent barely any time together this year, with Katy on tour and Orlando working on his upcoming film Bucking Fastard in Dublin. 'She knew that taking off her engagement ring would send a clear message. 'It's been a hard year so far. They wanted to wait until the tour is over before they made their split official, although Katy has grown tired of the situation.' The couple have dated on and off for nine years after first sparking up a romance in 2016. They got engaged in 2019, and welcomed their daughter the following year.

News.com.au
4 hours ago
- News.com.au
On The Punt: Caulfield best bets for Saturday June 28, 2025
News Corp form analyst Chris Vernuccio takes a look at the Caulfield meeting on Saturday. • PUNT LIKE A PRO: Become a Racenet iQ member and get expert tips – with fully transparent return on investment statistics – from Racenet's team of professional punters at our Pro Tips section. SUBSCRIBE NOW! â â â â â BEST BET MANOLO BLING (R2 No.1): Three-year-old filly Manolo Bling needed the run when she was run down late at Sandown against the older horses. She was a month and a half between runs and will take catching here against her own age. NEXT BEST THE BLACK CLOUD (R6 No.3): Sydney sprinter The Black Cloud made a pleasing return with a close second at Canterbury and just needs to go on with it now. His last win was a year ago at Flemington but he has been contesting stronger races, including a couple of Group 3s. VALUE BET LIM'S SALTORO (R9 No.3): Ex-Hong Kong galloper Lim's Saltoro should be ready now third-up in an open race. He has form around War Machine and Jimmy The Bear, beaten just 1½ lengths behind the latter at Caulfield last time out. THE JOCKEY JYE McNEIL SONOFKIRK (R1 No.4 – $4.80), TREMBLES (R2 No.5 – $4.40), HARRY'S YACHT (R4 No.3 – $5), RAINBOW DELIGHT (R5 No.16 – $8), RAIKOKE (R7 No.6 – $8), DUBLIN JOURNAL (R8 No.11 – $9), RUN HARRY RUN (R9 No.5 – $11). Originally published as On The Punt: Caulfield best bets for Saturday June 28, 2025

ABC News
4 hours ago
- ABC News
The best new books released in June, from Charmian Clift, Gail Jones and more
June was another stellar month in the publishing world, as our regular round-up of the best new releases attests. We have a new offering from Gail Jones, a literary powerhouse who has made the Miles Franklin shortlist four times, and another Franklin-shortlisted author, Jennifer Mills, whose propulsive "bunker novel" is set against a backdrop of environmental catastrophe. But the best books column is also a showcase of fresh talent, with no fewer than five debut releases. Among them are a glimmering short-story collection and a queer literary thriller set in Melbourne. There's plenty to sink into this month — enjoy! Picador Australia Forget the flashy underground bunker — what if, in the case of environmental catastrophe, the uber-rich retreated to a space station? In Jennifer Mills's post-apocalyptic novel Salvage, Celeste, the sister of protagonist Jude, has done just that. Salvage is an impressive addition to an emerging collection of what I like to call 'bunker novels' — eco-fiction that reckons with the morality of self-preservation by the world's richest people (gold-standard 'bunker novels' include Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood, Tim Winton's Juice and Naomi Alderman's The Future). As a child, Jude is adopted into the ultra-wealthy family of an Australian resources magnate. She grows up in luxury and seclusion and forms a lifelong bond with her adopted older sister, Celeste. But when the opportunity to flee the Earth appears, only the older sister is interested in a future asleep on a space station, waiting out disaster. Salvage is a propulsive novel told in multiple timelines. We see Jude and Celeste grow up, and apart. Years later, Jude is living in what appears to be a post-apocalyptic, post-war version of Europe. As part of a community of 'Freelanders', Jude drives a truck, fixes things and does what she can to help, all while keeping her true identity a secret. One day, an escape pod falls to the water, with a person aboard — could this be Celeste, returned to Earth? The Australian writer Mills is known for her bold experimentation with novels The Airways and the Miles Franklin-shortlisted Dyschronia. With its page-turning story, Salvage is an easier read but Mills's passion for the environment — and glorious descriptions of the natural world — are still front and centre. – Claire Nichols Summit Books I read Lucy Nelson's debut in the course of a single mesmerised sitting. A short-story collection tied together by theme, each narrative reflects on women who are not mothers. Some have chosen not to be; for others, it is a result of circumstance. In Ghost Baby, a woman undergoes an abortion and finds solace in a podcast about mothering. In the title story, a shy housewife learns to visualise giving voice to the things she most wants to say while seeing a therapist; yet it is in those moments of waiting to see him that she becomes aware of how waiting has shaped her life, for both good and ill. In Swooping Season, the protections people use to fend off swooping birds become a potent metaphor for living with grief. Centred on a ballet dancer, The Feeling Bones tenderly depicts the shape of a family in all its felt and physical contours, from the womb to the end of life. Across the stories, characters are often brought out of a state of semi-seclusion or taught to see their relative isolation in a new light. Those around them seek or offer companionship, becoming surrogates for absent figures in the characters' lives. We are encouraged to think about how people might nurture and mother one another, as well as the aspirations they carry in life. Nelson skilfully evokes broader landscapes and personal histories for her characters. Contoured and lean, each story gracefully arcs and coils. Within the space of a passage or single line, resonant details glimmer. Probing and gorgeously realised, Wait Here marks the arrival of a luminous new talent. – Declan Fry Dialogue Books Jamaica Road is a coming-of-age story, set within the Jamaican diaspora of Britain during the 1980s. The story begins with Daphne, the sole Black girl in her class in South London, who is coming to terms with her Black British identity. Every day Daphne scours the papers for mentions of people like her and is disheartened when she sees them presented as criminals and degenerates. When Connie, a young boy recently arrived from Jamaica, joins her class, they become fast friends. As Connie's relationship with his mother's fearsome partner, Tobias, worsens, he seeks shelter with Daphne, literally and figuratively. We follow the pair coming together and apart across the decade as they tackle all the country has in store for them. Both Connie and Daphne are children made to grow up too fast. While the characters are fictional, the dark history of police riots and racial profiling from South London in the 80s is straight from Smith's own research. While this dark environment pulses in the background, Jamaica Road's main focus is the family and community that keeps its main characters nourished. Jamaica Road reads almost like a play, with dialogue that comes to life on the page. It is a character-based, highly readable and unapologetically Black story about 80s Britain — and a love letter to the resilience and spirit of the Jamaican community. – Rosie Ofori Ward UQP In the acknowledgements of his debut literary thriller, Thomas Vowles thanks his mother and then apologises for not writing a novel that "delights" her. It may not be "delightful", but Our New Gods is a clever page-turner set in Melbourne's queer scene, which morphs from a gay coming-of-age story to a narrative that trades in paranoia, jealousy and obsession. Young Ash has recently moved to Melbourne, escaping the misery and emptiness of his father's home. Desperate to connect, Ash launches himself on the dating apps and meets the charismatic James. While they don't initially connect romantically, James invites Ash into his world, taking him to parties, meeting his friends and daring him to be bold. Ash is often out of his depth as he discovers even the local pool is a lavish queer space where "brightly coloured speedos were the uniform". As a guide, James is a life source for Ash whose desperation to escape extreme loneliness motivates his choices, which become increasingly self-defeating. Unease intensifies after Ash attends a bush rave with James and his boyfriend Raf; there, Ash recovers the body of Raf's former boyfriend, Booth, in a lake and becomes fixated on the idea that Raf murdered Booth and now Ash wants to protect James from a similar fate. As Ash reflects: "The difficult task of our lives was to act in the face of uncertainty. But how? To act, one had to make a choice within the treachery of ambiguity. How could this not inevitably lead to tragedy?" Within this "treachery of ambiguity", Vowles skilfully plays with our sympathies and plants seeds of discontent and disconnect which pushes the reader to the tragic end. A compelling Australian debut. – Sarah L'Estrange NewSouth It's a crime that Charmian Clift's marvellous writing is not better known. The past few years have helped ameliorate this neglect with a series of new publications and republications, including Clift's unfinished novel, The End of the Morning, her daughter Suzanne Chick's 1994 memoir, Searching for Charmian (republished in 2025), and We Are the Stars, her granddaughter Gina Chick's 2025 memoir. This month sees the arrival of her glorious second solo novel, Honour's Mimic, first published in 1964. It tells the story of Kathy, a woman learning to find herself outside the confines of marriage and children. Kathy is convalescing on a small Greek island following an automobile accident. She and her sister-in-law Milly are outsiders and objects of curiosity on the island, something Clift nimbly and gracefully captures (while out walking, Kathy notes the "quick shy ripple of teeth" she encounters from the men). Kathy is so vividly drawn, she burns a hole through the page. She is a person who feels deeply and wants to savour the marrow of life. She begins an affair with a wiry, wolfish sponge diver, Fotis. Delicately sketched, intimating things just so, Clift evokes their burgeoning attraction in slow, aching, pointillist detail. The book offers a fascinating portrait, too, of Greece in the 1950s: the small, close-knit community; scant electricity; the ships, barbers and taverns, and the houses hung precariously from cliff-faces, alongside public buildings dating from the Italian occupation during World War II. Raw, real and remarkable, Clift charts one woman's journey into the "expansive reckless" wonder of the world. Her evocation of Kathy and Fotis's interior lives is furious, grand and eclectic. Honour's Mimic is a superbly realised portrait of the links between true love and mortality. It is about how being in another country can unmoor and perhaps free you to find "a passionate affirmation of that old lost desire to face challenge and danger, to be brave, to dare for the truth". – Declan Fry Text Publishing Acclaimed Australian novelist Gail Jones explores the subterranean as well as the surface in her 11 novels (Black Mirror, Five Bells, The Death of Noah Glass, Salonika Burning, just to name a few). Her latest, The Name of the Sister, is a story of the missing. Those people who slipped away or were taken, who fell into mystery or were snatched away. Even more, it's about those left behind, the grieving and the searching, those who fill that missing space with hope, speculation and story. Angie, a freelance journalist in Sydney, is intrigued by the story of a woman found on the side of the road outside Broken Hill. Found, rather than lost or missing. The woman can't or won't speak and nobody knows who she is and what has happened. As Angie pursues the story, she is drawn in by the numerous people who project their own losses onto this woman, who claim that they recognise her, "dead cert, for sure, one hundred and one per cent". Meanwhile, Angie's romantic relationship is unstable, and her family history of silence and secrets lingers in the shadows. Her fierce best friend is the lead detective on the case, too, and so this is almost a crime novel, but not quite: "She had no wish to contribute to the criminal hunt or its shady forms of titillation." Jones takes us into this story with her usual eye for surprising detail and exquisitely realised description: the "windy hollow of the city's loud darkness", punctuated by memories, music, shared song lyrics and the sound of hopeful searches. – Kate Evans Allen & Unwin When you're 10, summer holidays seem like they last forever. It's a feeling Kiwi author Jennifer Trevelyan captures and infuses with unease in her debut novel, A Beautiful Family. A family of four heads to a popular holiday spot on the North Island coast for their annual five-week break. The story is told from the perspective of the younger sister, who remains unnamed for most of the book. It's the 1980s and her days are sound-tracked by the Split Enz album, True Colours, which she listens to religiously on her walkman. In the absence of digital distractions, time takes on an expansive quality. The narrator's 13-year-old sister, Vanessa, is now "too cool" to play, so she befriends a boy, Kahu, who tells her a story about a girl who went missing from the town a few years earlier. The pair spend their days exploring the beach and a nearby lagoon, looking for clues in their hunt for the missing girl. Around halfway through the novel, Trevelyan begins ratcheting up the suspense, and what began as a portrait of family dynamics becomes something more sinister. The missing girl's mother, a sad figure who collects wildflowers to lay at a makeshift memorial for her daughter, is a distressing reminder that however idyllic the beach appears, danger is never far away. What that danger is exactly is hard to say: is it the wild surf? The creepy next-door neighbour? Or does it come from within? Fractures grow in the parents' marriage as the narrator's mother disappears for mysterious walks on the beach while her father is at home watching cricket on TV. Their youngest daughter, small and easy to miss, has learned how to blend into the background. But she's always watching and leaping to conclusions, unchecked by her parents who are caught up in their own affairs. As the adults in her life become increasingly unreliable, the narrator sees the fragility of her family for the first time. "Now I understood that a family wasn't a particularly solid thing — it was a bubble purely of our own making and just like a bubble, it could burst." In the book's final pages, Trevelyan brings together the narrative threads in a gripping denouement. It's an atmospheric and satisfyingly pacy read that serves up a welcome slice of sun-filled escapism. – Nicola Heath Doubleday Liquid features an unnamed and unmoored protagonist. Two years after finishing her PhD, she is spiralling. She reflects, "My career had gone nowhere. My love life was non-existent. And as for sex, here I was, home alone on a Saturday night with a chick flick playing on my laptop because I didn't own a TV." Determined to change her life, she resolves to marry rich, planning 100 dates over the summer. Given her published PhD is a take-down of modern marriage, she feels perfectly placed for this endeavour. The writing is sharp, witty and fun. Our protagonist is a skilled commentator and, with cutting barbs, the dates become academic case studies on America, whiteness, class and sexuality. As a queer woman and the daughter of an Iranian father and Indian mother, she grapples with what it would mean to marry for the sake of comfort, particularly in the pressing whiteness of LA. In the final third of the novel, the tone shifts, as the protagonist travels to Tehran to see her father. Despite speaking Farsi and her olive skin, as an American in Iran she is an outsider. Everything that normally comes with ease or familiarity is met with sanctions and dead ends. She identifies this is not the fault of her destination, but where she's come from: "It wasn't my father's people who had invented the term 'Third World', and they hadn't defined the terms by which its inhabitants were forced to live." With a critique of American imperialism at its centre, Liquid is both a sexy and highly political piece of literary fiction. – Rosie Ofori Ward Tune in to ABC Radio National at 10am Mondays for The Book Show and 10am Fridays for The Bookshelf.