You mightn't know her yet, but actor Philippa Northeast is a star to watch

The Age

2 days ago

A baby brushtail possum has just fallen down the chimney into Philippa Northeast's rented cottage outside Adelaide. The actor takes a towel and wraps it around the joey, then places it beside a hot water bottle in a box, which she carefully leaves outside, having seen the mother looking for the youngster that fell from her back.
'The poor little thing, I think it's OK,' the 30-year-old star of The Newsreader and Territory reports back to Sunday Life after a five-minute break in our interview. Seated again in front of her grey stone fireplace in the South Australian countryside, Northeast's hair is long and brushed back, and her green eyes uncannily match the painted mantle. 'It's moving and it's crying out for its mum,' she reports. 'Which is interesting because Mum is there but she's very wary.'
The joey's sudden fall into Northeast's life is apposite, because we're talking about motherhood and the Melbourne-born actor's role in the new ABC series The Family Next Door, a drama based on Sally Hepworth's novel and filmed in Anglesea and Black Rock in Victoria. Northeast plays young mother Essie, who is living at home with her single mother Barbara (Catherine McClements) while she and her partner Ben (Tāne Williams Accra) struggle to save a house deposit.
Essie says the unsayable about motherhood and her baby, George: 'I don't enjoy being a constant plaything or a food source or having no time and space to be me. I'm too selfish to be a good mother.' Convincingly portrayed by Northeast as emotionally fractured, Essie's state of mind creates concern for George's welfare among the family in their claustrophobic residential court.
Northeast notes that Essie is diagnosed with postpartum depression in Hepworth's novel but not labelled as such in this screen adaptation. She says this is to make the character relatable to 'more women who have had challenges with motherhood that [don't] fall into a category that is diagnosed', such as loss of identity and feelings of isolation.
The actor feels society places excessive expectations of perfection on motherhood. 'It's meant to be this thing that's life-changing and life-affirming and puts everything else into perspective,' she says, resting her chin on her hand in contemplation. 'But if you're not sure what your identity is prior to having kids, I think it can throw up some pretty big identity crises.'
It's a theme turned over not just by her character but by Northeast herself. 'Globally and domestically, it's a precarious life, and no one knows what's coming next,' she says. 'Probably one of the most compassionate things you can do is ask yourself, 'Why do I want to bring kids into this world? And what will the impact be on me as well as on them?'
'I'm 30 now, and that really weighs heavily on my mind, particularly with the future that we all face. I want to be open enough to question a decision like that, rather than just following a path that's been trod by so many.'
So, has Northeast come to a clear conclusion about having kids? 'No, I haven't,' she says. 'Growing up, I felt that was the thing you did and would happen. But now, as I get older, I am more open to questioning whether it's the right thing. I haven't got a clear answer either way, but I want to do the work to know why.'
Northeast's partner is also an actor and the couple split their time between inner Sydney and a rural property to the city's south-west. Accompanying them is their small blue heeler, Rani, who is happiest chasing kangaroos on the farm. 'She is our everything, and the hardest thing to be away from when we're working,' says the actor, who declines to name her partner. 'We keep the personal details of our life pretty quiet, because it's just for us.'
Northeast is residing in South Australia while she films a Netflix series remake of My Brilliant Career, in which she plays another character who is questioning women's traditional place in society, Sybylla Melvyn (a role made famous by Judy Davis in the 1979 film). Sybylla and Essie face the same dilemma, says Northeast: 'What is the cost and the compromise of marrying and having children in comparison to having your own mind and agency and identity?'
Landing the role of Sybylla, Northeast continues, 'meant everything – she's such a beloved character, and so iconic. We're being true to the character people love in terms of her sheer determination, her humour, her naivety and her awe for the world. And her mind, of course.'
Northeast found the novel fascinating, given that Miles Franklin began writing this 'blueprint of her life' while still a teenager, and was just 21 when My Brilliant Career was published in 1901. 'Miles Franklin did end up living the way Sybylla Melvyn was determined to live … she paved a road for women at a time that road just didn't exist.'
In Northeast's career so far, there is one role in particular that put her on track for these challenging new opportunities – playing Kay Walters in The Newsreader. Directed by Emma Freeman, who also directs The Family Next Door, and set in the cutthroat TV newsrooms of the 1980s, The Newsreader' s third and final season aired earlier this year on the ABC. As the Berlin Wall fell in the series' denouement, Kay, the heroin-addicted daughter of a media magnate, united with her ambitious, controlling mother, Evelyn, to bring down conniving newsroom boss Lindsay Cunningham.
'I think Evelyn and Kay might have opened a magazine next,' speculates Northeast. 'Kay would have ended up editor, I feel.' Up-market, like Vogue? 'Probably more of a gossip magazine, to be honest! She would have turned into her mother's right-hand woman.'
Born and raised in Richmond, in inner Melbourne, Northeast attended Steiner schools where she recalls playing Peter Pan at age 13. 'Any creative inkling that I have has been fostered from that stream of education,' she says. Her mum, Polly, is an English teacher, and her dad, Mark, is an accountant. She is close with her older siblings, Sam and Bridget, and has two younger sisters from her father's second marriage.
Northeast has long been interested in psychology, so she began a Bachelor of Arts majoring in criminology in 2013. But after just one semester at Melbourne University she scored an audition, and then a role, on Home and Away. She subsequently dropped out of university, although during her four years playing Evelyn MacGuire in Summer Bay she completed a degree online with the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.
After leaving Home and Away in 2017 and playing Sunny opposite R.J. Mitte in Steven Vidler's 2019 independent film Standing Up for Sunny, she went to the US to slog it out during the notoriously tough pilot-auditioning season. Then COVID hit.
More than five years later, she looks back on that period philosophically; it taught her to cultivate a life outside work. 'It was a blessing in a way, because my partner and I moved to the country, we got a dog, we got chickens. We had a blissful experience where we weren't jetting around to auditions. [My career] momentum dropped out, but it gave me enough time to redefine myself as an actor who's more mature and ready to audition for different roles.'
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Today, actors can live almost anywhere and mostly audition online. 'Facing rejection on the couch with your dog and with your loved ones is much easier than facing rejection in some sterile little half a bedroom you can't afford in LA with no friends and family,' she laughs.
Like Sybylla, Northeast is forging a brilliant career on home soil, with a sharp instinct for empathy after the fallow work years. The light is falling now, and the actor must end the interview and turn her thoughts back to the fur baby in the cold gloaming.
The Family Next Door airs on ABC and iView from August 10.