Wentworth star Danielle Cormack reflects on Logies win as she stars in new season of The Twelve with Sam Neill
The acclaimed program won Most Outstanding Drama Series at the 2015 ceremony as well as a silver Logie for Most Outstanding Actress for its main star Danielle Cormack, who played inmate Bea Smith on the hit show.
But for the New Zealand actress – who appears on Season 3 of the award-winning anthology series The Twelve, titled The Twelve: Cape Rock Killer – it's a collaborative effort.
'For me, to be acknowledged for any work in any way, there's no accolade greater than the other,' Cormack, 54, told news.com.au ahead of Season 3 premiere on Monday, August 4 on BINGE.
'Just walking off set and someone going, 'Hey, that was great,' is just as thrilling as getting a nomination. And then also winning the award and look at these awards events – they're filled with people that have poured their heart onto the screen, heart and soul.'
'Of course, it's lovely getting that acknowledgment, but I always think there's so many people that help build a character. I've become the vessel that puts it on the screen, but you've got wardrobe, make-up, the writers, the producers, there's so many. I just feel like it really should be shared by everyone. But it's a great honour.'
In the years since Wentworth, Cormack has starred on a number of projects including Erotic Stories, Year Of, and most recently played a cutthroat sex worker on the much-talked about series Madam opposite Rachel Griffiths.
Now, Cormack ventures from the dark side to the good side, playing a prosecutor in The Twelve anthology series alongside Sam Neill, 77 – an opportunity she welcomed with open arms.
'Before I'd even been asked the question in its entirety, I already was saying, 'Yes, yes, I will be part of the show,'' she recalled.
'I had seen Season 1 and Season 2 – I thought they were absolutely stellar seasons. So I was really looking forward to seeing how they would craft this one and also what character they were wanting me to play.'
In The Twelve: Cape Rock Killer, Cormack plays prosecutor Gabe Nichols who goes against defence lawyer Brett Colby (Neill). Surprisingly, this is her first time starring onscreen with Neill, who also comes from Aotearoa in New Zealand.
Cormack and Neill – who won Best Lead Actor in a Drama for The Twelve at the Logies last night – are both from the same town in New Zealand, Aotearoa, but this is the first time they have worked together.
'There was a great connection, both being from New Zealand,' she shared. 'I had met Sam several times over the years. But this was the first time that I had been on a set with him, and that was a huge honour. He was so generous and warm on set, and there's no airs or graces about him. He's incredibly encompassing of everyone there, and he really sets a lovely tone on set.'
'I really loved picking the history between Gabe Nichols, my character, and Sam's character just because Gabe used to be Colby's solicitor until she jumped over to the dark side and became a prosecutor. So there was a lot to unpack there, which made it fun.'
The duo are joined by another New Zealand actress, stage and screen star Sarah Peirse, who also appeared on the BINGE and Foxtel series Love Me.
'I had the best time with Sarah. She is such a stunning human being and just delightful. She's so funny,' Cormack said.
'But she's an extraordinary actress, and when I heard that she was going to be in the show and I was going to be working with her as well, my jaw hit the floor. She's just such a formidable actress.'
The Twelve: Cape Rock Killer follows Colby gets personal for Colby, who is thrown into a murder trial to defend the husband of a lifelong friend accused of murdering wannabe crime author Amanda Taylor (played by Eryn Jean Norvill), who was researching a cold-case crime from 1968.
All the characters are 'complex, broken, brilliant, flawed, vulnerable female characters', just how Cormack likes to play them.
'I don't believe that there are strong female characters,' she shared. 'People often remark on the strong, resilient characters I play, and I don't view them like that. I think they're mostly incredibly broken and flawed, and the strength comes from their vulnerability and their circumstances.'
And Cormack says it's great how female narratives are driving a lot of series these days.
'We've had a lot of women in the industry that have been championing female driven stories,' she said.
'If we can keep doing that, but also not just females, but men or in our industry to keep exploring the female psyche on screen and all of its facets, then we're moving in the right direction.'
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The Age
17 minutes ago
- The Age
Perth dancer's renaissance after horror knife attack pirouettes to the big screen
It was the dawn of the new millennium and 22-year-old Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts dance graduate Floeur Alder was on top of the world. Alder had just returned from a dream four-month study trip to Europe that she hoped would set her up for a brilliant career and was tripping lightly down Mary Street to her Highgate home in June, 2000. Then, without any rhyme or reason, a man emerged from the darkness and plunged a knife deep into her face. He said nothing and disappeared back into the night. Alder managed to make it to her home and pull out the knife before dragging herself to a Greek restaurant in Beaufort Street, blood spurting from her neck. The owner called an ambulance and Alder was rushed to Royal Perth Hospital where she endured six hours of surgery and two blood transfusions, with the knife narrowly missing her jugular. While a skilled plastic surgeon managed to repair the surface damage, Alder spent the better part of the decade dealing with the trauma and healing a body that should have been gracing Australian and European stages. 'I was full of anger and rage,' says Alder. 'I was looking at people coming out of WAAPA and comparing myself to them. 'It made me mad. Their lives and careers were progressing while I wasn't going anywhere.' Adding insult to injury was the fact that Alder is the daughter of Perth dance legends Lucette Aldous and Alan Alder. Hanging over her entire life was the expectation she would match her parents' achievements. In particular, Alder was constantly compared to her mother, the New Zealand-born, Perth-raised prima ballerina who was the resident dancer of the Australian Ballet and who achieved icon status performing with Rudolph Nureyev in his famed production of Don Quixote. 'When mum was 21 she was at the Royal Ballet doing Sleeping Beauty with Margot Fonteyn. When I was her age I was in a hospital bed recovering from the attack. It was so ironic and painful,' Alder says. 'All my life I was dealing with people expecting so much of me. And I had those expectations of myself. 'So when I was recovering from the attack and barely able to move it was very hard for me to take. I was angry all the time.' That frustration and rage, and her gradual understanding that those emotions were not just because of the stabbing incident but spewed up from a deeper, darker place, is the central to a new documentary by Perth filmmaker Dawn Jackson, En Pointe: Dancing on a Knife, which is premiering this month at the CinefestOZ film festival in WA's South West. What began as a modest hour-long account of the trauma suffered by a young dancer and the way in which she used dance to rebuild, blossomed into a deeply moving feature-length documentary about a high-profile artistic family and the impact of fame on its youngest member. 'People used to have firm opinions about me and my family. I feel I've laid that to rest.' Floeur Alder Jackson moves between Aldous dancing in Sleeping Beauty and her daughter's convalescence during what should have been her golden years, weaving a tale in which Alder gradually comes back to life as a dancer and a choreographer, culminating in her directing her parents in a piece called Rare Earth (2004). The making of the documentary became a significant part of the recovery process, something which both surprised and unnerved Alder. 'I was much more involved in the film than I ever thought I would be. I certainly didn't think I would be narrating it,' Alder says. Jackson says there were plans for others to narrate the film, 'but we realised it had to be Floeur'. 'It was her story. We had to have her voice.' Loading The reason for the closeness of Alder to the film is that Jackson herself was training as a dancer in the mid-1980s at WAAPA while Aldous and Alan were teaching at the celebrated West Australian 'Fame' school. 'I remember Floeur being there [at WAAPA] all the time, sitting on the floor and eating snakes,' Jackson says. 'All of the students became really close to her. Her parents were busy teaching and she was an only child so we became her family. I even used to babysit for Floeur.' Around the time Jackson pivoted from dance to filmmaking, she caught a performance of Rare Earth and realised she had a great story to tell, one that had the appalling attack at its heart but opened up into other issues, such as Alder's struggle to come out from her parents' shadow. 'I was struck by Floeur's willingness to embrace her legacy after spending so much of her life grappling with it,' Jackson says. 'When she was at WAAPA the gossip was that she was getting all these great parts because of her parents. But she was getting them simply because she was bloody good.' Financing the film proved difficult and dragged the process over a decade. But it meant Jackson was able to document closely Alder's physical and emotional healing and renaissance as an artist, with her subject playing a greater role than normal for this kind of project. 'The long process gave me time to record my mother's history and her work, which became part of the film. This is not just a film. It is part of the story' says Alder. Her parents are both interviewed extensively in the documentary but did not live long enough to see its completion. While Pointe: On a Knife's Edge has all the stuff of an edge-of-the-seat crime series or podcast — we even get to an emotional meeting with the policeman who dealt with the case back in 2000 — Jackson says it is different because the story is told from the point of view of the survivor. 'So often when we watch these crime series it is about the perpetrator or the police trying to track them down,' she says. 'This deals with what Floeur went through — the attack and her healing and her fight to re-establish a career that was derailed when a random stranger decided to take out his anger on her.' Jackson also sees her film as an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge of trauma. 'Trauma was not as well understood when Floeur was attacked as it is today. It separates you from yourself,' Jackson says. For Alder, the documentary has allowed her to finally tell her story. 'It is my truth. It is nobody else's. People used to have firm opinions about me and my family. I feel I've laid that to rest. This is my story,' she says.
Sydney Morning Herald
17 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Perth dancer's renaissance after horror knife attack pirouettes to the big screen
It was the dawn of the new millennium and 22-year-old Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts dance graduate Floeur Alder was on top of the world. Alder had just returned from a dream four-month study trip to Europe that she hoped would set her up for a brilliant career and was tripping lightly down Mary Street to her Highgate home in June, 2000. Then, without any rhyme or reason, a man emerged from the darkness and plunged a knife deep into her face. He said nothing and disappeared back into the night. Alder managed to make it to her home and pull out the knife before dragging herself to a Greek restaurant in Beaufort Street, blood spurting from her neck. The owner called an ambulance and Alder was rushed to Royal Perth Hospital where she endured six hours of surgery and two blood transfusions, with the knife narrowly missing her jugular. 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When I was her age I was in a hospital bed recovering from the attack. It was so ironic and painful,' Alder says. 'All my life I was dealing with people expecting so much of me. And I had those expectations of myself. 'So when I was recovering from the attack and barely able to move it was very hard for me to take. I was angry all the time.' That frustration and rage, and her gradual understanding that those emotions were not just because of the stabbing incident but spewed up from a deeper, darker place, is the central to a new documentary by Perth filmmaker Dawn Jackson, En Pointe: Dancing on a Knife, which is premiering this month at the CinefestOZ film festival in WA's South West. What began as a modest hour-long account of the trauma suffered by a young dancer and the way in which she used dance to rebuild, blossomed into a deeply moving feature-length documentary about a high-profile artistic family and the impact of fame on its youngest member. 'People used to have firm opinions about me and my family. I feel I've laid that to rest.' Floeur Alder Jackson moves between Aldous dancing in Sleeping Beauty and her daughter's convalescence during what should have been her golden years, weaving a tale in which Alder gradually comes back to life as a dancer and a choreographer, culminating in her directing her parents in a piece called Rare Earth (2004). The making of the documentary became a significant part of the recovery process, something which both surprised and unnerved Alder. 'I was much more involved in the film than I ever thought I would be. I certainly didn't think I would be narrating it,' Alder says. Jackson says there were plans for others to narrate the film, 'but we realised it had to be Floeur'. 'It was her story. We had to have her voice.' 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'When she was at WAAPA the gossip was that she was getting all these great parts because of her parents. But she was getting them simply because she was bloody good.' Financing the film proved difficult and dragged the process over a decade. But it meant Jackson was able to document closely Alder's physical and emotional healing and renaissance as an artist, with her subject playing a greater role than normal for this kind of project. 'The long process gave me time to record my mother's history and her work, which became part of the film. This is not just a film. It is part of the story' says Alder. Her parents are both interviewed extensively in the documentary but did not live long enough to see its completion. While Pointe: On a Knife's Edge has all the stuff of an edge-of-the-seat crime series or podcast — we even get to an emotional meeting with the policeman who dealt with the case back in 2000 — Jackson says it is different because the story is told from the point of view of the survivor. 'So often when we watch these crime series it is about the perpetrator or the police trying to track them down,' she says. 'This deals with what Floeur went through — the attack and her healing and her fight to re-establish a career that was derailed when a random stranger decided to take out his anger on her.' Jackson also sees her film as an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge of trauma. 'Trauma was not as well understood when Floeur was attacked as it is today. It separates you from yourself,' Jackson says. For Alder, the documentary has allowed her to finally tell her story. 'It is my truth. It is nobody else's. People used to have firm opinions about me and my family. I feel I've laid that to rest. This is my story,' she says.
Daily Telegraph
5 hours ago
- Daily Telegraph
The Block 2025 Episode 7 recap: Big problem with the Block house designs
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