By: Vanessa Williams
Source: West Australian
She may be playing a fictional character in Foxtel’s epic two-part war drama Deadline Gallipoli but for WA actress Jessica De Gouw being part of the SA- shot project was a big honour.
“The story has always been of interest to me,” De Gouw says by phone from Louisiana in the US, where she is filming her latest TV project, the 10-part civil war drama Underground.
“We were taught about it in school and commemorate it every year so I expected that there would be projects with the centenary that would do it justice and tell the story well but I thought Deadline Gallipoli has such a different take on it.
“It was a very interesting approach to a popular narrative and the creators behind it were the ones that really drew me to this project.”
The Curtin University graduate, 27, stars as nurse Vera Grant, who is stationed in Egypt during WWI.
As she tends to wounded soldiers, Vera develops a connection with Australian photographer Phillip Schuler, played by WA’s Sam Worthington, also executive producer of the mini-series.
“My character is an amalgamation of a couple of different people but Shaun Grant, one of the writers, did tell me that Vera was based a bit on his grandmother,” she says. “When you think about the women of that time, they weren’t permitted under normal circumstances to co-exist with men in that kind of way.
“So for these women, as well as dealing with the gruelling day-to-day of war, they were completely out of their element socially. The whole experience must have been so overwhelming yet they’re so tough. But they were right there with the men as well, so they were seeing what the men were seeing.”
De Gouw says she was drawn to Vera’s feisty nature.
“I’m attracted to strong female characters, maybe it’s the feminist in me that just thinks why shouldn’t these women be as complex and as interesting as their male counterparts,” she says.
“I like the way Vera handled herself and the men in it as well, she’s matter-of-fact yet driven by her work ethic and by the cause she is fighting for. There’s also humour in the way she dealt with things.”
De Gouw is among the WA actors to have landed a plum role in the two-part miniseries. Others are Joel Jackson as war correspondent Charles Bean, Fremantle’s Ewen Leslie as fellow correspondent Keith Murdoch and Rockingham-reared Worthington as Schuler.
Despite sharing some intimate scenes with Worthington, the actress says she wasn’t nervous about working with the Hollywood heart-throb.
“I’ve met Sam before so I wasn’t at all nervous. There was a possibility of working on something together the year before and that fell through, so it was great to finally shoot something with him.”
Part one of Deadline Gallipoli airs on Sunday at 8.30pm on pay-TV channel showcase. Part two will air on Monday at
8.30pm.