Come on a journey of words and music as we explore Australian composer Melody Eötvös’ work Ruler of the Hive and examine Shakespeare’s relationship with women. Featuring portrayals of Shakespeare’s…
David Oulton’s Talk Show ‘Face to Face with David’ Acquired by OUTtv to start airing in April. Canadian talk show host David Oulton is pleased to announce that his talk show Face to…
I've added an interview with Pamela Rabe, Ruth Cracknell and Pippa Williamson from The Age (August 1995) about Three Tall Women to the interview section. Three tall women discuss acting,…
Before this interview I actually felt a bit nervous and realised it’s because I just binged season eight of Wentworth. How does it feel to play a character who provokes such a visceral reaction?
By the time my work meets its audience it’s always a good 6-12 months after it’s finished so I’ve generally well and truly moved on and [the reaction] takes me by surprise. Generally speaking, people are pretty good. Just occasionally I see a shift in eyes. Some people hyperventilate a little bit but I’m not sure if that’s more to do with the fact that somebody they’ve had in their loungeroom for a binge session has suddenly materialised in front of them or whether it has something to do with the terror Joan Ferguson wreaks.
Pamela Rabe | Photo by John Appleyard (2017)
Thinking about one’s ability to change, is it a case of once a villain, always a villain?
Well, that would be sad, wouldn’t it? We all have a — probably never more so than now in the middle of a pandemic — a desire for things to be normal and not to change. So maybe if people want to put things in a box. I haven’t found that personally. If it’s a question of a professional “once a villain, always a villain”, that’s certainly not been the case. I’m lucky enough to work across a lot of different media doing a lot of different roles that stretch me in different ways. But I don’t ever take for granted the great gift and privilege it was to play that villain. I’m certainly not the first person to say villains are wonderful to play. (more…)
Here's a snippet of the upcoming new episode 2 of "Face to Face with David" Season 2 with Pamela Rabe. There's still no new date when it will be out…
Johnaton Hughes published an exclusive interview for radiotimes.com today:
Pamela Rabe also reveals how the hit Australian drama kept calm and carried on through two Melbourne lockdowns.
After weeks of violence, twists and tension, Wentworth Prison reaches its explosive eighth season finale on Wednesday 7th October on 5STAR, and stakes for the inmates could not be higher as the show edges towards the last ever episode in 2021.
The gritty Australian drama, a reboot of cult favourite Prisoner: Cell Block H, was saved from the axe in 2018 by campaigning fans who persuaded Foxtel network not to lock up the show and throw away the key as originally planned.
Committing to two more years to complete the story and bringing iconic villain Joan ‘The Freak’ Ferguson back from the dead, Wentworth Prison is now on the home stretch to its final season – so what can we expect from this week’s sign-off?
“There is a sense of pressure from the repression of Joan’s amnesia,” says Pamela Rabe, the award-winning actress who plays Joan, speaking exclusively to RadioTimes.com. (more…)
Duncan Lindsay shared his latest exclusive interview with Pamela Rabe for Metro.co.uk earlier today:
No character’s journey in any recent TV show has been quite as complex and morbidly fascinating as that of Joan Ferguson in Australian prison drama hit Wentworth. And during the eighth season, we have seen a much more vulnerable and challenging side to the character, who has lost almost everything about her and is certain that she is Kath Maxwell.
It’s something that Pamela Rabe, the majorly talented star behind the icon (or is it the other way round?) found highly difficult as she returned – but it was a process she enthused to Metro.co.uk that she thoroughly enjoyed.
She smiled: ‘As I’ve said to you before, it’s always a joy with that group of people. It comes with all its challenges – when they push the character to extraordinary extremes and take away her memory, it’s hard to hold on to a character who is credibly the same person for the audience.
‘So we had to make decisions on which characteristics, qualities and appearance remained the same even if her memory of her actions had disappeared. It was a great challenge – I wouldn’t call it a joy but exciting and good, hard work!
Joan/Kath has been on an incredible journey (Picture: Channel 5)
‘We’re all like that here. As every season builds to a finale, there’s always someone going through high octane laundry press moments – Danielle (Cormack), Nicole (da Silva), Tammie (MacIntosh) – we all go through it. It was my turn for it to come round! (more…)
WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS
After being mugged in episode two, she claimed to have no memory of who she was or what she’d done – something plenty of people (including fans!) doubted. However, in the final moments of the gripping finale to season eight’s Part 1, it appeared that Joan was speaking the truth as we witnessed her horrified realisation of her past evil deeds. In a twist, however, this has occurred after her committal hearing, where it’s already been decided that she’s in a fugue state. It’s a situation ripe for the character to use to her advantage.
Pamela Rabe talks to us about her character’s return to the show, her journey in the first part of season eight and what it bodes for her in the second and final instalment!
Foxtel Insider: What appealed to you about returning to play Joan, who we all thought was dead?
Pamela Rabe: The first thing that appealed to me was just the opportunity to work with who I consider the most wonderful work family I’ve ever had the pleasure and privilege to collaborate with. I just wanted to make sure that the reasons for her return were grounded in something that could be credible for an audience and that’s tricky when she’s required to handle some of the more gothic, melodramatic aspects of the storylines.
Having said that, it was just then a really great challenge to be able to tackle: who is she if she’s not the person that she and the audience remembers? It ended up becoming very rewarding, learning about the aspects of this character that we’d all created, how they would manifest, you know, without some of the obvious things like the black gloves and the glint in her eye.
Insider: For pretty much the entire season of Part 1, no-one – neither the characters in the show nor the fans! – knew whether she really did have amnesia. How did you approach playing that?
Pamela: I think probably the same way that Joan would if she was trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes! But that’s actually the dilemma for her, really, isn’t it? The little girl who cried wolf. If you’ve been a master at playing people and playing games, how do you convince people that you’re not? [However] even with memory loss, she’s still the same person and she has the same intelligence and knowledge of the world in a way – she just doesn’t remember aspects of her own behaviour. She understands that she is not to be believed in a dangerous place where the alliances that you make and the things that you do really affect your survival rate. It’s a real dilemma but, as I say, a delicious one to tackle.
