australian television information archive

Karvan’s double life

WHEN Claudia Karvan finished shooting the new drama series Love My Way last month, she could not relax.

“I went to a yoga retreat pretty much the day after it finished and after seven days of yoga I still couldn’t take a nice slow, deep breath,” Karvan told The Weekend Australian. “It was just so hard to wind down.”

The shoot was difficult for the acclaimed Australian actress because she was working under two hats—as the show’s main star and one of its co-producers.

Love My Way has been a labour of love for Karvan, who created the drama with Southern Star’s John Edwards after the pair worked together on The Secret Life Of Us.

When Secret Life ended last year, Edwards approached Karvan—who as well as starring in the popular Ten Network drama also directed a couple of episodes—to develop a new series. “No one’s ever given me that opportunity before—actors are usually the last people to hear about a project,” Karvan said.

“So this was like a dream opportunity to be involved from the beginning and actually have input.

“And I’ve been working in the industry since I was eight, so I’ve got a reasonable amount of experience and understanding of the logistics of it, so I said, ‘Absolutely’.”

After toying with the idea of a Secret Life spin-off featuring Alex (Karvan) and Rex (played by Vince Colosimo), the pair decided on Love My Way, a drama set in Sydney revolving around the lives of a modern-day blended family of friends in their late 20s and early 30s.

The 10-part series—which stars Karvan, Brendan Cowell, Dan Wyllie and Asher Keddie—will air next month on Foxtel’s Fox 8 channel.

According to Karvan, making a drama exclusively for pay-TV helped give the cast and crew more creative freedom by having no demographic restraints, which usually come when making a program for a free-to-air network.

It is not the first Foxtel-produced drama: the network co-produced Head Start and Marking Time with the ABC, and White Collar Blue and The Cooks with Ten.

But according to Foxtel’s director of television and marketing, Brian Walsh, it is the first time the network has had the freedom to make a drama exclusively aimed at subscribers.

“I was impressed by the success the HBO network had in the US with their dramas Six Feet Under, The Sopranos and Sex and the City… and I wanted to carve out a piece of TV drama that was edgy, daring, provocative,” he said.

Karvan said she enjoyed working on Love My Way so much she would produce and star in a second series if one were commissioned.

“I would do it again. But I think I’d do it better next time, because I’ve learnt so much.”

By Sophie Tedmanson
October 23, 2004
The Australian