Madam star Rachel Griffiths reflects on her life in television, including her MASH crush and what it’s really like to go to glitzy awards shows.
Rachel Griffiths has been offered roles as sex workers during her extremely decorated career in film and television, but she’d never encountered anyone like Mack in Madam before. “Most of them were just really cliche and from the male gaze,” she told The Spinoff from her home in Melbourne. “Whether they are set in the 1980s or the 1880s, there was still this grimy titillation around them, and I’ve always happily passed.”
When she sat down with the Madam script, she admitted it wasn’t with huge expectations. “Except then I found out it was Kiwi, so I knew it would probably be better.” Inspired by the real-life story of a woman who started an ethical brothel in Northland, Griffiths signed up after reading the pilot. “It had such a great narrative to explore a lot about women’s lives in a kind of fresh and fun way,” she said. “Plus it was funny, but still really real.”
The role of Mack is just one of hundreds you may have seen Griffiths in over the last three decades. Best known for Muriel’s Wedding, Brothers and Sisters and Six Feet Under, the Australian actress has starred alongside the likes of Julia Roberts, Heath Ledger and Sally Field and amassed Emmy, Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. She made her directing debut in 2015, and became a Member of the Order of Australia in 2020.
And now, Griffiths ascends to what many in the industry are calling the most prestigious privilege of all: being interviewed for The Spinoff’s My Life in TV series.
My earliest TV memory is… My mother was quite anti-television, but I do remember going to my cousins’ to watch Roots. I remember it being a life changing experience, and being kind of woken up. Slavery was not something that we taught in our schools, and I remember my takeaway being two things. One was that television could be this amazing water cooler moment that the whole world is watching and learning from. But it was also about the power of character to take you into these big human moments from history and have thoughts and feelings about them.
My earliest TV crush was… This was prepubescent, so it was non sexual. It was like a mind alignment crush, but I absolutely loved Hawkeye Pierce from MASH. And then my first physical, sexy, “oh my god, he’s so hot” crush was probably Rob Lowe. But Hawkeye Pierce was just an entity I recognised. I was about 11 and I just thought “you and I have the same brain”.
The New Zealand TV ad I can’t stop thinking about is… I just remember seeing a lot of our [Madam] cast on different ads, and hearing Jennifer [Ward-Lealand]’s voice on ads too. New Zealand ads are so good. I actually noticed, since I’ve been back here in Australia watching television, that New Zealand ads have a real creativity and humour to them.
My TV guilty pleasure is… I have what I proudly call my laundry shows. They’re not guilty, because I’m multitasking. I’m getting stuff done, I’m in my happy place. I have a small television in the laundry because I think I’ve spent a lot of time in there and I feel it shouldn’t be a purgatory. That’s where I watch the shows that I wouldn’t ever put on around my husband, and they tend to be more rom-com shows, the odd reality show. I really like Alone, and a bit of home makeover shows. Poker Face was a real laundry favourite of mine, and Bridgerton.
The TV moment that haunts me the most is… I wish that I was armed with some of the concepts and language that young women in the industry have today around feeling uncomfortable about what we’re being asked to do. The times when I have not necessarily been the best human are probably also the times where I was most uncomfortable, but there was no process to say “I’m not OK with this right now”. On Madam we had the most amazing intimacy coach in Jennifer Ward-Lealand, who was just amazing at making everything explicit and making sure everyone was comfortable.
My favourite onscreen role of all time is… I think the thing I’m most proud of is Total Control, because I co-created that show. It was such a watershed moment because we’d never seen Aboriginal people walking through the halls of power, let alone by the end of season three where we have a black prime minister. It was so ambitious, and I just loved the delicate dance of playing a conservative white woman and unpicking a certain kind of privileged woman’s white fragility. Across my career, I’ve always loved having a partner in crime opposite me. Whether it was Deb Mailman in Total Control, or Toni Collette in Muriel’s Wedding, or Emily Watson in Hilary and Jackie, I do very well in that kind of one-on-one relationship – almost always with women.
The truth about going to glitzy awards shows is… I don’t see the truth of them. For me, they’re very overwhelming. My neurospicy doesn’t really cope with the flashes and the noise and all the stupid questions about what I’m wearing. Being nominated for the Oscar was like suddenly being put in a Barbie box. The best thing was going home after it was done. Some people love a party, some people are happy in a crowd, some people love sitting in a chair for three hours, some people love being in a dress you can’t breathe in. It’s taken me a while to be able to do it in a way that works for me, which is often finding a suit that stretches and just getting through the gauntlet as quickly as possible.
The TV show I’ve always wanted to be involved in is… I would love to have gone onto MASH and called them out for representation of women in that show, which was far less interesting than the male representation. I think in the book, it was more complex and it just got flattened out as the shrill blonde. I would have loved to have gone into that and given Hawkeye a serious kind of girl boss who was as serious and wild and outrageous as him. It would have made the show much better.
The last thing I watched on TV was… The Cats game last night. It went well.