The unpredictable nature of acting is par for the course, but where it takes you can make or break a career. For Bella Heathcote, this is a life she’s become accustomed to, as she tells us via Zoom from Atlanta, Georgia, where she’s filming her latest project.
But mixed in with her ongoing success, both in Australia and abroad, is an innate fear of failure.
Hollywood star Bella, 38, confesses, “I’m very insecurely geared, so I never feel confident until the first week of filming is done. I feel the pressure to rise to the occasion and do it justice.”
This sentiment is echoed by her Scrublands co-star Luke Arnold, 40. He never feels he can just sit back, despite his accomplishments.
“There’s always some ‘it’s not going to work’ anxiety, so you never go in with too much confidence,” he says. “I may have made that mistake in my early days, rocking up to the next thing thinking I could carry that confidence over, but the anxiety never leaves.”
It was a lesson he learned while playing late rocker Michael Hutchence in the 2014 miniseries biopic Never Tear Us Apart: The Untold Story Of INXS. His blistering performance sent him on an upward trajectory. It could have given him the ego of a real-life rock star – but it didn’t.
“I had to pretend I had confidence, even if I didn’t. No one wanted to see me unsure of whether or not I could be Michael,” Luke says of portraying the renowned musician. “There was no time for doubt. If I’d stuffed it up, I’d be living on the other side of the world, never letting my hair grow out again and never speaking a word to another Australian!”
At the time, Luke – who has appeared in Heartbreak High, The Alice and Home And Away – was flying back and forth between commitments for the period drama series Black Sails, which was filmed in Cape Town. After embodying a rock star for months, Luke was quickly brought back to reality.
“I got a bit of s**t when I returned to continue filming Black Sails,” he laughs. “The cast said, ‘You’re still walking like a rock star!’ I carried back more of Michael than I should have. It’s a nice thing to think, ‘Maybe I’m not terrible,’ but it’s a danger to play any other role like I played Michael.”
The same can be said of Aussie series Scrublands, which launched to rave reviews when it debuted in 2023. In the follow-up season, Scrublands: Silver, Bella’s character Mandy and Luke’s Martin are now together. They spend the season navigating the complexities of their relationship during a trip to his hometown.
But things become murky when someone murders Martin’s childhood friend and Mandy is the prime suspect.
“She can’t catch a break,” says Bella. She’s famous for her roles in Neighbours, Fifty Shades Darker and Johnny Depp film Dark Shadows. “The stakes are pretty high from the start, but I love playing her so much. She’s a spunky character.”
Filmed in remote Western Australia, the location and atmosphere set the tone for the series. It also stars Home And Away actresses Debra Lawrance and Tasma Walton.
Says Bella, “It was so moody. The landscape and costumes were all shades of blue, which lent itself to the unravelling of everything. For Mandy, I built up her relationships off screen. Then when they got taken away in the series, I really felt it. It’s easier to access that than to wonder what it would be like for someone to accuse me of murder!”
While season one, which featured Kiwi actor Jay Ryan, introduced the characters, Luke, who married his wife Kel in October 2024, says Silver gives viewers an in-depth look at who they really are and allowed the co-stars to be good friends.
“We only had a few scenes together in the first season, so we weren’t doing the level of work we are now,” he explains. “We have a lot of emotions and a complex issue to navigate. It’s a lot for a new couple to go through. Bella and I work similarly and we get excited by the same things. She challenged me to dig deep and do the work.”
Off screen, the two are just as close, with catch-ups scheduled for whenever they are in the same location.
Bella, who splits her time between Los Angeles and Melbourne, smiles, “Luke’s such an incredible actor. Only recently, he and his wife came to LA to hang out with my husband and me. We all became a bit of a family on set. When you’re on location, you need that.”
Scrublands: Silver is streaming on ThreeNow.
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