It’s a cold day in the Tasmanian town of Zeehan and Marta Dusseldorp is sitting inside the Gaiety Theatre. A beautiful old building that Bay Of Fires fans will instantly recognise. The actress is deep into filming the hit drama’s second season and, because she’s co-creator and producer, as well as star, she’s thrown herself into it completely.
“I hadn’t seen my daughter Maggie for a month when she walked up on set today,” tells Marta, 52.
“It brings me to tears. Four weeks! It’s the longest I’ve ever been apart from her because she’s now at the age where she’s busy with school. She’s got serious pressures, so any project I sign up to has got to be worth that – and this really is.”
Perth-born Marta moved to Tasmania in 2018 with her actor husband Ben Winspear, and their daughters Grace, now 18, and Maggie, 15. Inspired to create a crime thriller set in the island’s wild west, she came up with Bay Of Fires.
The popularity of the first season took Marta by surprise.
“The network kept messaging me after the numbers came out, going, ‘This is quite unusual. This is great,’” she recalls.
“And I’m asking, ‘What? Really? Really?!’ I even asked them to check it.”
The first season was also a hit with Tasmanians, with the initial episodes being screened in the old theatre where Marta is now sitting.
“This was entirely full of locals who were all in the show,” remembers Marta.
“I was more nervous about that than I was the Sydney Film Festival premiere that we did. “I was sitting up the back, thinking, ‘Oh, my God,’ but they were laughing and calling out each other’s names when they came on screen. “Right at the end, they all just turned around, looked up and they were like, ‘Good on ya, Marta!’”
Even before the show’s debut season went to air, Marta and her co-creators were at work on a second. While the first was all about survival for high-powered businesswoman Stella as she escaped assassins by fleeing to a remote Tasmanian town with her two children, the latest is about freedom and redemption.
“We’ve all done things in our past that we’re not proud of,” says Marta. “How do you make amends? That’s a huge burden for her.”
Nearly all the cast and crew have returned for season two, including Marta’s daughter Grace, who plays Rebecca.
“She’s so good,” Marta says.
“I’m really super-impressed and she’s spent so many years on set, so the pressure just doesn’t get to her. “She does want to be an actor – otherwise I wouldn’t give her an opportunity that someone else who genuinely wants to do it could have. “It’s a serious business and a great career, and it could be possible for her. It’s nice to have a sleepover with your daughter!”
Meanwhile, the success of the show’s first season in Australia and the UK has put pressure on Marta for an equally strong second series. But she says there’s no other option other than to “lean in” to the expectations.
“Because otherwise, what are you doing?” she asks.
“I do miss being a jobbing actor and just getting a beautiful script. “But I’m 52 now and so happy to be with all these genius people at the top of their game, having really great conversations and making the show’s world. I feel very lucky.”
Marta has starred in shows such as legal drama Crownies. A Place To Call Home, Wentworth and courtroom saga The Twelve. She describes that last show, which co-starred Sir Sam Neill, as “meaningful”, adding, “It’ll always have a very special place in my heart.”
She says that it is her “life privilege” to tell stories which are set Down Under.
“People ask, ‘Why haven’t you gone overseas?’ But why would you? It’s all here. It’s good, it’s beautiful and you’re there with fabulous people.”
For Marta, Bay Of Fires is a celebration of community, but it’s something more too.
She smiles, “It was an ode to motherhood because I was often asked, ‘Do you feel guilty?’ It just should never be asked of anyone and it shouldn’t be a question in your mind.
“Now my daughters are old enough to give me feedback, they say, ‘Thank you so much for showing us what was possible.’”
Bay Of Fires is now streaming on TVNZ+.
