There’s a moment in the fourth episode of Colin From Accounts where stars Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer appear to almost break character, laughing at the utter hilariousness that is actress Virginia Gay.
In the scene, their characters Ashley and Gordon are having dinner with their friend Megan. Megan’s brought along her new girlfriend Rumi, played by Virginia, who promptly hijacks the entire evening with pompous anecdotes of her travels.
It’s a lightning-in-a-bottle scene – thanks in large part to Virginia’s performance – and one the Sydney-born actress admits best illustrates just how fun the show was to film.
“It’s the happiest set I’ve ever been on,” beams Virginia, 42. She also starred in Winners & Losers and After The Trial. “It’s probably my favourite show in the entire world. You never, ever get to walk onto the set of your favourite show. It feels like my 14-year-old heart walking onto the set of Buffy The Vampire Slayer!”
She attributes that “pure joy” to its cast and crew. Particularly, the show’s “generous” creators Patrick and Harriet, whom she calls “comedy geniuses”.
And the feeling is mutual. Harriet revealed she and Patrick had Virginia in mind when writing the character of Rumi. They even allowed her the freedom to ad-lib much of her dialogue.
As experienced as Virginia is – she’s done everything from comedy to drama to reality TV – you’d think this is the type of thing that would happen all the time for her. But the actress begs to differ.
“That’s extremely sweet, but no,” she says. “I’m still very much auditioning for roles. The beautiful thing about auditioning is that 98% of jobs you go for, you don’t get, so you have to be OK with that. It’s tough, especially when you’re starting out, but it’s good for the soul to be OK with it.”
While she may have missed out on a few roles, directors have casted her in some significant ones too. Perhaps her most notable one was as nurse Gabrielle Jaeger in the early 2000s hospital drama All Saints, which she landed when she was 24 and still studying drama in Perth.
“I had a pretty strong case of imposter syndrome for several years in All Saints,” Virginia reveals. “It was very much like, ‘Why should it be me who got this role out of all the talented people in my class?’ I was ready for it to be taken away at any minute.”
She adds that the fact she’s remained close to some of her All Saints co-stars – including comedy queen Celeste Barber – “is testament to how close we were and how lucky we were to have each other in that time”.
Fast-forward nearly two decades and Virginia’s scheduled is all booked up. She’s busy and shows no sign of slowing down. She gained many new fans as a finalist in the 20th season of the Aussie version of Dancing With The Stars in 2023.
This year alone, she’s become artistic director for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival. She’ll be taking her acclaimed gender-flipping play Cyrano to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland and has been developing a new dark comedy for TV.
Does she feel exhausted?
“Never – I feel so exhilarated by it all,” Virginia enthuses. “I feel so honoured and humbled. I just love what I do.”
And it probably helps that she recently found out that she has ADHD.
Of her life before the diagnosis, Virginia says, “I thought that everyone struggled in the same way that I did. Other people were simply better humans, though.”
It was during lockdown that she realised other people’s brains didn’t function like hers.
“I was like, ‘What do you mean that not everybody struggles for days and days to write a single email, then goes into a guilt spiral about how they can’t and wastes all this energy on shame?’”
Now on medication, Virginia says her diagnosis has changed everything. “It’s been such a revelation. It’s just about observing the patterns in my brain and recognising that my chemistry is simply different. This is perhaps the most extraordinary time of my life.”
The second season of Colin From Accounts is now streaming on TVNZ+.
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