Leah Purcell
“What I loved about the script was there were six strong lead characters and they all had their own
journey. An ensemble piece is hard to write and hard to cover and, although it was a smaller part, Carmel,
my character, had a middle, beginning and end. That’s something you look for as an actor, so you can
really sink your teeth into it.
For Carmel it’s about being haunted from your past. Trying to work out who you are, where you fit in life
and where you don’t fit. She doesn’t belong. Well, she does belong, but she doesn’t know where she fits into
the circumstances within her own personal journey as a character, and with the other characters, and the
life in Jindabyne. Carmel is a city girl. I think she opted to go to the bush where there was a strong
Aboriginal community. She’s never denied her aboriginality, she’s always aware of it, she’s always proud
of it, but she just didn’t know how to connect to it. She’s a strong woman, a professional, she’s gone to
university to be a teacher. At the same time, she’s fighting with her own demons. She’s got this yearning
inside her that she doesn’t quite understand. She’s confused, she’s at a crossroads, and she’s the character
that doesn’t quite fit in. As the story of the film unfolds, the indigenous issue that does arise is really thrown
at her, and she doesn’t know how to deal with it.”
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