PHOTOGRAPHY Georges antoni
STYLING Jana Pokorny
WORDS eugenie kelly
unlight spills through the windows of Asher Keddie’s home office – a floor-to-ceiling vision of tastefully understated whites. Her desk is pristine. Behind her, on the mantlepiece of an ivory-marble fireplace, sit framed photos of her children, alongside a small print of the iconic 2008 portrait of the late actor Heath Ledger, painted by her husband, artist and friend of Ledger, Vincent Fantauzzo. Dressed in jeans and a starched pink-striped shirt, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, her creamy-blonde hair swept back into a messy knot, Keddie’s pair of black-framed reading glasses are the final flourish to what’s a chic librarian vibe.
Asher Keddie is an industry force. The former child star turned national treasure has graced our screens for 40 years in iconic series such as Offspring, Fake and, next, season two of Strife this May. But there’s more to Keddie than a face for TV. She’s now a crucial component behind the scenes, adapting books into screenplays and TV shows. But she’s not ready to let acting go just yet.
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She looks bookish, like someone with mountains of reading ahead. The thought of this eminently pleases her. “Every day when I wake up, I can’t wait to get started,” Keddie says of her recent projects as a producer, where she turns books into series. “Producing has filled up my life as a creative in a totally different way to acting. For this one, I’m working with my dream team: Made Up Stories and Kindling Pictures. Our next project is based on a book we’re all obsessed with. What an extraordinary place to get to after acting for [so many] years. To think people want to create stories with me.” But if an acting part with this project happened to present itself? Keddie smirks. “I’ve very graciously – half-jokingly – said, ‘Hey, if I do end up playing this person ...’”
Shepherding books to screen is not only a priority for the 50-year-old actor-cum-producer these days, it’s a passion she shares with her Made Up Stories’ collaborator, Bruna Papandrea, the Australian producer who enticed Keddie to take on the role of publisher Evelyn Jones in Strife. The Binge series – a fictionalised adaptation of Mia Freedman’s 2017 memoir, Work Strife Balance, about her experience of leaving magazines to launch a women’s lifestyle website – debuted in late 2023, breaking records for the streaming platform, with season two (debuting May 8) set to do the same.
Personally, one thing I struggled with was Evelyn’s clothing and the sartorial style Keddie landed on for her character. (Full disclosure: early in my career I worked with Freedman, and went on to become an editor-in-chief of a women’s fashion magazine while being a mum to two teenagers.) Anyone who knows Freedman would be aware of her love of colour and a sequin, while Evelyn Jones is more Emmanuelle Alt, if anything. “We went down the path that our inspiration would be the ex-Paris Vogue editor [Alt],” agrees Keddie. “I knew Evelyn had to look comfortable in her skin, so I wanted the clothes to not say anything … to be a part of her [and not] scream chaos. So, during those times when she’s not comfortable with situations, her inner angst feels obvious.” Personal pieces from Keddie’s wardrobe were also used for inspiration, in line with the story’s 2012 era. “Helmut Lang pants, a Roland Mouret coat, some Isabel Marant,” she rattles off. “I can’t wear Marant’s clothes anymore – they just don’t feel right now. Though I still replenish my stash of her Dicker boots every few years.”
Freedman and Keddie had only met once before, but when Keddie signed on to the project she invited Freedman to fly to Melbourne to meet at her house. “It was actually funny,” she admits. “We chatted non-stop for three hours – an amazing conversation about life. We’re polar opposites. She’s the beautiful neurodiverse mind and I’m the neurotypical mind.” That’s a dynamic she’s used to. “Vincent, my husband, and I are the same. But I enjoy that. It’s intriguing.”
Having already worked with Papandrea for roles in Nine Perfect Strangers (2021) and the miniseries The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (2023), Keddie was keen for something “less brutal” and lighter in the realm of comedy/drama. “Bruna sent me [Freedman’s] book and her ideas on how it could evolve into a drama and I loved the themes of bravery, of trying to navigate and change a media landscape, and of being highly ambitious.”
The relatability of this anxious career-woman character also held huge appeal. “This is a story that the familiarity of the work/life balance chaos, but it’s also intriguing,” says Keddie. “My character, Evelyn, isn’t someone who is always likeable. She can be polarising. She’s going through a marriage breakdown. She doesn’t always get it right.”
uniforms and cook dinners. “The boys are full-on but I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she says. “Vincent calls it ‘beautiful chaos’.”
Life today is very different compared with 2012, when the pair met in Fantauzzo’s studio, the artist entrusted with the task of painting the actor’s portrait for the NGV exhibition, 30 Portraits 30 Days. (Keddie was number 26.) She’d been anointed the golden girl of Australian television, receiving widespread acclaim in her lead role of obstetrician Nina Proudman in the hit series Offspring, which had launched in 2010. When she wasn’t pulling 14-hour days on set, Keddie would retreat to a 16-hectare rented property in rural Kyneton, 90 minutes’ drive from Melbourne, with her rescued racehorses. “At the time I was so fulfilled with farm work,” she declares. “It gave me purpose and allowed me to get comfortable with being alone.” She and Fantauzzo married in Fiji in 2014.
Asher wears Carla Zampatti, Bottega Veneta and Chopard.
CREDITS
Talent: Asher Keddie
Editor: Georgie McCourt
Creative Director: Juanita Field
Art Director: rebecca rhodes
Photographer: Georges Antoni
Stylist: Jana Pokorny
Interview: Eugenie Kelly
Hair: Daren Borthwick
Makeup: Isabella Schimid
Manicure: Ruby Hardcastle
Producer: Robyn Fay-Perkins
Fashion Assistant: Benji Luis
VIDEO CREDITS
Talent: Asher Keddie
Editor: Georgie McCourt
Creative Director: Juanita Field
Videographer: Stef Maystorovich
Stylist: Jana Pokorny
Interview: Eugenie Kelly
Hair: Daren Borthwick
Makeup: Isabella Schimid
Manicure: Ruby Hardcastle
Producer: Robyn Fay-Perkins
Fashion Assistant: Benji Luis
Asher wears Carla Zampatti, Bottega Veneta and Chopard.
Coincidentally, our interview timing coincides with the official publication date of Fantauzzo’s memoir, Unveiled (Penguin Random House). Raised amid poverty and violence in Melbourne, Fantauzzo was a street-fighting petty criminal as a boy, and the book is a white-knuckle ride recounting how Keddie’s husband became one of Australia’s most successful portrait artists. “His story is amazing,” she marvels. “How on earth did he survive and thrive?” Her pride in her partner – who suffers from severe dyslexia and debilitating memory problems – is obvious. “He needed to get this book out of him.”
Fantauzzo has won the Archibald Prize People’s Choice Award an impressive four times and the Doug Moran National Portrait prize twice. Nevertheless, the pair leave each other alone on their creative journeys, unless one asks the other for an opinion. “When I’m feeling confused about a story I’m developing as a producer, I’ll ask him because his brain is extraordinary and comes from such a different place,” she admits. As she does for him. “If he’s in the early stage of painting narrative, because they are so cinematically driven, he might ask for an opinion at conceptual stage.” But, she adds, the conversations are robust. “We have incredible arguments. We’re incredibly passionate. Highly sensitive – he more so than me. And we want each other to love what we do. Everything is very complex in this relationship.”
It’s a trait that’s resulted in unique techniques, which she uses to prep for acting roles. “I read and read a whole script until it’s in my pores,” says Keddie. “I connect to the text in a way that makes me feel reactionary or emotional. And I don’t speak about the character to anyone, apart from the writer or director.” So, no feedback sought from family or friends? “I just can’t articulate it. And I don’t want to. I have no need to run it by anyone.”
Keddie then visualises herself delivering the narrative. But never out loud. “This is mortifying to admit, but when I got the role of Ita Buttrose in Paper Giants, I never once practised speaking like her prior,” she confesses. “The first time I spoke her voice was when I got to set on the first day. I don’t feel any need until I’m ready to deliver my lines.” That pressure sounds terrifying, but the adrenaline feeds her. “Trusting myself has really helped. That trust is why I’ve had career longevity and can keep moving incrementally towards the work I really want to do.”
Asher wears Scanlan Theodore, Beare Park, Sportmax and Cartier.
Asher wears Christian Dior.
Asher wears Bottega Veneta.
Asher wears Bottega Veneta and Cushla Whiting.
“I’ve certainly had challenges through life with self-esteem and self-worth. But I’ve
also had a great sense of trust in myself.”
LEFT Asher wears Friends with Frank, Tod’s and Sportmax. RIGHT Asher wears Prada and Cartier.
Still Ascending
Asher wears Sportmax and Cartier.
“The boys are full-on but I wouldn’t have it any
other way. Vincent calls it ‘beautiful chaos’.”
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stepmother to 15-year-old Luca (from Fantauzzo’s previous marriage) and mother to 10-year-old Valentino, Keddie is a self-confessed “homebody” who relishes the six-month stints in-between acting roles she schedules, so she can stand on soccer sidelines, wash school
“Streaming has changed everything. It’s pushed
our Australian work out everywhere.”
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antauzzo’s memoir is at times intensely personal. Case in point: spilling the insecurities he felt while watching his wife diagnosis in 2014. Having this laid bare in a book would stress the majority of us. However, Keddie insists the scrutiny doesn’t affect her. “I can’t work out whether
that’s come from getting older or whether I’ve become accustomed to not having anonymity,” she says. “We can easily keep private what we want to keep private.” She pauses. “I do care what people think of me. But at the same time I don’t.”
Keddie has a strong sense of self, yet it’s taken work to get here. “I’ve certainly had challenges through life with self-esteem and self-worth, and I’ve allowed myself to be manipulated and to think I’m not good enough,” admits the actor, who was just 10 years old when she first appeared onscreen, in Disney series Five Mile Creek and the film The Last Frontier. “But I’ve also had a great sense of trust within myself – ever since I was a little girl.”
LEFT Asher wears Scanlan Theodore and Dinosaur Designs. RIGHT Asher wears Carla Zampatti and Chopard.
Keddie has dominated the Logie Awards since 2013, when she won her first gold statuette for Most Popular Personality on Australian TV. She’s undoubtedly a highly marketable star, lending kudos to projects where other cast members don’t have her decades of experience. But does this burden her? “Yes!” she shrieks. “I feel a huge responsibility when I’m at the centre of a show. My agent, Lee-Anne Higgins, will often say to me at the beginning of something, ‘Don’t fuck it up.’ It’s a joke, but it’s also real.” So she loves being a leader? “I get bored easily. I like responsibility. That’s when I deliver my best.” How Evelyn of her.
Season two of Strife will stream on Binge from May 8.
LEFT Asher wears Scanlan Theodore and Dinosaur Designs. RIGHT Asher wears Carla Zampatti and Chopard.
Asher wears Friends with Frank, Tod’s and Sportmax.