Natalie Bassingthwaighte has learnt a lot about mental health in the past few years. She knows that she shouldn’t take too much on, and she’ll knock back well-paid gigs if she thinks they don’t work for her family or “my sanity”.
But recently, she found herself filming the series Space 22 at the same time as she was working on the musical Jagged Little Pill.
“These days I would never take on both things,” she tells TV WEEK from her home in Byron Bay.
Natalie’s new series Space 22 discovers the stories of seven people who’ve experienced mental illness.
(Image: BBC)“But because of COVID, they ended up overlapping – one got pushed back and one got pushed forward – and I did find it incredibly challenging.
I did have a moment where I was just hysterical, on the floor, crying, at work, like, ‘I can’t do [it]’. I was so exhausted. So it was a good reminder [that] I can’t work like that.”
It wasn’t just exhaustion. Natalie, 46, was also feeling a lot of emotion from filming Space 22.
The ground-breaking series takes seven people who’ve experienced mental ill health – some as a result of childhood abuse or devastating personal tragedy – and leads them through art therapy, to see if it can help them.
Natalie was filming the series Space 22 at the same time as she was working on the musical Jagged Little Pill.
(Image: Getty)“Being around everyone who’s had a lot of stuff happen to them and they’re dealing with their emotions… I’m an empathetic person, so I was feeling all that,” Natalie explains.
But it was a series she was “desperate” to make.
“I’d been through my own mental ill health journey and I know what works for me in times of high anxiety or any of the things that I’ve gone through, so I felt like to be able to give people the tools to navigate their own mental ill health journey would be amazing.”
In the series, Natalie talks about the “huge breakdown” she suffered a few years ago, where her whole body shut down. However, her journey started long before that.
“When I was younger there was this moment in my life where I was just like, I just didn’t belong. That was the beginning for me.
“Then, more recently, having another episode in the last five years or so, it was really terrifying. Again, I felt like [I was] out of my body, I felt like I couldn’t leave the house, I felt like everyone who looked at me was judging me.
“The beautiful thing about this show is everyone had experienced some form or another of mental ill health, so there was a real kinship with everyone.”
The bonds that Natalie formed with the seven people on the show have lasted. They’ve stayed in touch since filming finished.
Natalie and her husband Cameron McGlinchey are taking steps to look after their kids’ Harper and Hendrix’s mental health.
(Image: Instagram)“They all came to see Jagged Little Pill, which was amazing. We all caught up afterwards.”
Mum to Harper, 11, and Hendrix, almost nine, with husband Cameron McGlinchey, Natalie is already taking steps to look after her kids’ mental health. With Hendrix, she’s been inspired by what she learnt while making Space 22.
“I’ve just taken my son to art therapy. He’s a very sensitive soul, and with everything that’s been going on in the world, like the floods and the wars and COVID, he’s freaking out,” she says.
“The kids are so anxiety-ridden. I give him the best advice I can, based on what I know, but I think this has been helping him.”
Natalie found fame as Izzy Hoyland in Neighbours.
(Image: Ten)Natalie, who found fame as Izzy Hoyland in Neighbours nearly two decades ago, has the rest of this year planned out, workwise, with gigs on both stage and screen, including the return of Jagged Little Pill from July.
She says she’ll take on anything that “tickles my fancy”.
“I just did the Baz Luhrmann film, Elvis, and I played a really tiny role, but I loved that.
“But I loved Space 22 just as much. Obviously, working with Baz was kind of mindblowing, but this just filled my heart and my soul with so much goodness and love.”
The premiere of Space 22 airs on Tuesday, May 10 at 8pm on ABC.
