It only takes one question about Home And Away for Bonnie Sveen to start tearing up.
Bonnie is talking to TV WEEK via Zoom from her home in Tasmania about her new series, Thou Shalt Not Steal. When asked what she misses about her time in Summer Bay playing Ricky Sharpe, she gets so emotional that she momentarily can’t speak.
“Oh goodness!” she says, once she’s recovered. “Sorry! It was just so joyous. I guess I feel a little bit sad because you can’t go back. I cried to my agent about it last year too, when I went and met with the guys again. I’ll never stop loving everybody that I got to work with.”
In her three years in Summer Bay, surfer Ricky went through plenty of highs and lows, falling for Brax (Stephen Peacocke), suffering a miscarriage and eventually having Brax’s baby.
“I was just super lucky to work with Steve and be a River Girl,” Bonnie says. “Ricky wasn’t a damsel in distress – she was more of a mother role. In some ways I feel like I can play that stuff better now because I actually am a mother. There’s more layers to me.”
It’s been 10 years since Bonnie won the TV WEEK Logie for Most Popular New Talent for her Home And Away role. She recently played the video of her acceptance speech to her twin daughters Myrtle and Emerald, who have just turned six, and Myrtle covered her eyes with her hand.
“It’s really funny,” Bonnie laughs. “It was the whole theatrics of it, everybody dressed up to the nines, with that big band playing and me crying. Myrtie just looked at me and was like, ‘Mum. What are you doing!’ She thought it was a little bit over-the-top for me.”
Myrtle and Emerald are used to seeing a much more down-to-earth version of their mother. Bonnie grew up in rural Ranelagh, Tasmania, and she and her partner (now husband) Nathan Gooley moved back to her home state before the birth of the twins. In Tasmania, Bonnie does a lot of work with animals, having trained in wildlife rescue with Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary.
“I’m daily pulling roadkill off the road and checking pouches,” she says. “That’s just a part of our reality down here. That’s my daughters’ reality too. When we see a dead wallaby, it’s like, ‘Mum, are you going to pull over?’ and then, ‘Was it a boy or a girl?’ To have these conversations, to look past the gruesome side of what it is… They factor in the existence of animals around us, and I think that’s really cool.”
Bonnie, 35, has had a number of acting roles since the twins were born, including a part in Rosehaven. Meanwhile, Nathan, who’s an assistant director, has been kept busy working on shows shot in Tasmania – most recently, Bay Of Fires. The twins have been able to see their dad in action on set, but they’re too young to watch Bay Of Fires themselves, and they don’t seem to appreciate any of their mum’s old shows.
“I’ve turned on a little bit of Home And Away and The Secret Daughter and they just haven’t quite gotten into it,” Bonnie says. “So no criticism of the shows, but it’s just not quite Bluey!”
As for Thou Shalt Not Steal, that’s another series that Myrtle and Emerald might appreciate when they’re a bit older. Set in the 1980s, it follows Robyn (Sherry-Lee Watson), an Indigenous juvenile delinquent, who teams up with preacher’s son Gidge (Will McDonald) on a road trip through the outback. Bonnie says her role in it came “out of the blue”, after she’d commented to Nathan about how great Sherry-Lee was in the first season of Heartbreak High.
“I think maybe I manifested it a little bit,” she laughs.
Bonnie plays Cheryl, a character she describes as a “rich b***h”.
“I haven’t really done villain for TV so far. It was actually really fun to not have to pull down the armour and play vulnerable.”
Thou Shalt Not Steal also stars Noah Taylor and Miranda Otto, but Bonnie was most excited to be reunited on set with one of her best friends, Shari Sebbens. The two of them went through NIDA together, graduating in 2009.
“Student life: you’re looking at your bank account, wondering are you going to see the show on Friday or Saturday night as part of your studies or are you going to afford meals for the next week?” Bonnie remembers. “To be thrown into this elite acting school was a bit of a culture shock for me. Shari was that little bit older and more experienced. We were there for each other in some of the best and hardest times in those few years and in the years after.”
Bonnie has certainly had some hard times as a mum of twins.
“I think parenthood changes you in ways that you just don’t predict,” she says. “I feel like it has deepened me, and my God, if anyone’s had multiples, they know! You get smashed! I’m talking about it like I’m surfing again, but it is, it’s like getting double smashed by a giant wave.”
She says parenthood can be “very isolating”.
“Can you imagine the difference between going to set on Home And Away and meeting new people every day, getting to meet hundreds or thousands of people every year, versus spending a lot of time around your kitchen sink, just doing the mundane… the mundane, beautiful stuff?” she finishes with a laugh. “I’m looking forward to a little more variety and getting a bit more time on set, for sure.”
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