Making Fake, a drama series about a woman who falls for a man she meets via a dating app, got Asher Keddie and David Wenham talking – mostly about how relieved they were to have found love before apps became the way to do it.
“Yeah, I was grateful for my age,” David, 58, says.
“It was so wonderful when we were all falling in love in our twenties and thirties, not feeling manipulated in that way,” Asher, 49, adds. “I’m grateful I met my partner before all that – the online stuff – began. I would be dreadful at it! I’d be too frightened. I’d bea shut-in. I’d just be by myself.”
Asher, who’s been in a relationship with artist Vincent Fantauzzo for 12 years and is stepmother to Luca and mother to Valentino; and David, who’s been with Kate Agnew, a dancer turned yoga teacher, for 30 years and is father to Eliza and Millie, are chatting to TV WEEK via a three-way Zoom. The two actors haven’t seen each other since they shot Fake and start the Zoom with a quick catch-up.
“How are you, my friend?” Asher asks David. “Where are you?”
“Where am I? I’ve got a lovely jumper on, so I’m in London in the middle of summer,” David replies.
With both stars having decades of TV and film credits behind them, including David’s stint as Diver Dan in SeaChange and Asher’s TV WEEK Gold Logie Award-winning run as Nina Proudman in Offspring, it’s surprising the pair hadn’t co-starred on screen before Fake. But they did act together in a 2005 stage production of Cyrano de Bergerac.
“We had a good laugh looking back at the photos of us when we were young,” Asher says.
In Fake, Asher plays Birdie, who meets Joe, played by David, and things quickly get serious, despite her niggling worries that he may not be the wealthy architect-turned-grazier he claims to be. The two actors have some intimate scenes together, but insist there was no awkwardness.
“It was such a wonderful ease working with you,” Asher tells David.
“Our relationship, our working relationship, is diametrically opposed to Joe and Birdie’s,” David says. “There’s implicit trust between us.”
Since starting on Fake, David says several people have told him their own stories of being deceived in romantic relationships. Although he’s never had that happen to him, he did have someone in his life who told elaborate lies.
“He created this myth about him being this writer,” David recalls. “I spent quite some time with him, and then one day I got a call from his brother to say he’d been put in jail and would I act as a character witness for him? He was involved in a big importation of drugs through furniture from overseas. I was like, ‘Oh my God!’”
One of the messages in Fake is the danger of believing in romantic fairytales. Asher’s real-life story of falling for Vincent – she walked past him on the street and “absolutely felt connected on a level I’d never felt connected to anybody in my life” – sounds like a romantic fairytale, but she says that wasn’t what she was seeking.
“I was raised in a house full of feminists who told me to live my life and march to the beat of my own drum,” she explains. “So I didn’t grow up with that princess myth – which is one of the reasons I was so attracted to the story.”
Asher, who’s been nominated for the 2024 TV WEEK Gold Logie Award for playing Evelyn Jones in Strife, is loving the roles she’s had recently.
“I had such a long run in Offspring for seven seasons,” she says. “I never would have imagined I’d do a show for that long. Since then, they’ve certainly been quite different roles. That’s what an actor loves – to play really diverse characters and people we don’t know.”
Stream Fake on Paramount Plus from $9.99/mth, with a 7-day free trial.
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