On the set of any TV drama, it’s up to the lead actor to set the tone. On High Country, that was Leah Purcell. So when cast and crew started “freaking out” about leeches falling on them from the trees, just a couple of days into filming in the rugged Victorian mountain region, Leah remained calm.
“Leeches have a heat radar, so they actually feel you out and zoom down,” she tells TV WEEK. “They were coming from above and below. People would take off their masks and there’d be leeches under them. I went, ‘Oh, I’m just going to be cool and calm everyone down.’”
(Image: Supplied)
But then, as Leah was stepping over a log, she felt something squash against her thigh.
“I swore loudly and crudely, running out of the bush, telling all the boys, ‘Turn around! I’ve got a leech in a place you don’t want to see!’ Mate, they’re mongrel little things.”
Leah wasn’t expecting the leeches when she signed on for High Country. But she did know that filming the eight-part mystery thriller – “the biggest moment in my career, number one on the call sheet, the show written for me” – would be a challenge.
Leah plays Sergeant Andie Whitford, who moves to Victoria’s High Country with her partner – former artist Helen Hartley (Sara Wiseman) – and their teenage daughter Kirra (Pez Warner). Andie finds herself investigating a string of disappearances and deaths, while unravelling the mystery of her own identity.
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Not only is Leah the star of High Country, she’s also executive producer and cultural consultant.
“I wore a few hats,” she says. “It was hard work, but I loved it, because that’s where I am right now in my career – 38 years in, you want that challenge.”
As cultural consultant, Leah worked with the Taungurung Indigenous elders, getting their permission to use a Taungurung “warning story” in the series.
“It’s a blessing to do the right thing and get the mob’s blessing,” she says.
For the role of a horse-riding country police officer, Leah had to be at peak fitness. That wasn’t a problem for the 53-year-old, who’s thrown herself into physical roles before, from Police Rescue back in 1996, through to Wentworth, where she starred as Rita Connors.
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Growing up in the small Queensland town of Murgon, Leah was always sporty. She knew she’d either be an actor or “an athlete of some sort”.
“Netball was my big thing and I made a Queensland Indigenous representative side when I was about 15,” she remembers. “In the ’80s I was an aerobics instructor at the Murgon sporting complex, doing a bit of Jane Fonda in my leotard!”
She’s a trained boxer from a family of boxers, and her partner, Bain Stewart, is a former kickboxer.
“I’ve always been around that training aspect – my body craves it,” she says.
Leah feels that training is good for her mental health as well as her physical health – and she’s a big fan of kettlebells.
“When I was peaking – anxiety and a bit of pressure – the Sunday before I went to work on High Country, I did a hundred kettlebell swings. It calmed my nerves; it pushed down the adrenaline. Walking on [to the set], I felt strong.”
It’s hard to believe that before the role of Rita in Wentworth came along, Leah had decided to retire from acting to focus on writing and directing. She has no plans to retire now.
“Yeah, nah,” she says with a laugh. “The calibre of work and the diversity of roles now, and stories such as The Lost Flowers Of Alice Hart… [the 2023 drama miniseries] when stories come along where you’re sharing the frame with Sigourney Weaver, they’re hard to pass up!”
Even though Wentworth finished in 2021, Leah is still loyal to the show’s “amazing” fans. She turned up to Wentworth Con [a convention for fans of the show] in Melbourne earlier this month, where she caught up with other cast members, including Socratis Otto, who she met at her first – unsuccessful – Wentworth audition.
“Believe it or not, I was auditioning for [the role of] Joan Ferguson,” she explains. “I said, ‘Who else is running for this?’ and they went, ‘Pam Rabe’ and I went, ‘Mate, this is her to a T.’ But the audition was great in that I put myself in front of the casting people.”
(Image: Instagram)
Leah has just finished the first draft of her next project, Koa Kid, an action-adventure family film set in outback Queensland. She’ll direct it, and says there might be “a little part” in there for her. Her partner Bain, a producer, will be working on it with her.
“He’s my man, mate and manager,” she says. “We’ve been together for 32, 33 years. It’s not all roses – now and then we take things out on each other, when we get frustrated work-wise – but we pull our heads in pretty quick, apologise and get on with it. I love seeing him work. Bain is passionate about our stories.”
As successful as Leah has been as an actor, writer and director, she says there are still times she misses out on things.
“It’s tough to get stuff up in this industry. It’s taxing. Sometimes you go, ‘Mate, I just might go and start my toilet-cleaning business.’ But in saying that, I know that I’m blessed and fortunate to be in an industry where I’m doing something I love.”
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