Shooting the drama series Plum led Jenni Baird to make an important decision about her 12-year-old son Charlie. Jenni plays a journalist in the series, written by Brendan Cowell, about a rugby league legend suffering a brain disorder caused by years of head knocks.
“A couple of weeks in, after I’d done all my research, I said to Brendan, ‘I’m not going to let my boy play rugby,’” Jenni tells TV WEEK. “And he looked so conflicted to hear that, because on one hand he loves the sport, and on the other hand, he really has learnt so much about this condition.”
Jenni, 48, admits she didn’t know much the brain disorder CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) before she was cast in Plum. But she soon found out about it from one of her neighbours, who works for an NRL club.
“He came over and talked to me at length about it, and he put me in touch with a neurologist,” Jenny says. “She’s one of those people who definitively say that contact sport causes CTE.
“My boy is a very lithe, skinny boy with a long thin neck, and I don’t want him to get hurt and I don’t want him to get dementia at the age of 55.”
In Plum, Jenni plays sports journalist Dana Hanlon. Dana cared for her former rugby league player dad Mo (Peter Phelps) in his final years before he passed away from CTE, and now she wants to publish a big story on the link between the sport and the brain disorder.
In one of the show’s most emotional scenes, Dana watches a compilation of home videos showing the progression of her father’s dementia over the years, and breaks down in tears. Showing emotion in the scene wasn’t difficult for her.
“I watched my grandmother disintegrate with dementia and my father-in-law at the moment is also suffering from that,” she explains. “I know the pain of watching somebody you love disappear in front of your eyes. So it’s easy to contact that kind of grief and loss.”
Jenni has played some memorable roles in her career, from nurse Paula Morgan in All Saints to Meghan Doyle in US sci-fi series The 4400 to grieving mother Diane Lawson in The Twelve. But the role that’s made the biggest impact worldwide is the villainous Regina on A Place To Call Home.
“I get messaged every other week by somebody in some far-flung part of the world who is like, ‘I just finished watching A Place To Call Home and Regina is so awful!’” Jenni says. “That was such a wonderful job. I got to do everything that any actor would ever want to do.”
Just recently, Jenni was cast as a murderer in Return To Paradise, and she thinks that Regina may have had something to do with it.
“I’m your go-to villain, really, which is great!”
Return To Paradise also gave Jenni a chance to catch up with her former All Saints castmate Celia Ireland.
“We actually went out and caught a movie together,” she says. “We were such good friends when we were on All Saints, so it was lovely to reconnect with her.”
Jenni is married to writer/director Michael Petroni, who she met when she was working in the US. They’re parents to not just Charlie but also 16-year-old Rose, who recently played Juliet in a stage production of Romeo And Juliet.
“I was like, ‘Don’t be an actor – it’s too heartbreaking a career!” Jenni laughs. “She was so luminous as Juliet, so good. I really feel like I’m good at assessing even though she’s my own child!”
For Jenni, who describes acting as “the one thing I truly love”, Plum is a series that she really believes in.
“It’s wonderful to be in something that steps beyond just the joys of entertainment and goes into something challenging,” she says. “I think this will make people have a reaction.
“It has 100 per cent affected me.”
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