When TV WEEK catches up with Claudia Karvan via Zoom to chat about the new season of Bump, she’s sitting in her car. It’s midday, and she’s been out with Nathalie Morris, who plays her daughter on the show.
“I was at the pool with Nat just then,” Claudia, 51, explains.
Claudia co-created Bump with Kelsey Munro.
(Image: Stan)After shooting four seasons of the comedy drama, Claudia has become close to the young stars, especially Nathalie.
“I taught her how to make fresh pasta the other night,” she says. “We went to an Afro-fusion dance class together last week. She’s the best.”
Bump, which Claudia co-created with Kelsey Munro, began with high-achieving student Oly, played by Nathalie, giving birth to a baby girl, even though neither she nor her teacher mother Angie, played by Claudia, knew she was pregnant. When season four kicks off, that baby girl, Jacinda (Ava Cannon), is now seven, Oly is working for a very demanding mayor, and Angie is living in a tent camp, protesting against the removal of trees.
Claudia says Dylan Alcott is “fabulous.”
(Image: Stan)“We actually didn’t expect a fourth season,” Claudia admits. “We thought that was it. Then when Stan ordered a fourth, Kelsey and I put our heads together and settled on an environmental lens to see the world through. Series one, two and three was very much and very consciously a feminist lens.”
Claudia, who went on a course run by a climate-action group to prepare for her character’s new direction, says Angie is “genuinely tapping into the universe”.
“There’s a lot of people suffering from eco anxiety.”
With Santi (Carlos Sanson Jr) now Jacinda’s primary carer, Oly is working for mayor Shauna Johnson (Steph Tisdell). Former tennis champion Dylan Alcott plays one of Oly’s co-workers, and Claudia says he’s “fabulous”.
“He put a couple of his jokes in the show, which worked really well.”
Over the first three seasons of Bump, Claudia has had a lot of feedback.
“I’ve had some incredible responses from women who were terminally ill with metastasised breast cancer, saying, ‘Thank you for showing someone with cancer who still has needs and isn’t just a patient or a victim,'” she says.
“Then there are things that don’t land. Quite a few people were very upset by Ariel’s (Matilda Ridgway) birth. They thought it was obstetric violence. So you learn from your audience.”
Claudia is currently developing two new TV series, one based on the novel The Other Half Of You by Michael Mohammed Ahmad and the other “confidential but very exciting”.
Bump season four is out now.
(Image: Stan)“One show I’m not in and another show I’m in too much, so I’m just trying to work out how can I get off-screen a bit more,” she says with a laugh.
Looking back over her long career, from the film High Tide with Judy Davis when she was just 14, to Love My Way, The Secret Life Of Us and Puberty Blues, Claudia has no regrets.
“Definitely not, no. Very happy with the path taken,” she says, adding that Australian TV drama currently feels “very fertile and still really creative”.
“I’m really happy to be here.”
