“How do we deal with this whole dead black people thing?” | Television tonight

“That was one of my first questions,” Ghosts Australia star Tamala reveals.

“I said, ‘How are we going to deal with this whole dead black people thing?’ Because I have a responsibility to represent my culture in the best way possible.

“But I think we handled it in the smartest way because we can’t put it all in one mind to hold that story. That would be negligent and really unfair to the actor who is supposed to hold all that.”

Tamala is a proud Bundjalung and Lamalama actor who has starred in Nowhere Boys, Cleverman, Reef Break And Late Night with the Devil. In the Australian adaptation of Ghostsbased on the original British sitcom, she now plays Kate, who inherits the crumbling country house Ramshead Manor. She moves in with her boyfriend Sean (Rowan Witt) and begins seeing the ghostly residents who have failed to cross to the other side.

But for a First Nations character, death and ghosts necessarily come with layers and complexities that need to be addressed. There is a colonial history, there are 250 language groups or ‘mobs’, cultural sensitivity around deceased persons and the importance of Aboriginal spirituality.

That’s why the show’s Writer’s Room featured Steph Tisdell and Shontell Leah Ketchell, two First Nations writers. Under executive producer and writer Josh Mapleston, the Australian adaptation landed on a First Nations character as a “Breather” or living character, to avoid clumsily trying to represent an indigenous spirit.

“It’s a huge undertaking to try to represent all the mobs at all times. As much as that has to be in our minds, and we have to try to do that, in this story I think it’s a much more interesting take, and there’s more to explore by doing it through Kate’s eyes as a young First Nations woman, rather than going the other route,” she explains.

It also creates conflict and storyline as Kate comes face to face with Gideon (Brent Hill), one of the original characters created to portray Australian history. Naval officer Gideon arrived in the Third Fleet and founded the town around Ramshead. But it didn’t end well. Now under constant spearing, he has spent over two hundred years clinging to the belief that this is still ‘his country’, and trying to convince the other Ghosts that he is in charge.

“Kate has to live in this house with a man who represents colonialism, contact Australia first, carnage,” she continues. “He literally has a bloody spear in him. So Kate has to see it. Kate has to live with that every day and justify her stay in that house.”

“I’ve been trying to do that all the way through the series. For Kate, this is her out. She wasn’t happy with her life before, doing corporate law, city life. She’s made this big decision, and this is her life that she wants. So in order to embrace that life, she has to embrace all these things. Ghostsdespite their differences.

“We talk about it being a shared comedy. And I think that’s true. But I also see Kate as a kind of mother. So in order to justify interacting with people who have very different views than me – Gideon has racist views and he says it to my face – I have to be able to have compassion for him and understand him in some way in order to continue living with him.”

Like the British original and the American adaptation, only Kate sees it Ghostsmuch to the frustration of confused partner Sean.

Also scaring the house are Irish potato famine survivor Eileen (Mandy McElhinney), bride-to-be Miranda (Ines English), 1980s aerobics instructor Lindy (Michelle Brasier), Chinese miner Joon (George Zhao) and 1990s biker Satan (Jackson Tozer).

Before Tamala was cast, she had watched five seasons of the British original “because I loved it and I thought I wouldn’t get the part!” But she has not seen any of the American adjustments so as not to be further influenced.

The production of the BBC Australia series in Perth may have felt like a theater ensemble for this cast, but for Tamala it was a job like no other. As the only character to see Ghosts, each scene involved between one and three different acting tasks.

“I feel like I’m doing three different scenes at the same time and that’s kind of how we shoot it that day. We do the scene as it is, Ghosts and so on, and then we make a ghost-free version,” she explains.

“The really crazy thing is when day players come in, ‘Breathers’. I then have to maintain that reality. So that’s the third scene I have to do. I have the Sean and I scene, me and the Ghosts and the breathing pauses.

“If I have a breather, come in and I’ll have it Ghosts when I talk to me, I have to acknowledge that the Ghosts talking to me to get them to shut up. Then I have to listen to the Breather… so I have to play a lot of things at the same time. I’ve never worked like that in my life!”

There is another term that is unique to the Ghosts world…. being ‘sucked away’. Yes, you read that correctly.

“Sucked off is the Ghosts take off and leave,” Tamala reveals.

“I talked to the actors about, ‘What would make your character suck?’ What is the ultimate thing holding them back from which they need to be freed?

“But we also have to do this interesting dance, because obviously we want more seasons. We love that Ghosts so we don’t want them to be too liberated, get sucked off and leave.

“Maybe to me, having someone like Gideon having these conversations isn’t the peace he needs to save him from his sins. Maybe he has deeper things within him that we can discuss later?”

Ghosts Australia has a double premiere episode at 8:30 PM on 10 Sunday, November 2 / All eight episodes on Paramount+.