Mandy McElhinney on the glamorous afterlife. | Television tonight

‘I’d never heard of it Ghosts for. Never looked at it,” admits Mandy McElhinney.

“Then I read it, and my interest was piqued because of an Irish character.

“Eileen is from Donegal in Ireland, where my father is from.”

For full disclosure, McElhinney reveals that it was actually her idea to add Donegal to the Irish character Ghosts Australia.

“She was always Irish, and when I was cast I said, ‘Would you be open to her being from this place specifically?’ and they were really open to that. It was a great experience for me to discover more about the history of my ancestors. We work with an Irish consultant who lives in Donegal, speaks Irish and understands what kind of life my father would have had,” she explains.

“They took all the clothes from Donegal textile mills that would have existed at the time Eileen left. In the 1840s, The Great Hunger, as they call it in Ireland, meant that the potato blight hit. Because of the colonial situation there with the English, a lot of Irish people died, were kicked off their land, and a lot of people emigrated and were put on ships, and actually shipped to Australia.”

In her character’s backstory, a teenage Eileen found herself shipwrecked off the coast of Van Dieman’s Land. Eventually she married a hopeless drunkard, and together they took over ‘Ramshead Inn’, as it was called at the time.

Now living with others Ghosts and new tenants Kate (Tamala) and Sean (Rowan Witt), chaos ensues.

McElhinney loves the role, even if it’s not her most glamorous role.

“She has really bad teeth. She has jaundice and she’s had a hard life. She sat in the chair for over an hour and the makeup people did a great job creating the look for her. It’s personally a really fantastic job to do because I’m wearing clothes that my ancestors would have bought.”

Performing together with a colleague GhostsInes English, Brent Hill, Michelle Brasier, George Zhao and Jackson Tozer, the ensemble has settled on a playing style that lies “somewhere between the American and British” editions.

“I mean, I like the British version because they made it. They have it.” Horrible historieskind of Monty Python-like atmosphere,” she suggests.

“The American one is a little more subdued. I think people speak a little more in the same voice. We’ve moved more towards that style, I think, but at the same time some of it is quite broad. And the kids will love it. It’s something the family can enjoy, I think.

“I have a prop, a piece called Raggy, and every time the beautiful props department hands it over to me, there’s a ceremony: ‘Here’s the Raggy!’ and it has become a bit of a security blanket. She is constantly cleaning, but she has no physical effect on the world.”

McElhinney is also excited that “Australia’s complex history” will be addressed in the script.

“I think that’s one of the great things that sets it apart. We’ve had the opportunity to shed light on the true history of Australia. That’s one of the things that really got me excited about it. I think we’re mature enough to start looking at it honestly,” she says.

“Eileen has arrived in a country that isn’t hers. So there’s the migrant story, I guess. It doesn’t really fit. Even what she wears, like how did the women in this climate get by in corsets and wool?”

Ghosts Australiaproduced by BBC Studios Australia, it also sees McElhinney return to WA for filming.

“It’s great to be back because that’s where all my family live. I live in Sydney. I came here and did a play with my sister a year and a while ago that we wrote and performed together. That felt like a real homecoming. When I left Perth it felt like there was no future in the arts here,” she recalls.

“Then you think, ‘How dare you go to the East Coast. You’re letting us down! It was a very complex time.’

“To come back now and find that it’s blossoming, … there’s so much energy going on right now.”

Ghosts Australia screens on Sundays at 8:30pm on 10/full season Paramount+