‘Why aren't you being cancelled?': Claudia Karvan reveals her problematic past roles

The Age

12-07-2025

When Claudia Karvan was just starting out as an actor, a lot of her colleagues paid the bills by lending their voices to dramas on the radio. 'Their bread-and-butter job was doing radio plays. That was a regular gig,' she says.
Karvan herself never recorded a radio play. Her career kicked off much earlier than most - she thinks she was eight or nine when she first appeared on screen in the 1982 film Going Down, and at 10 had scored the lead role in the feature Molly. By the time she was old enough for audio dramas, their popularity had plummeted.
That's partly why one of her latest projects has proven so satisfying, she says. The new audiobook Like, Follow, Die isn't exactly a radio play, but its chapters are narrated by several actors playing different roles. Karvan has recorded audiobooks before, but being part of a larger ensemble performance scratched an itch she didn't know she had.
'You just get so swept away in it. You get so immersed. It's a nice way to do a performance because it's a real pure go at the character. You remove all of the other complexities of costume and makeup and lighting and going to location, all those technicalities. You can just focus on the world of that person.'
That person, in this case, is Corinne, a mother who slowly comes to realise her son has fallen down a dangerous internet rabbit-hole and into the clutches of manipulative, anonymous forces. The police officer questioning her about her child's misdoings harbours his own troubles and is forced to juggle ethical dilemmas just as thorny as Corinne's.
Audio experiences have had a powerful resurgence in the last decade or so. Once upon a time a train or tram would be packed with people nose-deep in a book. Now they all sport earbuds. 'People have a voracious appetite for audio books and podcasts. It's great company when you're commuting. It does make the gardening and doing the laundry much more pleasurable, doesn't it?' says Karvan.
Part of the appeal is the intimacy afforded by another person's voice in your ear. There's also the way the imagination of a listener is involved: 'It's quite creative because you're filling in the gaps. I feel like I've been in Corinne's apartment, like I could actually map it out. I can tell you the colour of the walls, the colour of the curtain. I can smell it. I can hear it. I feel like I've been in that location. It's really powerful.'
You might think that an actor would find audio dramas challenging, given that they're stripped of the ability to use facial expressions, physical reactions and the other tools they deploy to convey emotion. Karvan says that's not true.
'It's just a much more intense version of what we already do as actors. It comes down to empathy and being emotionally available. Obviously, there's a little bit of technical craft with voice, stamina and articulation and muscularity,' she says. 'Otherwise it's still about humanity and compassion and curiosity. But they're so much more fun because you get to stay in your tracksuit pants.'
Karvan was attracted to Like, Follow, Die because she related to the role intensely. She has two children, and her son is close to the age of Corinne's. She has a great relationship with him, she says, but she's also very conscious of the toxic environment young men are forced to navigate both online and offline right now.
'I think every parent is alive to the conversations around the 'manosphere' at the moment. I am one of those parents. It's always on my radar for sure.'
Her solution involves communication, honesty and empathy. 'I think it's really important not to be fearful because yes, there is a very blatant fight to hang onto the patriarchal old world order, and we're seeing that play out. But we're in this big human experiment together, and I think it's really important for us as brothers and sisters to work together and look after each other.'
Karvan's own mother was a feminist, 'a very colourful one and a fantastically inconsistent one', she laughs. In a recent Who Do You Think You Are? episode devoted to Karvan's life, she describes her mum as 'a feminist who picked the bits that she wanted from feminism and left the rest'.
The world may have shifted in ways alarmingly different to the one she started out in, she says, but it's also important to keep the wins in mind. 'I just went to Australian Fashion Week, and it's very different to the '90s in a very good way. The diversity of the models, different ages, gender fluidity, different shapes, different races, less uniform, much more originality. It was so life-affirming.'
You can chart those social changes in the roles Karvan herself has played over the decades. In recent times people have often raised an eyebrow at 1993's The Heartbreak Kid, in which she starred as a teacher who embarks on a clandestine romance with one of her pupils. 'People are like, 'ummm ... your character had an affair with a student. Why aren't you being cancelled?' Or, 'you played a Greek woman when you're not Greek'. Things change, definitely.'
TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS ACCORDING TO CLAUDIA KARVAN
Worst habit? Dental flossing in public. Pretty disgusting, isn't it?
Greatest fear? Being attacked by a shark or being constipated.
The line that stayed with you? Gloria Steinem: 'The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.'
Biggest regret? Uh, come and ask me at three in the morning.
Favourite book? Right now, the audiobook Clown World. Why hasn't anyone heard of this book? It's written by two Vice journalists. It's their investigation of the manosphere. I'm recommending it to everyone.
The artwork/song you wish was yours? I wish I'd written the song One Day Like This by Elbow.
If you could time travel, where would you choose to go? To meet any of my ancestors that I learned about in Who Do You Think You Are?
More than reflecting the times in which they're made, though, a huge number of Karvan's most memorable roles also capture a particular phase of life itself. The Secret Life of Us was entirely about the highs and lows of life in your 20s. Love My Way, on the other hand, wouldn't have been the same show if its characters hadn't been in their 30s. The Claudia Karvan of today is very much echoed in Bump, the series in which she plays a mother of kids around the same age as her own.
Karvan co-created Bump and is filming a feature film instalment right now. What attracts her to productions in which she goes beyond acting to get active behind the camera?
'Something that's going to surprise an audience. I feel connected to the audience because I'm an audience member and I know how I want to feel or what I want to get out of an experience, be it with an audiobook or a film or a podcast. I want to learn something. I want to feel moved. I want to come out feeling some hope.'
One of Karvan's earliest roles was in Gillian Armstrong's classic High Tide, in which she plays the restless teenage daughter of a fiercely independent mother played with characteristic verve by Judy Davis. Did Davis' brave example inspire Karvan to challenge herself in the same way?
'I would have subconsciously downloaded that,' she says. 'Other things too, like you can be a smart actor. You should be well-read. You should have an opinion. You don't have to be a meat puppet.'
Karvan grew up on our screens, so perhaps it's not surprising that she went on to keep growing and exploring what it means to be a certain age throughout her acting career.
Does she often look back and take stock of her life? 'Of course. Yes. All the time. Every day.'
Some people don't. 'No, I know they don't. I find that fascinating.'
Loading
She doesn't reflect on her own history in order to self-flagellate, she says, but to better know herself. It comes down to a quote she loves from the poet Pablo Neruda: 'Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.'
'I just think it's such a beautiful thing to remember. That you never get away from yourself,' she says. 'You want to play that long game where you make sure that when that day comes, it's not a horror film.'