Jessica Marais as Carlotta. Image supplied
Samantha Lang became attached to the TV movie quite late in the process, after the funding was in place and just a couple of months before production started. “There’s nothing like a bit of pressure,” she said.
Screenwriter Danid Hannam and producer Lara Radulovich developed and originated the project, based on interviews with Carol herself. Samantha believes that she was chosen based on her previous work. She has a history of making features such as The Well, The Monkey’s Mask and The Idol, and she supposes that what they were looking for was her sensibility, both in terms of performance and tone.
Samantha explained that, “Carlotta was, in my eyes, a pioneer during a significant moment in our social history. She was an outsider advocating for respect in minorities at that time. Some of my previous work has been about people who exist outside of the considered norms…I have an enormous amount of admiration for Richard Byron, Carol Lea, Carol Spencer.”
Once she did some research and met Carlotta and got her head into her story, Samantha realised that it was “a survivor story, and I related to that. My guess is that she was an advocate for the acceptance of people who exist at the fringes of society, at a time when there was a lot of change happening in Australia. She’s an extraordinary character. She went through so many changes and traumas and difficulties, but what she managed to do despite that, was keep and open heart and retain her generosity. I think that’s an extraordinary quality in a human being.”
