Lockdown meant a lot of different things, to a lot of different people. For Miranda Tapsell, fresh off the success of her film Top End Wedding, which hit cinemas in 2019, it meant having a good long look at what she wanted to do next.
Not just in terms of her career, but in terms of her life.
“Look, I hate to bring up lockdown, but we were in it in Victoria, and that’s when (my Top End Wedding collaborator) Josh Tyler gave me a bit of a nudge,” says the 37-year-old star, who wrote and starred in the acclaimed film.
“He said to me, ‘I don’t think we have quite ended the story of Lauren and Ned, I think there is more to their relationship than just their wedding’.”
And it got Tapsell thinking.
Newly married to her partner of several years, James Colley — the couple wed in late 2018 — Tapsell, a Larrakia and Tiwi woman from Darwin, began to wonder what the next few years might look like for the characters she’d dreamt up in her head, and what the next chapter of her own story might look like.
“When he said all that, I was also grappling with whether I should have a baby or not,” Tapsell explains.
“I had grown up in such a tight-knit community, where everyone had a hand in looking after the kids.
“Josh and I thought, ‘do we necessarily need to speak about parenthood through the journey of pregnancy?’ especially when it’s EVERYONE’S obligation — in my community, anyway — to look after a child.
“I thought we should be celebrating that in this series, too.”
An idea was hatched: what if the couple at the centre of Top End Wedding, Lauren (played by Tapsell) and Ned (played by Gwilym Lee), so happy in their “double income, no kids” life, became parents — but not in the way they ever expected?
Tapsell and Tyler decided to do the unthinkable and kill off one of their central characters. It was decided that Lauren’s cousin Ronelle (played by Shari Sebbens in the film) would pass away in the first episode, forcing the couple — now so settled and living their dream life in Adelaide — to be thrown headfirst into caring for Ronelle’s daughter, Bub.
They’d move in with Lauren’s parents, Daffy (Ursula Yovich) and Trevor (Huw Higginson), and be forced to navigate the chaos of what comes next. It proved a brilliant jumping-off point for the story.
“It took Josh and I a while to decide what comes next after happily ever after,” Tapsell explains.
“What Josh and I recognised as the magic for this series, is that there are so many ways to make a family . . . children need to know that there are so many people who they can turn to and so many people who love them, and Josh and I wanted to show that.
“It was particularly important to me because Aboriginal families are often represented as dysfunctional and negligent, and that’s just not the Aboriginal families I know.”
Fast forward five years, and Top End Bub has just hit screens: Tyler and Tapsell’s vision is writ large in all its chaotic glory.
The creators managed to persuade the film’s ensemble cast to return to reprise their roles, and though Sebbins’ character Ronelle was no longer around, she jumped onboard as one of the show’s directors.
“I knew I really wanted to do (a follow-up series),” says Welsh actor Gwilym Lee, who plays Lauren’s husband, Ned.
“I had such an amazing time on the film, and I really loved the team behind it — Josh and Miranda are the best.
“I read the first few scripts of the TV series and thought that it just had that same charm, and that same kind of soul.
“I had always said in my mind that as long as we continued to tell that same beautiful, Indigenous story, I would be keen.”
In the five years since filming the movie, life has moved on for all the ensemble stars, but for Lee, it’s continued in tandem to Tapsell’s: both became parents (Tapsell and her partner James Colley welcomed their first child, Grace, in December 2021) — and both are now traversing the brave new world of shepherding little ones through those early years.
“A lot had happened,” Lee concurs. “And we’d kind of been living these parallel lives — quite strange, really.”
Just a few days after we speak to Tapsell for this story, she welcomed her second baby, little Vincent, born last month.
Like her character in Top End Bub, things had just got a whole lot more chaotic, but in the best possible way.
“When I was wondering whether I should have a baby, Josh said to me, ‘you never are going to have your ducks in a row, or have enough money, or be where you want to be in your career; there are always places you want to travel to, but if you are ready to embrace the chaos and love that comes with being a parent, then you should just do it’,” she says of her decision.
“It’s because of him that I took the leap of faith, both in writing the show and having my baby.”
Top End Bub is streaming now on Prime Video
