Catherine Millar is an award-winning director who has worked on many of Australia's most critically and commercially successful TV dramas, several of which have also earned praise across the world, like The Secrets She Keeps, a recent six-part thriller for which Millar was the set-up director and director of four of the series' six episodes that found its second home on BBC1 after success in Australia. Narrowing down a list of her biggest accomplishments is an impossible feat, as her oeuvre to date is extensive, varied, and highly acclaimed, including but certainly not limited to Wentworth, Janet King, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, and Darlings of the Gods, a miniseries Millar developed and directed that earned her an AWGIE for Best TV Adaptation.
But that's not all. She's harnessed her expertise and passion into education, serving as Head of Directing (2007-2010) and Deputy Director of Screen (2010-2012) at the Australian Film Television and Radio School (AFTRS) - which also happens to be her alma mater. It's safe to say that she has mastered the intricacies of television and film direction and has become a staying, influential, and powerful presence in Australia's film and television industry.
Most recently, she served as set-up director for One Night, leading the charge in establishing the show's unforgettable and chilling visual language and tone before directing the first three episodes of the series. Unsurprisingly, the Paramount+ series is yet another to add to her list of international successes, as it has immediately garnered critical acclaim in the UK after its November 24 premiere there.
As we conducted our interviews with various cast and crew of One Night, it very quickly became clear that Catherine was someone we must talk to. She’s a busy woman, so we cannot express our gratitude enough for the hour-long conversation she had with us.
// Please be aware that, due to the themes represented in the TV series One Night such as sexual assault, PTSD, and addiction, it was inevitable that some of those topics would be discussed in our interviews. //
Helena Emmanuel: What were your initial reactions when the One Night scripts came your way? Did something jump out at you?
Catherine Millar: Wild enthusiasm. I think it was just very enthusiastic. The chance to do something from such a female perspective just doesn't come your way very often, and Emily (Ballou)’s a very unique writer. The chance to do something that was trying to do a genre piece, but was really exploring a lot of female issues was just an incredible gift. Also a chance to do something visually exciting, as well as being able to attract such amazing actors because they had such meaty roles.
That was really great because you knew that you were going to be able to give female actors an opportunity to do something incredible, which you just don't get enough of, I don't believe. It's very exciting. Their voices are not often heard.
Celine Whitby: Not heard in the depth they need to be and not from the perspective they need to be.
Catherine: Yeah, and the thing is it's more of a novelistic kind of writing, I think that's much more interesting in television now, that [the show’s] got a very strong, unique voice. It's a very individualistic series. The voice is. Trying to make that as something unique and experiencing a more bespoke type of series.
It was amazing to work on, Emily was fantastic and we were able to do really interesting things and it was incredible. I loved it.
CW: That’s a good segue for the second question we have actually! You directed the first three episodes of One Night and were instrumental in creating the show’s visual language and tone. Emma Paine (Director of Photography, Episodes 4-6) mentioned that she and Lisa Matthews (Director of Episodes 4-6) were involved in this process as well, even though they weren’t shooting until the second block of episodes. What was it like collaborating with another director and cinematographer pair for this?
Catherine: Well, what we did was make a visual document outlining the style so that everybody could be on the same page in terms of what the visual style was, but at the same time, I think it's impossible for creative people to rigidly stick to someone else's visual style or point of view or way of doing it. So it was really a conversation. When they came to do their three episodes, they took it in another direction, but we did have a basis of the language. I had a very distinctive idea on my approach, and then they adopted some of those aspects, but not all of them. That's just the "creative" part of the creative conversation. I don't believe in rigidity in that way. I wouldn't want them to rigidly follow the same point of view. There were [consistent] stylistic things that we did, like when we were doing memory pieces, we shot a lot of it with shift and tilt lenses to keep it semi-obscured because memory is something that is not completely sharp, you know? It's often an emotion and feeling, so we try to echo that stylistically.
We had strong rules about color and the like. For instance, the aftermath of the night where [Tess is] on the astroturf and it's green and she's in the red [dress]– those are the strongest colors in the whole series. Nothing else is as strong and as vibrant as that because we wanted that to be the thing that stuck. There's certain things we kept to and then other things that were looser in the relationship. So creating a sort of guideline for everybody to stay coherent throughout the series.
HE: Speaking of all the tilt-lenses, one of my favorite things about the show is how sure it is of its visual language and tone - how it uses the camera to tell the story, especially memory and trauma: the use of the tilt and shift, the sharp angles for one-shots, and the blurriness that kind of goes in and out. You spoke a bit about it already, but could you talk a bit more about how those choices were made and your collaboration with Garry Phillips?
Catherine: Garry's got an amazing, great composition. We talked about the tilt-shift lenses and he was very keen on going in that direction, so we did a lot of experiments with the shift and tilt lenses to see how they'd work. A lot of it's quite out of focus, deliberately out of focus. It all works, but it's actually quite brave to shoot stuff that's not really in focus, but because it actually works, it's okay. So that was quite tricky. When we were doing the color stuff, we had to shoot a lot of tests to make sure that the green and the red were actually the peak colors. The other thing that we did is that we tried to make the environment very dominating. We did very, very big wide shots and tried to make the people very small to make the landscape a character and to have this very dark beauty.
What was great about Garry is he's just got such a beautiful eye for doing that, for creating that epic quality that we wanted as well as it being very intimate. We were working between this intimate thing and then this epic thing: we do the memory stuff and a lot of the thriller beats in a very inflected style, but then we would try and shoot the scenes between the women in a much more impressionistic, naturalistic style, so you've got different styles working against one another. We discussed it all, we shot tests and we always had the camera having some sort of float on it so that it was sort of "breathing" all the time.
We had a reason for everything that we were shooting in a particular way and we thought it all through very deeply before we actually started shooting. Also, we wanted to give the actors space as well. Even though things are very designed, at the same time when the actors come on set and they want to move in a certain way, I never want to be the director saying, "Oh, don't do it that way. That's not how I had it planned." I wasn't going, "Well, no, do it that way." So that there's always room for other people's creativity. That's just your job, that people can come on board and they feel that they can be as creative as they want to be in the material. You're trying to bring everyone on board with a singular vision, but at the same time, you've got to let people's individual creativity flourish. Garry's got beautiful lighting and he was just a fantastic choice of cinematographer, particularly for all the more Gothic noir memory stuff but also the beautiful visual landscapes he created.
CW: Absolutely. A lot of beautiful collaborations between everybody in the team.
Catherine: Yeah, it was great. It was one of those ones where the women were all very generous with one another, which was fantastic. There was no competitiveness or prima donna behaviors. They were all just incredibly dedicated to realising the material and working with one another, and it was amazing to have them. They were all incredible, and we've got such an incredible cast. It was an honor to direct them all.
HE: When we spoke with Emily, she mentioned that it was a very emotional experience for her. She specifically mentioned when in Episode Three, when Tess just found out about the book and she has a panic attack, then goes into that meeting and her younger self is lying in the circle of men. She said when Mikaela (Binns-Rorke) came out with the bruise makeup and she saw it for the first time, she was like, "This is too much."
Catherine: Yeah. At times she didn't want to shoot things because it was too much, but it was one of those things where we've got to go there because that's part of the truth of it. And you know, it's not like we showed anything in a graphic way, and that was very deliberate too. There's nothing graphic in it.
CW: From the perspective of someone like me who has experienced sexual assault, it was so appreciated because there's so much glamorisation of the trauma. This idea that you've got to show the victim in such a way so that you can feel empathy with them or pity, and no, you don't need to know. You don't need to know any of that. We, as viewers, don't even know what Tess heard on the recordings that she was listening to. We don't need to - we can just be in the reaction and how it impacts the character. That's all you need from a human perspective. I thought that was extremely intelligent of you and of the team to decide not to go into too much visual detail in that respect. It was very, very thoughtful.
Catherine: It was interesting because things like the Mare of Easttown - did you ever see that? It's a very good show, but the way they treat the coverage of the female victim, I was going, "Oh my god, I am not going to do that." It's trying to find a way to do it where you understand its impact, because we played it mainly on Young Simone watching it, but just being careful, as you say, not to glamorise it or make it salacious in any way because then it wouldn't be truly a female perspective.
It was trying to make sure that it really was from the female sensibility and also that thing of understanding that the emotional impacts are hard enough to deal with. You don't really want to be re-traumatising people.
CW: I don’t think it would have served Tess' voice either, because she herself doesn’t know or remember what happened. So if you show it to the viewer, we have one up on her and what's the purpose of that?
Catherine: A lot of people don't understand why they're so anxious and traumatised, because a lot of things happen to people in their early childhood that they can't remember, but they nevertheless have these feelings of overwhelming anxiety and can't handle certain things. It's much more scary in a way when you actually don't have a core memory to pin it to. All you have the ongoing anxiety associated with the feeling. Trying to make a show around that, which applies to so many people. We didn't really go into the childhood aspect of it, but so many people have had traumatic childhoods, but they can't remember it except from these feelings of overwhelming anxiety and fear, right?
HE: Right. The show isn't about the attack, the assault, the rape. It's about Tess, her life and their lives after that happened. We need to know that it happened to provide context for the characters’ emotions and journeys, but the show isn’t actually about the mechanics of assault itself. It was so great that they had just such rich inner lives and personalities and you portrayed that very well.
Catherine: Also the thing that's so important, I hope that what we portrayed too, was the love between them. Their love was tested and almost broken apart, but it returned. The strength of that, that they eventually were able to return to their friendships after exposing all the ugliness underneath it all…. that need for healing, and the painful process of healing, was one of the things we tried to explore in the piece: how painful it is to really heal relationships. If you just skate along the surface, you're not really having a deep relationship. You're not actually able to really engage in the love between each other. I guess it’s understanding that thing about truth and reconciliation, that they really needed to go through that process to reclaim their friendship, deepen their friendship and move on, and how those types of friendship really, really can support you as a person. That feeling of being heard and listened to and understood and supported is just so important.
CW: Especially when it's something that's happened. The relationship started at such a young age and it continued for decades. We don't really explore those aspects of female friendship either. It's either you're the mum friend or the work friend or the drinking friend. What about the friends that we make in childhood and teenhood that carry us for the rest of our lives? You were growing and you are growing together. That was beautifully portrayed. You know, Hat pivots between the three of them, never losing touch. She's the anchor of the three of them. That's how I see Hat.
Catherine: Yeah, and such an amazing actor, oh my god. She's dynamite. She really is incredible. I mean, she would just astound me where she would just go there. She's got no vanity. She's just so in tune with her true self, Yael (Stone). She's incredible.
HE: Speaking of really going there and those emotional places, how did you approach creating a set that was safe and mentally sustainable when you're working with such difficult subject matter and asking actors to really, really confront it?
Catherine: You have to work on that from day one as a director. I always try to create a space where the actors don't feel the technology rules. I always ask actors, "How do you like to work? As an actor on set and before set and rehearsal? What do you need when you're doing big emotional scenes? What are your needs?" Because every actor is different. Not everyone wants the same thing. I have actors who go, "I need the set to be totally quiet." Then I'll have an actor who says, "Don't make the set quiet. I'd rather everyone just keep on chatting. I just have to find my own [headspace]."
Then you always want to do the more difficult scenes later, because as with all human beings, sometimes what you think you need, and what you really need, there is a bit of a gap. So it's great to get to understand actors a bit more deeply. Sometimes, you know, some actors can be just, "I'll be fine. I'll be fine," and they won't be fine. They do need a certain sort of space. So it's about getting to understand them individually, creating the space on set and making sure for those scenes, they have enough time to do them. They have enough time. They have enough prep. They get the takes they want. I always say, you know, "If you want another take, you can have another take." So I try to give them as much freedom as possible within the material and as much respect.
At the same time, you'll find with most actors, they'll go, "Well, if you're happy, I'll be happy." Because, to a certain extent, like all artistic people, they're never happy. A lot of actors will go, "I could keep going forever and I'll never be happy." They're just hard on themselves. It's a big responsibility for you as a director, though, because, having an actor saying, "Well, it's your vision. Just let me know when you're happy…."
CW: Are you ever happy, yourself, with the work?
Catherine: No, no, I am. When everything clicks in, there's this…you just know it's right. You just go, "That's just incredible." I felt that so many times. I was just blown away by it so many times. I think that there was a real hunger from all the women on the show to do something where they felt very invested in the material, they respected it and it wasn't just for themselves. They really were doing it for [all] women in a way. They really were incredibly committed, not in a selfish way. They wanted to respect the material and express certain things. This is a genre about women being raped, which has been so exploited that they wanted to put this other point of view on it, the longterm, the depth of it all and how it just eats away at you.
CW: It ripples through everything in your life.
Catherine: Yeah. It's just- it's almost impossible to cure that form of trauma. It just needs so much emotional support, understanding, sensitivity and care.
CW: You learn to live with it, but you never forget.
Catherine: You can’t forget. I think one of the things you can't forget too, with performers, is that they always do their best work when they've got their attention on the other. They very much did. It was amazing working with them all. We were going quite fast sometimes, which we have to because we have very small budgets in Australia, but it's trying to find space in that framework. For me, I try to be as prepared as I possibly can be so that no time is wasted.
CW: So you can be steadfast whilst respectful.
Catherine: Yes. So that I've done the maximum amount of preparation, plan staging wise, how things might be, how actors might move, but at the same time, I'm also open to them wanting to do it a different way. You have to have that flexibility, like when you're playing a game of sport, you do all the prep, but the game will change on the day. That's what makes it alive and wonderful and fresh. Rigidity is a terrible thing. I think it kills creativity.
CW: It's teamwork.
Catherine: Absolutely, yeah. It’s total teamwork, complete teamwork. Trying to keep that creative inspiration alive and make sure people have access to their creative imagination. It's got to flow.
Sometimes I shoot the closeups first. Sometimes [the actors will] want to build to their closeups. Sometimes they'll want to get them done straight away. Sometimes, if possible, you want to cross-shoot so you've got both sides of the performance because they might go in different directions on different takes. They might try for a different action on how to achieve their objective. So it's all about trying to capture that chemistry on screen between them.
CW: What was your approach in creating the necessary emotional energy and tension for some of the challenging scenes with the adult Tess? The panic attack in the bathroom in Episode One is a moment that is over so quickly yet lingers in the mind as does much of Episode Three.
Catherine: It's discussions with the actor about how they want to do it, but you have to make sure that your team is ready [when they are]. So [the crew] can't be dropping focus or putting a boom in. The team has to be ready to capture that performance. You go through "What are your boundaries with this scene?" And we discuss those boundaries.
With Jodie in the bathroom scene, I also discuss with her how I'm planning on shooting and how that fits in with her boundaries. "Will you be comfortable if we shoot it from this angle?" You might show an angle you're going to shoot on your iPhone, so that they understand the boundaries, they understand that they're being respected and that you're not doing anything that would compromise them or they'd feel compromised about. We're discussing, "How far do we go? What are the boundaries? Where do you want to push in and where don't you want to push in?" It’s all about respect and understanding the space and having the conversations early.
CW: And that's another question that comes to mind for me - was it around this time when the intimacy coordinator came into play? Or was it always decided that there would be such a person on set?
Catherine: We always have intimacy coordinators in Australia for anything that has nudity or sexuality. They come in and are also part of rehearsals, and we discuss [the scene] with them. I have private discussions [with the actors] and they have discussions with them as well, so that they have their own relationship with the intimacy coordinator. It's important that [the actors] can have a one-on-one relationship with the intimacy coordinator so that they’re not feeling obligated or forced into doing something.
It's been a great thing having intimacy coordinators, and I think it's very good as a director to know that there's somebody in case you've missed something or if an actor for whatever reason mightn't feel a strong enough connection with you to discuss something, that they've got someone else to discuss it with. It just makes it so much better. For this show, I think we're all very much on the same page. I think we just sort of worked off one another very well, but it's still nevertheless important for [the actors] to be able to have a private relationship with an intimacy coordinator and be able to say, "Oh, no, I can't do that. I don't feel comfortable. I don't know how to say it to someone else, but not that." I’ve worked with intimacy coordinators a lot. I find them great. It's fantastic having that.
Any form of nudity or sexual scenes, anything involving anything triggering always have an intimacy coordinator. We always discuss, "How are we going to do it?" We often have a plan, particularly if it's a sexual encounter, and people agree to it. I often show [actors] angles that I'm shooting it at so that they know exactly what's being seen.
I did quite a lot of work on a show called Wentworth, and we had a lot of sexual scenes in that, some very full-on gay sex. Some of the girls found that very challenging. I did a big scene with Nicole (da Silva, Simone), and it was, you know, "We’re going through here," "This is the angle," "We'll do this". We always have a closed set and all that sort of stuff. It's hard for the actors, but, at the same time, they also enjoy cathartic experiences provided they're given a safe space. That's what it is to be an actor. As long as the space is safe, the catharsis of the material, they do actually enjoy. It's hard to believe someone's enjoying sobbing, but in actual fact, it is cathartic provided the space is safe.
CW: It’s a release.
Catherine: Absolutely. There's a release. A big release. That's what they're in it. They're in it to do the hard stuff. They want to go there. They just have to be provided with a safe space in which to do it. The material is authentic and worth it. I think they really enjoyed the work.
CW: Yeah, I think from having spoken to some of them, we know that they have. They remember the experience being fun, despite the subject matter.
Catherine: It was fun. I remember Bridgette who played Young Simone had to do that scene where she watched the trauma, the aftermath of the rape. She just was so great. It was so hard to do because it was very emotional for her and she really went there with the emotion. It was also very tricky technically because it was shot so close and tight. She just felt such a sense of achievement at the end of it all, having gone there emotionally, got to the right place, hit all her marks. It was tough, but it's a thrill when you actually get it right. It's an incredible thrill for everyone. That was what it was like, they went to the very difficult places and they did a great job.
HE: One of the most memorable and charged scenes is the one with adult Simone and Tess walking on the beach. When we spoke with Emily, she mentioned that a lot of the last bit of dialogue that they share was improvised by Nicole and Jodie, and that you encouraged that improvisation. The chemistry between them is palpable. Of course, we had to ask about this because of the kind of magazine we are. Can you talk about the process for approaching and creating that scene?
Catherine: So that scene became a result of rehearsal. We rehearsed that scene, and then sometimes in rehearsal, I'll go, "Well, let's improvise outside the scene. What else could have happened in this scene? If this is the most emotional love scene, what are the things that aren't being expressed? What would this scene be if this is a scene where Simone wants to express her undying love for this character?" Can it possibly go to that area?
So we did some improvisations around the scene, and Emily was there. They were so powerful. The actors were crying. Emily then used those improvisations and wrote them into the scene. That’s why I love doing rehearsals and working it out: "What else could this scene be? What if the scene is this instead of that"? Because Stella Adler used to say that every scene's a love scene, even scenes that are about hate. So digging out all that is very exciting.
I think the pair of them were really about this bond that never really happened. That's at the core of it, that that relationship never happened because of the trauma. That sort of scene expresses the sadness of it in a way, that they never got to be who they were meant to be to one another because of the trauma of what happened. That was our opportunity in the material to actually see what could have been. It was a very important scene to me and that’s why we rehearsed it, and then they did it. Of course they were amazing. I think too, that thing about unrequited love is that it's such a powerful thing in people's lives. Most of us have unrequited loves.
If you've got something like that, it's great to have the writer in the rehearsal room because actors are such great dramatists themselves. Drama is all about relationships and realising things through relationships, making discoveries about yourself and understanding human nature through relationships with other people. There's so many opportunities to explore getting more deeply into the material if you have a proper rehearsal process. The writer gets a chance to deepen the writing as well, you know, because as a writer, almost everyone when you first start writing, the first thing you put down no matter how great you are tends to be generic. Then after that, it's the ability to go back, reform, dig and really try to work out why unconsciously you're going to these places. I think working to make the unconscious conscious and working with other people who are tuning into it is part of that process in rehearsal where you can really make the material sing more, if you get the time to do it. You never get quite as much as you'd like.
HE: Speaking of relationships and especially of queer relationships, we wanted to ask a question about Tess and Vicki's.
One of the reasons the show has resonated so much with so many people is because of the queer stories that it tells. And having three – and Vicki maybe isn't technically a lead – but three queer lead female characters normalised where there's not a discussion about it, it's just how it is, it still feels rare. And Tess and Vicki specifically are so important for a lot of us because there really isn't much, if at all, media of two adult women in a relationship together who have been in that relationship together. From what I’ve seen, if you see adult women together, it's the beginning or the end of their relationship. So seeing them in this established, steady marriage was really special, even when they fight. And it was incredible that they weathered the storm together, you know? And they have a happy ending, and no one dies.
Catherine: The thing about that relationship is, I agree, it was just normalised. There was no big deal about it. Kat Stewart (Vicki) is a fabulous actor. We didn't think we'd get her for what comparatively is quite a small role, but she gave it so much power and the relationship had so much power. It was a complicated relationship because Vicki had got involved with a woman who was really very, very screwed up. So I talked quite a lot with Emily about "How does this relationship work? Even on an intimate level?" You're dealing with someone who has a whole lot of rules around her sexuality because she has had a terrible experience. The thing about having a complex relationship with someone, understanding that it still works, that the level of support and the complicatedness of being with someone who is traumatised… It's quite interesting.
I think you had that situation where Tess really valued the relationship because Vicki had always been there for her. I think Tess understands she’s fucked up, but there's this person who loves her anyway. Not that that's ever stated, but that was very much part of it. You know, "She’s taken me on very much warts and all," and they really rode the storm of the whole situation. Whereas I think there's some people in the audience who'd be wanting Tess and Simone to get back together again. But really, the reality is that [Tess] has been held together by this relationship with Vicki, and that is her true home. They had those children together.
I love the way Kat did it right from the beginning: "I'm the wife," that first time you meet her and she's strong and sexy. She was just amazing for the role in the way she just gave it such credibility. You just didn’t doubt it for a second. They just felt like they were married.
CW: The queerness was the least interesting thing about them. It was the fact there were two people that love each other deeply, that created something together. It was so nice to be able to see that.
Catherine: Everyone was very committed to expressing things about being a woman that you just don't see very much. That point of view, because you just don't, as you say, you just really don't see it enough.
HE: It really made me emotional watching it. I didn't realise until after I had finished the show why. It was that bit of domesticity that I just never see modeled.
Was that relationship dynamic a conversation? Did you talk about that with Kat and Jodie, who they are to each other?
Catherine: Oh, definitely. The thing with Tess is she understands she's the more selfish one and she's more selfish because she understands that she hasn't been able to deal with her trauma and because of this self awareness, you feel more empathy for her. You don't feel she's being selfish for the sake of it. She's selfish because she's aware of it. She just, you know, she can't get on top of it. A lot of the scenes dealt with that where Vicki just couldn't take it anymore. Tess is trying to explain, "I just…"
CW: "I'm stuck."
Catherine: I'm stuck and I can't get out of it.
I think all that really rang true in relationships. But I think that the thing with Tess is that you could think of her as being hysterical and selfish, but the truth of it is that the way Jodie played it is that she's self aware of her trauma.
Words: Zenith & Helena Emmanuel
Interview: Helena Emmanuel & Céline Whitby (with questions submitted by the RTR team)
You can watch One Night on Paramount+ UK & Ireland and Paramount+ Australia now.
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