Besides One Night’s power to encourage dialogue and shine a light on the life of a trauma survivor, two of the things that have resonated greatly with our team are how the beauty and truthfulness of Tess and Vicki's relationship have been portrayed and how there is much more to their story than their queerness. It’s only so often that queer viewers are given the chance to have queer characters who are allowed to be messy and flawed, let alone exist at all. A lot of media featuring queer women in particular would rather centre around their sexualities than their lives, and those kinds of portrayals just aren’t as compelling.
This October, for my first interview with Read The Room, co-editor Helena Emmanuel and I sat down with Kat Stewart to talk all things regarding her character Vicki.
Vicki has been in an established relationship with Tess for almost two decades now. Both with high-level careers in finance, they have built a firm and steady life together, which includes bringing up their teenage children, Lily and Art. Vicki has seen Tess at her lowest, at her most vulnerable, and her most emotional. From the everyday effects of Tess’ assault that took place twenty years ago to Tess finding herself facing these effects head-on when the family go back to Australia, Vicki has been nothing but her wife's biggest supporter, helping Tess traverse not only her trauma, but her sobriety, too.
We wholly immersed ourselves in the gripping world of One Night both on and behind the screen, and we were delighted to get to hear Kat’s point of view on her character. Our conversation covered everything from navigating through a partner’s trauma to the importance of working with an intimacy coordinator and what it was like to be part of such an unparalleled project. We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did.
// 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: So, just broadly, what were your initial reactions to the One Night scripts after you read them for the first time? Was there something that surprised or excited you the most?
Kat Stewart: I actually heard about the show through a friend of mine who was auditioning for another role. He said, “Aw gee, these scenes are really well written.” I had a look at the couple of scenes that he was auditioning with and I said, “Yeah, they're really well written.” They were quite functional scenes, but they were really spare, really economical and just good. You can just tell good writing straight away. I said, “Is there anything for me here, Roy?” and he said, “Well…” and so I made enquiries, because I knew I was too old for the three leads, but I thought maybe Vicki. So they let me put down an audition, and I got to read, I think I got to read the first episode for that. Then I got some scenes. I just knew. I knew that it was a really, really special piece.
I thought, “This is something that's unlike anything else I've read, anything else that I'm aware of that's been made in Australia”. It's not easy, and I want to be involved in projects that are challenging and nuanced. That was my favourite thing, I think, the nuance of it. That so many things can be true at the same time.
HE: Yeah, absolutely. The writing is really great, like you said - very spare and economical, but very powerful, too. And very deliberate.
Kat: Bold! Nothing's wasted, yeah!
Candice Dupire: There’s not just one thing, there are so many things - the way Emily has written such a script that is very nuanced in so many ways. It's not just one element, everything is felt so deeply.
Kat: It's great to see such strong female characters and an exploration of female friendship. It's great to see love expressed in its many iterations. You know, we're so used to seeing just romantic love, and I love that we're seeing a much, much more varied palette. You know, different kinds of love.
HE: Absolutely.
CD: So, speaking of Vicki: in Episode Four, Simone and Vicki confront each other at Helen's front door. It's such a fascinating and captivating exchange, and those characters interacting without a buffer was really interesting to see, because it was really emotionally charged as well. Vicki's fierce in her protection of Tess, but it also seemed like there was a bit of a territorial thing going on for both her and Simone. Can you share a bit more about your interpretation of that scene with us?
Kat: I think everything that you just said is true. [laughs] I think it's so many things. I think there's an element of protection, and that Tess in that moment has said, “I'm not here.” Like she doesn't want to deal with Simone at that moment. So it's maintaining that guard, protecting her. But it's also a kind of: “Come on! Don't bullshit me. I know exactly what's going on here.” I was very excited when I saw that scene. I thought, “Oooh yeah, this is good!” 'Cause you just know when something's going on - you know when someone else has an energy with your partner that is dangerous to you. You know. And Vicki is on the ball. [laughs] Yep!
HE: Even the way you get up to walk to the door to talk to her, you're like, “Oh, I am going! I have a mission.”
Kat: I'd been wanting to do it! [laughs]
HE: Something that's so special about the show is that there are a lot of intimate scenes in general. For Vicki and Tess, those are mostly emotionally intimate scenes. We read that Five Bedrooms was your first experience with an intimacy coordinator and when we talked with director Lisa Matthews she spoke about the use of one on One Night. She specifically mentioned, among other things, the last scene with both Vicki and Tess where they’re kissing on the balcony. It's brief, but really meaningful. What is it like having the presence of an intimacy coordinator on set, and how has that changed your approach to those kinds of scenes, if at all? What did that look like for that specific scene on the balcony?
Kat: I think intimacy coordinators are a wonderful development. It's so different to how it was in the relative Wild Wild West of when I started acting. You know, it was very much, “Get through it as fast as you can so that it's over.” Because it was quite, well by definition, it was exposing. And at the time it was normal and part of the job, and I'm very lucky in that I didn't have any horror. It's all relative though, isn't it?
I think it was just different then. You just inherited what you inherited and you made the best of it. I mean, I've always avoided nudity like the plague as much as I can. Because for me, when I see an actor nude for example, it takes me out of the story. I start thinking, “Oh wow, I wonder if they ate today. Are they working out? Gee, that must have been hard for them.” I'm with the actor and I'm not with the story. And look, no judgement, it's different for everyone. I always just kind of got through that stuff, especially if it involved nudity or was revealing. So I think the introduction of intimacy coordinators is wonderful.
I mean I'm fine now, you know, I've been around. I'm going to be okay. I think it's really great for the actors coming through, the new ones. The ones that are more likely to not know what's what or not be able to look after themselves and not quite understand the camera angles or whether they're covered or not, that sort of stuff. So I think it's fantastic that that is in place. It's wonderful. Even if it doesn't necessarily affect the action that's going to happen on the day, it just means there's a nice mechanism for you and the other actor to have a conversation: “Are you comfortable with this? About how many beats do you think this should go for?” You know, it's a negotiation, and that it takes all of the weirdness out of it so you're not thinking, “Oh my god, this is how everyone thinks I have sex.” It cuts all of that out of it, and you're just plotting it out.
For me, I think I'm probably digressing, but a couple of years ago during lockdown I saw that show Normal People. Did you see that?
(We nod enthusiastically.)
The sex scenes in that were astonishing. I found out that it was with an intimacy coordinator who's kind of the goddess of intimacy coordinators [Ita O'Brien]. Basically every single gesture, they approached like a line of dialogue. So it's not just, “We'll do this and then we'll roll around and then we'll get out of shot.” It's, “Okay, this means this.” [gestures] “This means ‘I trust you,’” whatever it is. It's marking each moment so that nothing's wasted and it's part of the story. So I think that's just an absolute game changer and I love that they're there.
For the moment that you just mentioned, by then I think it was one of the last things we shot, and Jodie and I – Jodie's just a dream so we got along really well, so it wasn't tricky. The intimacy coordinator was there. She's great. We chatted and had a few laughs and we just talked about how it's just a stroke in a painting, and you want to show that they're okay and they're connected. So it kind of was quite organic, really.
Sometimes there's a power imbalance, someone's new, someone's more... It's just, ugh. It's a very strange job. I've been doing it for so long. Let me tell you, I think I've kissed more people at work than I have in real life! After a while it just becomes like, “Okay.” You know, you do it, it's part of the job. When you think about it, it's exposing, especially when you're starting out. So I just love that this change has happened.
HE: Yeah, absolutely. The fact that it's just choreographed, almost.
Kat: The conversations, yeah! ‘Cause if it involves taking clothes off or something more involved, absolutely. Just having a conversation, I think it's great.
HE: Yeah, Lisa also talked about one of the flashback scenes where Trevor assaults Simone in the hallway. And she was mentioning how much of a blessing having the intimacy coordinator for that kind of scene was. I can only imagine.
Kat: Yeah, that beautiful younger cast, you just wanna protect them. You just wanna make sure… Because it's harrowing, harrowing material. Because what they were doing was dark. You know, you've got to take care of everybody.
HE: Speaking of the dark material, while Vicki wasn't experiencing that specific trauma, Vicki was still adjacent to it and experiencing it by proxy. How do you approach being in a show that deals with such heavy content? How do you separate honouring the character and the script from protecting yourself?
Kat: I didn't have to go there myself. As you mention, I was kind of adjacent to it. But your body doesn't know it's pretending when you're going there. I have done work where I've had to go into pain or sadness, and that is quite tiring. You can find that when you get home you've got a bit of a throbbing headache and you just kind of have to take it easy. Because your body is going, “Oh, I’m so upset”. But for this, I was very much adjacent to it as you say, and I've gotta say, it was really nice and refreshing for me because historically, I've played a lot of people who are grappling with something or kind of off-kilter. It's very rare for me to play someone who's really got their shit together. [laughs] Vicki really had her shit together, and that was kind of a nice experience, so it wasn't taxing in that sense.
HE: So apart from the voicing of these harrowing experiences and the female friendships, one of the reasons why the show has resonated so deeply with a lot of people is the LGBTQ+ stories that it tells. Because it's really easy to relate to Vicki, Tess, or Simone's relationships to their own queerness, however they identify themselves. And this maybe is in part to the certain specific trauma that's shared just from growing up queer in society - everyone just kind of has it. And we think that deepens the audience's connection to the show, but also deepens Vicki and Tess' connection to and understanding of each other.
We wanted to ask about their marriage specifically. It's important to see Tess and Vicki navigating that pain together and seeing them go through those ups and downs, but their normalised domesticity is just as important, maybe sometimes more important. The intimacy and love they have for each other is clearly something that's been practised and tended to and something that they've put a lot of care into. The representation of adult women in an established, steady relationship where no one dies at the end is really profound.
Kat: Yeah! No one's punished, no one dies.
HE: Is that something you're aware of when you're filming something like this? Is that significance of the relationship itself, and of the more tender side of the relationship specifically, something you're conscious of?
Kat: It's something I loved about the script. It was there on the page, and it's something I really wanted to explore and lean into. I love that Vicki knows who she is and she carries that really lightly. Tess has so much going on and has so much pain that she's buried and is processing. But Vicki is in a position to be strong, and even though she's under incredible pressure - all that traditional stuff, that shit's been dealt with a long time ago. I just found her to be an incredibly positive and assured, kind, steady presence. I thought that's my job in this script, is to provide the harbour. The domesticity and the safety. I loved what Vicki represented in that palette. I love that she's a positive figure, so that's what I fell in love with about her, too. Really that's all credit to Emily (Ballou). She's such a special talent.
HE: Yeah she seems to be. We had a conversation with her, and she's pretty amazing.
Kat: So cool! She's the coolest! Fiona Seres actually wrote that scene we just spoke about earlier, at the doorway. She wrote that scene. Fiona Seres is an amazing writer, too, and she was script editing and wrote that episode. I worked with her on a show called Tangle over ten years ago now. She's a real amazing writer, too. But this is Emily's baby, and she's got a really fresh and strong point of view. That's what makes this special I think. I mean, god, everyone did an amazing job. But the bones there, it's nothing without that script.
HE: It's really incredible. That steadiness and patience that Vicki has is really apparent, and I think it's something that I didn't realise was so important for me to see until after I'd finished it. I was like, “Oh I've never actually seen that, two women with kids and they're just, you know, being together.'”
Something that makes the tone of this show unique and the way that it is, is that the two main relationships that we see are Tess and Simone and Tess and Vicki. Both of them in a sense are romantic relationships, though Simone goes in and out of that. The show is so specifically from a female perspective. Do you think that tone would have shifted or that the story would’ve been told in a different way if those relationships weren't centred, or if Tess was married to or involved with a man?
Kat: Oh, yes. Yes yes yes. I think if Tess was married to a man, they would not be having those conversations. I just don't think there would be that level- I mean no disrespect to men at large, but I just think that women have a kind of insight and a shared experience and a sensitivity to what it is to be a woman, and also an understanding of how dangerous it can be to be a woman. As much as people in other kinds of packages can empathise with that, until you know what it is to be frightened or threatened or to be vulnerable, you can't understand it in the same way.
Also I think the great thing about Vicki and Tess is that they've been together for a long time. I love - it's so economical - that moment when you see Tess in the shower for the first time, and you see all the markings on her body. That some of them are so clearly done in a jagged, almost sort of harmful way. They're not all beautiful, gorgeous, decorative... There's a lot of pain on her body. You can see the history. I've thought a lot about who was the Tess that Vicki met? How did they get to this really good place where they're at? They're under intense pressure from the beginning of the show, but they've got to a really good place. They've worked hard. They've been through a lot together. She was able to see something in Tess that might not have been evident to everybody else. So yeah, I think the story would have been very different if Tess was with a man.
HE: Yeah, like with Tess’ tattoos. How long did it take before Vicki knew about them, before she could see them?
Kat: Yeah!
HE: Well that's all we have. Thank you so much again for chatting with us.
Kat: A pleasure. Honestly it's so lovely to talk to you, because I can tell from our conversation that you've really digested the show in a really detailed, deep way and that just makes me happy. Because you sign up to these things and you hope they will do what you hope they'll do, and it just makes me really happy. You know, I'm only a small part of it, but obviously it's provoking stimulating conversations that are really great. So thank you for supporting the show. It’s great.
As we concluded the interview, I felt the need to put some music on as a way to process and take everything in. Having the opportunity to be a part of this important conversation was exciting for me, and getting the chance to learn more about the depth of Kat’s character, her approach to work, and what went into creating such an intimate and beautiful series was something I felt very lucky and blessed to be a part of.
Words: Candice Dupire
Interview: Candice Dupire & Helena Emmanuel (with questions submitted by the RTR team)
You can watch One Night on Paramount+ UK & Ireland and Paramount+ Australia now.
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