Homegrown talent
Brooke Satchwell
“There’s been immense healing”
Brooke Satchwell has worked hard to build a sparkling screen career while also healing from stress and trauma. Now, at 45, she’s created the life she truly wants to lead and she says it’s “lovely”.
WORDS by GENEVIEVE GANNON · PHOTOGRAPHY by CORRIE BOND · STYLING by MATTIE CRONAN
Brooke wears Calvin Klein singlet, dress and cardigan, and Alémais necklace.
“I’m really thrilled at the stage that I’m at with my career ... It’s exciting.”
The day The Weekly crew piles into water taxis with Brooke Satchwell for a photo shoot in Sydney’s secluded Lovett Bay, the heavens betray us. It’s high spring, but the skies are grey and dreary. Worse, a sinister cold has infiltrated the team. Brooke is sympathetic and loaded with advice.
“Have you done your liquid echinacea?” she asks. It tastes terrible, she warns. The trick is to mix it with cranberry juice. She also swears by a tea called “throat coat”. She knows to come to set prepared.
“Often, I’ll be like, ‘Dr Quinn medicine woman is in the house! What ails you? How can I help?’”
Two weeks after she joined the cast of Neighbours, at the age of 15, she contracted glandular fever. This was a problem for the writers who were cooking up a romance between her character Anne Wilkinson and Billy Kennedy (Jesse Spencer), and wanted the teens to kiss.
“There were all these discussions about whether we could use a plate of glass so we wouldn’t infect each other,” Brooke laughs. The scene was rewritten. “That’s why it became the sleeping kiss on the cheek,” Brooke says. “You can see my eyes are slightly puffy.”
More stories bubble forth. She has been up since 4.30am but she’s used to greeting the dawn. For 20 years, Brooke has been eating egg and bacon rolls for breakfast at far-flung filming locations, dishing out echinacea and loving every second of it. She has ‘resided’ at some of Australia’s most recognisable addresses, appearing on Packed to the Rafters, SeaChange and of course, Ramsay Street.
She’s pulled double-shifts, filming Wonderland in Sydney before flying to Melbourne for Dirty Laundry Live as comedian Lawrence Mooney’s offsider. A few risks put paid to those who told her that, to be a serious actor, she had to focus on one thing. When she took on the role of Black Comedy’s culturally confused Tiffany, who acts black, she feared her career would be over.