From boom to bloom

After years of playing a starship trooper in a sci-fi show, Frankie Adams has found time to stop and smell the roses.

- RUSSELL BAILLIE

After five seasons cooped up in a spaceship, Frankie Adams says it was nice A to get out in the garden.

The New Zealand-Samoan actor and Shortland Street graduate stars in The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, an adaptation of Queensland author Holly Ringland's novel about flora, fires and family secrets set mostly on a botanical farm in rural Oz. The show was shot mainly in northern New South Wales with an excursion to the Northern Territory.

The 29-year-old plays Candy Blue, one of the waifs and strays who have become an all-female staff and surrogate family on a flower farm called Thornfield, which is presided over by the formidable June Hart, played by Sigourney Weaver. The story begins with events leading to June's granddaughter Alice coming to live at the farm where Candy becomes a doting aunt.

It's Adams' second career excursion to Australia after a short stint on prison drama Went worth and her second big series for Amazon Prime after the streamer took on and kept The Expanse, the space battle epic in orbit for six seasons. For five of those, Adams played Bobbie Draper, a gunnery sergeant in the Martian Marine Corps and one of the toughest women in a spacesuit since...well, maybe Weaver's Ellen Ripley in the Alien movies.

Adams laughs that she had plenty of prods to bring up their mutual intergalactic frequent-flier miles with the veteran whose sci-fi duties have also included the two Avatar movies.