LEAGUEN of their OWN

A STELLAR CAST UNITES TO CREATE AN AUSSIE THRILLER

- Naomi Toy

There was a moment while filming The Clearing that made Miranda Otto, a veteran actress with vast experience, stop and take stock. As she looked around at the cast and crew assembled for the shoot in rural Victoria, she thought, “Wow! Look at our team! We’ve got a female stunt coordinator. We’ve got a female DP [cinematographer] on-set today. We’ve got a female producer, female assistant, my sister, Gracie, directing and then we’ve got a female writer,” she recalls to WHO. “There was a really strong creative team of women involved with this that … really gave me a thrill.”

What also lay before Otto’s eyes was a powerhouse of players brought together to film the first Australian series to launch on streamer Disney+. Otto, 55, as Adrienne Beaufort, the glamorous leader of the cult The Kindred, heads a cast of top local talent, including Claudia Karvan, 51, Kate Mulvany, 46, Teresa Palmer, 37, Guy Pearce, 55, and teen newcomer Julia Savage, 16. The psychological thriller is adapted from J.P. Pomare’s bestseller In the Clearing, which in turn was inspired by the real-life Australian doomsday cult The Family, based in the countryside outside of Melbourne in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.