LEAH PURCELL -- THE WOMAN BEHIND, AND IN FRONT OF, THE CAMERA ON THE LEGEND OF MOLLY JOHNSON, A.K.A. THE DROVER'S WIFE
Back in 2022, when I interviewed Leah
Purcell, the writer, director and star of the excellent new Australian Western,
The Legend of Molly Johnson, I’d intended to run the article
immediately. But the film had not yet been released in the U.S., and so I
decided to wait until it was. I don’t know exactly when it was finally released
here – I think it’s been a while – but it’s available now, streaming on Hulu,
Plex, Prime, Roku, and Tubi, and I strongly recommend that you pick one, and
watch it!
Some of the then-upcoming projects which we discussed are still in the works. Leah Purcell has also recently starred in the Amazon Prime series The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, and stars as a police detective in the Australian BINGE network’s series High Country, which is not yet available in the United States.
In the U.S., the film is called The Legend of Molly Johnson, but in Australia, that’s the subtitle; the main title is The Drover’s Wife. In fact, it would be something like blasphemy Down Under to remove the original title from Henry Lawson’s story. ( HERE is a link to Lawson’s original story.) Purcell, explains, “You could compare him to your Mark Twain: he's considered one of the greatest storytellers of our country. He was looking at the colonial period when he was writing. Henry would go on walkabouts as they say in Australia, and meet up with people and sit and observe. But he also based The Drover's Wife loosely on his mother's experience, and his mother was a newspaper proprietor. She actually published his first poetry, and she was a writer herself.”
Lawson’s story takes place on a
single night, with a woman and her four children alone in their farmhouse in
the bush, waiting for her drover – a man who drives livestock – to return. A snake gets into the house, into a hollow
woodpile, and the wife and her dog spend the night awake, protecting the family
from the snake. Forty years ago, another
Australian classic, Banjo Paterson’s poem The Man from Snowy River,
became a tremendously successful film, and the filmmakers took great care to
elaborate, but not stray from, the original, beloved story. Purcell has taken a very different route,
using the original story as what she calls, “A Trojan Horse,” as a springboard
to a much more complex tale, with a backstory that is slowly revealed as the
main story moves ahead. It is a
beautiful but unflinching film, brimming with suspense, hate, brutality,
violence, and hope.
Purcell, who played Queenie, Danny
Huston’s girlfriend, in The Proposition, and has an extensive resumé as
a television writer, director, and actor, already had created a successful
stage version of Drover’s Wife before she filmed it. You’ll learn in the interview why it’s a
profoundly personal story to her.
HENRY PARKE: How long have you
known Henry Lawson's story, The Drover's Wife?
LEAH PURCELL: When I was a five-year-old,
my mother would read that story to me. She had his little book of short
stories, first published in 1892. And that was the first time I used my
imagination, where I put myself and my mum in that story, because my story was
very similar. My mother's Aboriginal, and my dad is white, but he was not in my
upbringing. So it was just me and her. We lived on the outskirts of a small
country town. We had a wood heap; she could swing an axe. She taught me to
split logs to chips, and she taught me to stack wood. She would say,
"Don't stack it hollow, or the snakes will get in under." So words in
my life were sort of echoing the story. My mom passed away, and when she did
pass, that book was the one thing I took. I carried that story with me for 42
years.
I was a director in a writer's
workshop, but I got very frustrated with these writers because they just kept
churning out the same 12 pages. So then I thought, maybe it's time for me to
write. I wrote the play in 2014, and we world premiered it at the Belvoir
Street Theater in Sydney, one of our prestigious theater houses, (and) we sold
out. I'm a bit crazy, Henry. I'd get the feedback from the audience, (then) go
home at night and work on the film script. I always try to leave my work
open-ended, so I leave them wanting more. And they did want more, and I said,
well, I can do that in the film. Once I got the first draft up, and we got into
pre-production, I was then finishing off the novel. We got a book deal from
Penguin, Random House. And that was amazing because what I could do with those
chapters on the characters was to give their chapters to my actors. So it was
an enriching project and a process for our film; they came with a strong
understanding of those characters. And it just all built upon one another and
it made for a rich, rich film, I think.
HENRY PARKE: How ingrained is The
Drover's Wife in Australian folklore?
LEAH PURCELL: Henry Lawson is considered
one of the greatest storytellers of our country.
And in the film, The Dawn,
that Louisa (played by Jessica De Gouw) writes for, is a homage to Henry's mom:
her name’s Louisa Klintoff, after Louisa Lawson. The Dawn was her paper
and she was writing about battered wives, temperance. She was before the Suffragette
movement; she really pushed it in Australia when it came. She was a woman
before her time. So the story The Drover's Wife is a classic. And when I
had my producing hat on, I knew that it could be the Trojan horse to bring his
loyal fans, where they might have thought they were getting a literal
interpretation, but were pleasantly surprised – a majority of them – with the
indigenous flavor that I put through.
Through my work, I want my audience
to sit, think and have conversation. And I've witnessed that; I've gone to the
film, sat at the back and watched the audience sit there until the credits
roll. I'm listening to the conversation, and the ushers are telling us to get
out because the next session is starting. So I've done my job. And as an
indigenous person, as a storyteller, a truthteller on my people's plight, I
wanted to open those conversations up, and hope people can take an interest, an
understanding from an indigenous perspective, and maybe have their own interest
to research more, to find their own understanding on those issues.
HENRY PARKE: In Lawson’s story, you
learn her children’s names, even that her dog is called Alligator, but the
drover’s wife’s name is never said. But you named her.
LEAH PURCELL: Well, she's a woman and she needs a name. The funny thing is when I sat down to actually write the play, I grabbed the book and put it beside me. And I said, I'm not gonna reread it. I'm gonna remember what my mother told me. And once I'd done the first draft, I gave it to my partner in life and in our production company. I said, you read this and tell us if we're onto something. And while he read that, I went back and read the book. And the first thing I said was, he doesn't give her a name! What's going on? It was important that I gave her her identity. I understood in those times, for protection, it was important for a woman to be married, to have her husband's name, and to be able to mention it, because of the danger of being on a property on her own while her husband is away; it gave you some status. So I understand that, but I wanted to play on that. And Molly does that: whenever she introduces herself at the beginning, “I'm Mrs. Joe Johnson.” He's the boss. He'll be home soon. That's her way of protecting herself. But then when she finally finds the friendship, she clearly gives her name, and that's such a big thing because she's owning her identity in that moment. And then, without giving too much away, that opens up even further with the indigenous man, what he's there for. The name Johnson actually came from my great-grandfather, who was non-indigenous and who loved his black wife and his Aboriginal children. My grandmother was part of the stolen generations. (Note: from the 1910s to the 1970s, in a policy that echoes earlier ones in the U.S. and Canada, as many as 300,000 Aboriginal and mixed-race children were forcibly taken from their families by the Australian government, to be raised as white.) She was stolen, and he tried to save her and her sister and brother; he managed to save his son, but not the two girls. And that's where Johnson came from: paying homage to the men in the family who stuck by their Aboriginal women.
HENRY PARKE: Was it very difficult
for you to move the story from the stage to the screen?
LEAH PURCELL: No. I loved the
challenge, and I wanted each experience to be different. So I really thought
about those processes. I can't wait to do the play again, because if you read
the book and you’ve seen Molly on the screen, now come and meet her in
person on the stage. With the novel, you get more of a spiritual and an
internal thought process about what happens to her. And in the film you get the
raw, in-your-face: here it is. I've had a lot of people say that they've read
the novel, and they cried. “But when we
got into the film, we wanted to get angry. We wanted to get even.” The women
were empowered. So no, I really enjoyed the process of finding the difference.
HENRY PARKE: You have extensive
experience directing television, writing episodic TV, and I'm sure that was
wonderful preparation for you. But why did you decide to do your own stunt
fighting?
LEAH PURCELL: Because I I'm a very
physical actor. I love my sports. I come from a boxing family. My brothers and
nephews were all Australian champions. My non-indigenous father was a boxing
trainer; that was how we could get close to him, by going boxing training. And,
I just wanted to show off my skill. It was an opportunity. Because my dad said
to me, if you were a boy, you'd be an Australian champ. I was 49 when I
ventured out on this, and I said, I'm gonna give it my best shot, and do my
fight stuff. I had a ball! All the producers were on-set. When Molly takes the
fall, I did that 12 times, and they're going, “Stop! Stop!” And I'm going, “But
I'm having so much fun doing it!” Even the stunt coordinator, he said, “You're
a man.” And I said, “Yeah, I know.” I said, “When I grow up, I'm gonna become a
stunty in my seventies.”
HENRY PARKE: Great. I do know
stuntman who are in their seventies and they're stunting for actors in their
eighties. I was wondering what Western filmmakers, Australian, or American, or
both have influenced you?
LEAH PURCELL: The biggest one for
me is Clint Eastwood. My mum was a big fan, so I watched a lot of his movies. Growing
up in a small country town, you don't have a lot of choice in what you watch.
So we grew up on westerns; a few spaghetti westerns found their way out, The
Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. There were other movies; Unforgiven,
Clint Eastwood. Hondo, with John Wayne. I got a bit scared because, oh
my gosh, some of my lines (in Molly Johnson) are in these films. I hope
people haven't thought I ripped it off; I want it to be an homage to them. Shane
was another film that we looked at, Deadwood of course, and in
Australia, The Proposition. John
Hillcoat was the director, and I acted in that one as well. I played Queenie,
Danny Houston's girlfriend. And that was shot in my great-grandmother's
traditional land of Winton. So that meant a lot. And Mudbound was the
other one, just looking at the female character, Carey Mulligan, as the protagonist
in that. And I threw in 12 Years a Slave. Just for the sort of character,
that he was wrongfully arrested, and trying to get home. So, they were the main
ones that I looked at. And the one with Leonardo de Caprio, The Revenant.
That was another one that I was looking at, the shots of the action, the low
angles. And so for when Molly has that fall, when Leo was fighting the bear --
we really studied it. We've got a scene where a horseman is coming down the
hill at pace; that’s a little homage for the fans of Banjo Paterson and The
Man from Snowy River. They were the main ones.
HENRY PARKE: What is your next
project? Are you tackling another Western?
LEAH PURCELL: No, I've been advised to try something different. I'm acting in a film at the moment. So on my downtime, I sit and I write. I've finished a treatment that I think will be my second film, but I've gone totally the other way. It's PG, it's family. I'm really excited about it. There's an indigenous component in it, which is loosely based on my family's history again, as a foundation. It's a bit of animation in there as well. And you know who I am as a writer, so there's this subtle subtext of an issue; of a few issues; I'm excited about that. But also I've just finished the bible for the The Drover's Wife limited premium, TV series; about to go shopping it. It starts in 2020, and the little girl in the film, Delphi, it's her great, great, great, great granddaughter in 2020, and an incident happens and she's got to go back to the high country. She's been estranged from Australia and her family. She's been living in America as a defamation lawyer. She comes back home and her work sends her back to the high country. And then her history starts running back to her. She finds out that she's connected to Molly Johnson, and you find out what happened to the children. So that's exciting to do. And we've been offered an opera version or a musical version, like Porgy and Bess. The composer has been chasing me for nearly a year now, and we finally sat down and had the conversation, and contracts have been drawn up. It's exciting. I think for me, the TV series will wrap it up and I'll put Molly to bed. And then of course, hopefully I'd like to do the play again at some stage, because we only did a short season in Australia, we only did one city. So I'd like to do a tour. I'm just on this trajectory of film and television at the moment, so I might have to give over the role of Molly to another person to get it back out there. But I love that role and I want to play homage to it again. And I know that my fans in Australia do want to see me in that role on the stage again, so there's plenty of stokes in the fire to keep me busy for a good while.
If you’re in Southern California,
and would like to see Leah Purcell on the big screen, On Sunday, June 1st,
The Proposition is an opening night film for the American Cinematheque’s
4th annual Bleak Week, at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica.
Director John Hillcoat and actor Robert Morgan will be there for an in-person
Q&A, and and Ray Winstone, Danny Huston, Guy Pearce and Emily Watson will
take part virtually. Here’s the link: https://www.americancinematheque.com/now-showing/the-proposition-6-1-25/
REMEMBERING JOE DON BAKER
He did a fair number of Western television
episodes, playing a wide range of white hats and black hats. On one of his Gunsmoke shows he blames
Doc for letting his wife die in childbirth, for instead attending a wounded
outlaw. On The Big Valley he played a college-educated Modoc who
ascribes all of his problems to white racism. He also appeared on Bonanza,
Iron Horse, High Chaparral, and on 3 episodes of Lancer, one of
which was the model for the episode-within-the-movie of Quentin Tarantino’s Once
Upon a Time in Hollywood, with DeCaprio reprising Baker’s role.
To me, Joe Don Baker’s most
important film was 1977’s car-crash crime-thriller, Speedtrap, because
it was my first film credit -- I co-wrote it with Fred Mintz during my last
year of college, and we were credited with the original story. I was on the set
in Phoenix for the last few weeks of filming, and Joe Don was particularly
welcoming, friendly, and easy-going. Back then, every film production had its
official t-shirt, and the silent way to show off your resume’ , was to wear a
different movie’s crew t-shirt every day for as long as you could. Our shirt
was yellow, with blue type, and said, “FIRST ARTISTS, SPEEDTRAP” on the front,
and “SCREW THE DIALOG, LET’S WRECK SOMETHING!” on the back. They destroyed 136
cars making the film. Joe Don was so kind, he thought my feelings would be hurt
by the slogan, and apologized for the shirt, assuring me that they really did
care about the dialog. He seemed relieved when I was wearing my, “SCREW THE
DIALOG” shirt on-set the next morning.
I said, “Joe Don, I don’t know how
to drive.”
“You don’t know how to drive? No
wonder you write these fucking movies!”
A few years ago, my Christmas cards
started coming back as undeliverable. The phone number I had was disconnected. I’d
been interviewed for a documentary, and the guys making it wanted to interview
Joe Don. I tried to put them together, and failed. I checked IMDBpro, to see if
he had management that I could go through. His manager had four clients listed.
Besides Joe Don, they were John Saxon, Stuart Margolin, and Dick Gautier. All
dead but Joe Don, and now he is as well. I was, not surprisingly, in the mood
to watch a Joe Don Baker movie, so I checked my streaming services, to see what
was available, and to my amazement I saw that Speedtrap is streaming on Tubi.
Here’s the link!
https://tubitv.com/movies/100028258/speedtrap
MY RECENT WRITINGS
Please check out my newest articles. The May/June True West is our All American Primeval issue, and I have four articles in it! Here are links to two of them. The first is about the Indigenous Consultant who made sure the portrayals were correct ...
https://truewestmagazine.com/article/an-indigenous-consultant-ensures-accuracy/
...and the second is an interview with the actors who play the most interesting characters in the story, Jim Bridger and Brigham Young.
https://truewestmagazine.com/article/showdown-bridger-vs-brigham/
My newest article for the INSP Blog is What Makes a Great Western Movie? Unpacking the West, where in I reverse-engineer some classic Western films to see what traits they share.
https://www.insp.com/blog/what-makes-a-great-western-movie/
On the first Thursday of every month I'm a guest on Bobbi Jean and Jim Bell's podcast, Rendezvous With a Writer. I give an update on what's new in Western film & TV, and stick around as they interview a guest author. Their guest this time was Anne Hillerman, who has continued her father Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn, Chee and Manuelito novels, and has just published her 10th, Shadow of the Solstice, which is excellent! Give it a listen, won't you?
Listen HERE.
or watch HERE.
AND THAT'S A WRAP!
I've got a bunch of up-dating to do on this site, but I need to get this posted NOW, so I'll be polishing the site up in the coming days. Tomorrow is Memorial Day, so don't forget to take time out to think about the millions of brave American men and women who have given their lives in war to keep us free!
Happy Trails,
Henry
All Original Content Copyright May 2025 by Parke -- All Rights Reserved
