Netflix‘s latest Australian murder mystery, The Survivors, is based on Jane Harper‘s 2020 novel of the same name. Thom Green, who plays Sean, and Shannon Berry, who plays Bronte, sat down with Chattr and explained what it was like turning a best-seller into a mainstream TV show.
Like any bestseller, The Survivors book had its share of passionate fans — and Thom was actually one of them before he was cast as Sean.
“I read the book and I loved it. I absolutely, absolutely adored it,” he told Chattr. “I had devoured the book and put a lot of people onto it. So being a part of this story was a huge draw card for me.”
He added that translating the character he’d envisioned while reading into a performance on screen was a “really interesting” experience.
“When I got the script, I was like, ‘Oh shit, I’m going to be Sean’. I had a picture of Sean [in my head, and] it wasn’t me. So that’s always very jarring.”
Meanwhile, Shannon hadn’t read the book until she was cast in the part of Bronte, so she was able to look at her role with a fresh perspective.
“As soon as I booked [the role], I went out and I bought it and I read it on holiday. I read it on the beach,” she said.
“Reading it, there were a lot of moments where I went, ‘That’s me!'” She added. “I think it’s natural to imagine how it’s going to look, or picture yourself in it.”
“[But], you have to put it away and focus on the script and go, ‘Great, that’s in the back of my mind. That’s an amazing piece of reference.”
How Thom Green and Shannon Berry decompressed after an emotional day of filming
The Survivors is set in a beach town called Evelyn Bay, where two people drowned and a young girl went missing. Fifteen years after the event, Keiran Elliot returns to the town and the body of another young woman is found.
The gripping series follows the fallout from the original deaths, as well as the investigation surrounding the latest.
Thom and Shannon told Chattr that they had an intimacy coordinator on set to help them detach from the heavy emotional load of playing their characters.
“The intimacy coordinator we had on set used to have these whole-body exercises to kind of shake it all out,” Thom explained.
Shannon added that she was her own “process” to step away from her character’s emotions after filming her scenes.
“Sometimes it’s hard not to take it home with you, especially when you have to do a lot of physical stuff as well a lot of emotional stuff,” Shannon explained.
“As an actor, when you finish the day, you have things that you do where you get out of it. Getting my makeup taken off is very therapeutic to me. And once that’s gone, I have a cup of tea, and I’m like, Okay, that’s great. I can leave that for today, and now I can step back into myself,” she said.
Thom said that he’d use light-hearted TV shows to decompress from the day.
“For me, I would go sit in my hotel room and just stare at the wall for a long time, before I take a shower. Afterwards, maybe a beer, and then a sitcom, and then bed.”
Stream The Survivors on Netflix from June 6.
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