Comedy icon Marg Downey has delivered her verdict on a potential Kath & Kim reunion, while also sharing an update on Magda Szubanski’s health. The Fast Forward legend opened up about whether the beloved sitcom would ever return to screens.
Marg Downey’s Return to TV in Ground Up
Like a veteran player being forced to strap up and play on through a career-threatening injury, Australian comedian and actor Marg Downey thought she might be subbed out before the first siren of new AFL comedy Ground Up. A painful bout of plantar fasciitis, exacerbated by a nasty reaction to a steroid injection, left the stalwart of Aussie comedy shows hobbling for almost a year.
“I rang [director and producer] Wayne Hope and said, ‘Wayne, I can barely walk. I know you want me to play a multi-millionaire businesswoman, but I’m in such pain. If I do this role, I’m going to have to wear runners,’” Downey tells Stellar. Fortunately, Hope didn’t miss a beat. “He said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll work around it.’ So the costume department bought me these ridiculously expensive sneakers.”
Behind the Scenes of the Sam Pang-Helmed Sitcom
Beyond the fancy but sensible footwear, the Sam Pang-helmed sitcom about the launch of a Tasmanian AFL side pulled out all the stops to keep Downey aboard. As she settled into her role as club president Catherine La Fontaine, she recalls, “They put me at desks and ensured I didn’t have to walk very far. They were always rushing out chairs for me to sit on between takes. It was so sweet, and I’m so glad it worked out because we had such fun.”
A fan from afar of Pang’s work, Downey’s only prior interaction with the comedian and TV host was when he was hosting the Logies and she was a nominee for best supporting actress for her turn as the conniving Evelyn Walters in the acclaimed 2021-2025 drama The Newsreader. The role of Evelyn is Downey’s favourite across her 40-year screen career, which includes comic roles that made her a household name in hit sketch shows such as The D Generation and Fast Forward, and the groundbreaking Kath & Kim sitcom and its 2012 film spin-off.
A Late-Career Pivot to Drama
After deciding to upskill her work to include dramatic acting in 2012, Downey, 65, says she’s been relishing her surprise late-career pivot. “I didn’t know whether I’d be any good at drama. It was at a midpoint in my life, where there weren’t many roles coming in, that I took an acting masterclass,” she says. “I was thrown in the deep end. You had to perform a dramatic scene in front of an audience of your peers. It was frightening; the director would tear you to shreds and say, ‘No. Do it again. You’ve got to be angry.’ So I did – I just flipped a chair over. And I thought, I really enjoyed that.”
That breakthrough paved the way for her role in Jane Campion’s 2017 miniseries Top Of The Lake: China Girl. “I was Nicole Kidman’s love interest in that,” Downey says with mild bemusement. “It felt like unusual casting, so I asked Jane what made her choose me. She said they were intentionally casting people traditionally associated with comedy. She felt they brought a little bit of magic, or a glint in the eye that is slightly left-of-centre.”
Lifelong Friendships and Comedy Beginnings
Whether it’s been for laughs or gasps, performance has long been Downey’s happy place. One of eight children, she and her siblings would partner up with neighbourhood kids to create a theatre company. Later, at school in Melbourne’s inner suburbs, she formed lifelong friendships with Jane Turner, Magda Szubanski and Gina Riley, which have led to some of Australia’s best-loved comedy.
Recalling when she met Turner in the school playground, she says: “She was from New South Wales, and arrived in Grade 6. I’d been there since Prep. As soon as she came, I just thought, I want to be this girl’s friend. She was just so funny. She had that lovely, deep, husky voice and a very short hairdo – a bit like Mia Farrow. Definitely more Mia Farrow than Kath.” Szubanski was already a long-time friend from the primary school tennis circuit, and Downey then met Riley when she went to see Turner in a production by the St Martins youth theatre company.
In adulthood, the foursome found themselves together on the pioneering sketch comedy series Fast Forward, which premiered on the Seven Network in 1989. “You don’t see as much sketch comedy now, which is a shame, particularly in these times [and] at this particular juncture in politics,” Downey says. “Fast Forward would be having an absolute field day with politicians like Donald Trump and Pauline [Hanson]. All the politicians, really. I think we’ve lost the ability to see the absurdity in not only politics but just in life generally. That’s where fantastic shows like Kitty Flanagan’s Fisk come into their own because they see the absurdity in life and laugh at themselves.”
On Set Laughter and Challenges
There was no shortage of laughter on the Fast Forward set, says Downey, as she recalls Turner’s daggy dancing and Szubanski as a thigh-slapping musician. “You’d have to do take after take, particularly with Magda because her giggle is so contagious,” she tells Stellar. “There was one notorious episode where we couldn’t look at each other [without cracking up], so we ended up having to film facing in opposite directions. The director said, ‘All right, enough is enough’ – and even that was enough to make us laugh again.” With so many of Downey’s characters requiring a deadpan delivery, she ended up coming in to record early in the morning, before the other cast arrived on set and started making her laugh.
Update on Magda Szubanski’s Health
Fifty years later, the women remain as tight-knit as ever. Downey talks to Szubanski on the phone every week, and shares that the beloved comedian is doing really well now that she’s in remission after completing chemotherapy for stage four mantle cell lymphoma. “It’s still challenging,” Downey adds of her friend’s health battle. “We’re all still in constant contact. I had a long conversation with Gina yesterday. And Jane lives in Paris now. Her son Nick Denton is a very good actor and he lives in London so she travels there to see him. Whenever she’s back, we get together – Jane, Gina and I – for adult sleepovers. We’ll share the load and someone will have it at their house one time, then another the next. We chat for hours and then stay the night, because it’s easier.”
Kath & Kim Reunion Doubtful
As for whether a Kath & Kim reunion could ever be on the cards, Downey is doubtful. “I think those days are over,” she says with a shrug, adding that she’s still recognised for her role as Marion, the sombre celebrant and counsellor on the show. “We love each other’s company – and we talk about it – but don’t think it will ever eventuate.”
Instead, Downey is focused on tackling new projects such as Ground Up and upcoming dark comedy film Rex, starring Kat Stewart. Most exciting of all, though, is her very personal role – that of grandmother to six-month-old Margot. “I just love being a grandmother,” Downey says. “They now challenge you to read 1000 books to [babies] in the first year, or something like that. I love doing character voices, so I have been doing that. And she seems sort of interested.”
Ground Up premieres at 8.30pm tonight on ABC TV and iview.
