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On Sunday night, Deborah Mailman will become the first person of First Nations descent to be inducted into the Logie Awards Hall of Fame, as well as only the sixth woman.
“I had a moment of almost bursting into tears,” she says. “I couldn’t quite understand it all, to be honest. It took some time for it to land because I was like, ‘Are you sure?’ I had to re-read the email and go, ‘Hang on, what?’ And then when I started thinking [about it], I got really quite emotional about it.”
The award, which began in 1984, recognises “outstanding and continued contribution and enrichment to Australian television culture by an individual, a group of individuals, or a program”. Mailman will be one of three inductees on the night, with the other two revealed during the ceremony.
For Mailman – whose breakthrough came in the 1998 film Radiance, followed by roles in the TV series The Secret Life of Us, Redfern Now, Cleverman, Offspring and Total Control, as well as the films Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Sapphires and Bran Nue Dae – the fact she is the first Indigenous person to receive the honour is a source of enormous pride but also conflicted emotion.
“This is not being disrespectful … but it’s a long time coming,” she says. “And I don’t mean that for just for me, but in terms of us as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in this country, and in this industry, because I’m a beneficiary of the many people who have gone before me and who’ve worked their asses off for someone like me to be a beneficiary and to have these opportunities, so I acknowledge that I’m only here because of the hard work that’s gone before.”
The fact that she is only one of six women to receive the honour – joining Magda Szubanski, Rebecca Gibney, Kerri-Anne Kennerley, Noni Hazlehurst and Ruth Cracknell – is also something Mailman wanted to acknowledge.
“I don’t know if there’s any sort of sugarcoating that,” she says. “I mean, it has been an industry built for some time for certain people. But now we’ve seen in the past decade or so, even longer than that, when we look at storytelling in this country and where that excitement has been for some time, and the voices that haven’t been there before, and the representation around so many voices that have never had a foot in the door, that’s what it’s about.”
That Mailman, 54, has become one of the most recognisable and beloved faces on screen is still a surprise to her. Growing up in Mount Isa, she only took to acting when faced with the alternative: business studies.
“I didn’t choose it to become an actor,” she says, laughing. “I just thought, ‘Yeah, I didn’t want to do that, so I’ll try this [drama].’ And I just had two really great teachers throughout high school that saw something or supported me, and I just loved drama. I wasn’t an academic, I was average at best, and … I was very shy and that helped with my confidence.”
In many ways, Mailman’s life can be measured in firsts: her first screen role, in Radiance, landed her the Australian Film Institute award for best actress in a leading role, making her the first Indigenous woman to do so; her first TV role in The Secret Life of Us, in which she played student Kelly Lewis, landed her Logies for outstanding actress in a drama series in 2002 and 2004. She has won six Logies in total, including for the TV film Mabo, the ABC dramas Redfern Now, Mystery Road, Total Control and the Nine shark drama Bite Club.
“I still pinch myself that I’m still in this industry – and I’m still in love with it,” she says. “It’s a hard industry to be a part of, and when I signed up at 17 years of age, I had no idea what this was going to look like for me. And the fact that I’m still here and still getting great opportunities, and getting really good work, that’s not lost for me.”
She still gets approached the most by fans of The Secret Life of Us, and Play School, and in many ways still considers herself to be a “shy kid”, so it’s no great surprise to hear that she is “really, really, really nervous” about the prospect of standing on stage on Sunday, with all eyes turned in her direction.
“This is doing my head in,” she says. “Having been at these events before, you’re part of a production, you’ve got your co-workers, your colleagues around you, and you’re celebrating together. This is a very different feeling, and, yeah, I’m really, really, really nervous, but I’m also trying to just enjoy what this is about as well.”
