A range of families battle varying financial and emotional pressures in the series,with Terera explaining:“I’ve got a sneaky little reason for why I always do family in my work. It’s because I can have two people who are nothing like each other spending time together and the audience will accept it. Sometimes you see friends on screen who are nothing like each other,always butting heads,and you think,‘Alright guys,just don’t be friends.’ But you can’t say,‘Don’t be father and daughter.’”
The project was pitched to SBS’s head of scripted development Julie Eckersley on a Friday and by Monday she’d given it a green light.
When Crawford read the scenes required for her audition,one of them a version of the opening scene and another a more intimate conversation with Elsie’s friend and potential love interest,Aisha (Bernie Van Tiel),she was excited by the project. “I loved that Elsie was a person of colour:it wasn’t open ethnicity and they audition everyone. And when something is written for a person of colour by a person of colour,you can just tell. There’s so much more detail and specificity. And I could also tell it was written by someone in their 20s:it wasn’t a 40-year-old man writing for young adults. It was someone in that life writing about people in his circle.”
The actress describes her character as “thrifty and self-reliant,someone who knows how to present herself in different situations and is incredibly strong,but also has lovely moments of vulnerability”. Ntombi Moyo’s eye-catching wardrobe design emphasises Elsie’s inventiveness and Crawford happily recalls:“I think we tried about 100 jackets before we settled on the two that she wears. Elsie hasn’t had a lot of autonomy over aspects of her life,but what she puts on her body and how she represents herself is something that she can control.”
Terera describes his heroine as “Afro punk”,explaining the label as referring to someone who has “a disregard for rules and laws,but always with love at the front”. And there’s no doubt that Elsie loves Robert,even though he infuriates her. Terera notes that “Robert could have just come across as simply a deadbeat,or a complete clown”,but that Curtis’ carefully calibrated performance infused it with complexity. “He made Robert so real,like,when he’s trying to get a bank loan,the nuances of his facial movements can break your heart.”
A New Zealand actor (Avatar:The Way of Water,Once Were Warriors),Curtis came to Melbourne to check Terera out after he’d read the first few pages of the script. As the scriptwriter took his visitor on a tour of his neighbourhood,they bonded over a shared passion for boxing. Curtis signed on,becoming an executive producer,and is a now regular visitor to Terera’s mother’s place for family dinners when he’s in town.
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Terera has written stories for years and a Zoom interview reveals photos that he’s taken lining his bedroom walls. He started taking pictures after buying a small Pentax camera “for five bucks” from a local Cash Converters shop. Soon his musician friends were asking him to take photos for them,and then to make music videos. He loved the work but found “it was missing a little bit of soul”. But when he combined his stories with the skills he’d learned making music videos,the seed forSwift Street sprouted.
Unlike many film and TV makers,he says he’s no film buff. “My mum wasn’t restrictive:she wasn’t,like,‘Your options are lawyer,doctor,engineer’. But she didn’t grow up in an environment where there were all these other career options. I didn’t know that you could be an artist. If you’d asked me when I was 19 what an artist was,I would’ve said Leonardo da Vinci. I wouldn’t have had any other references.”
Crawford was one of more than 50 actresses who auditioned for Elsie,which is her first lead following a charmed run. She graduated from WAAPA (Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts) in 2021 and has defied the gloomy,though sadly realistic,predictions from her teachers about the dauntingly high unemployment rates in her chosen profession,appearing in M. Night Shyamalan’sServant (Apple TV+) andTiny Beautiful Things (Disney+). “It’s been the most surreal experience,” she says from California,where she’s shooting a feature film. “I feel so lucky. I’m living my dream.”
Terera’s dream,meanwhile,is a second season ofSwift Street:“I’ve learned so many things and I’d love to have another opportunity,with the same cast and hopefully a similar crew.”
Swift Street premieres on SBS,Wednesday April 24,8.35pm and SBS On Demand.
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