On the eve of her latest show, The Wrong Girl for Channel 10, Kerry Armstrong has made a new movie about life at street level, called Pawno.
It’s your first Pawno? My three sons were horrified at the name! They said it’d take too long to explain to other kids. It could've been called The Pawn Shop but Pawno has that double-entendre.
I play a mother looking for her jewellery in a pawn shop but what she's really looking for is a clue to her son’s whereabouts. There's a beautiful moment when she asks the pawnbroker did her son sell his PlayStation?
She’s heartbroken and remembers her son at 5 and the thing he loved best. Now he’s an addict and he’s sold it.
You stand alone in your home, apparently doing nothing, but you’re heart-wrenching. Thanks. You have to act the truth. The audience knows what you're thinking. If you don't believe it you're playing false. I just did another film in which I knew I'd bombed. I watched myself and thought you can choose to be extraordinary and then you need to have the courage to be dreadfully bad. Or you can be mediocre.
What did you take away from SeaChange? We did an important thing. The producers wanted John Howard and I and our kids to hate each other. I asked could we try to love each other and let everyone else hate them? They said yes. What I took away from SeaChange is that audiences will watch if you care about each other.
- Full interview: parramatta sun.com.au/entertainment.