Miranda Otto laughs when I compliment her on her excellent wig work in . Slightly stiff, with its flipped ends up, it gives her a matronly air, that of a woman not quite ready to move with the times. “It’s such a look,” she says, laughing.
“I remember when I was at school in the ’80s and there was one mum who still had a beehive. Eventually, she had to let it go, but it was like, wow, that is a lot of work to keep such a set hairstyle. And do you do it fresh every day or does it stay overnight?” Otto’s hair is of note because she is the newest addition to the universe, which began with Madeleine St John’s 1993 novel , which was then adapted into a in 2013 and retitled , and then , directed by Bruce Beresford, in 2018.
All three iterations follow the women who work in the “model gowns” section of upmarket Sydney department store Goodes in the late 1950s and early ’60s. Otto plays Mrs Virginia Ambrose, who has been imported from Harrods as the dour and intimidating new head of model gowns. “Is harsh lighting an Australian thing?” she quips, on first inspection of the pink-hued department.
“She’s somebody who really believes in service, who really believes in class, she really believes in discretion,” says Otto. “She sees fashion really as a way to blend in and be a part of things and be discreet and be able to talk in a certain way. “It was really important to me, coming into it, that it wasn’t just about her wanting to assert her power –.
