![]() Johnson died in 1987, a few months before the Family’s compound was raided by police and all the children removed. Kids were only brought on set for “a really short period of time”, the parents were always nearby, and efforts were made to keep the mood on set as light as possible until the moment cameras rolled.Īt times, The Clearing can be upsetting viewing, particularly knowing how few consequences the Family’s leaders faced. He was impressed by their talent and ability to handle the script’s “heavy material” – something the behind-the-scenes team were conscious of making as low-impact as possible for the young performers. But Walker feels the true standouts are the two child leads, Lily La Torre and Julia Savage, through whom we experience the inhumanity of young life in the cult. The Clearing’s A-list cast in Otto, Palmer and Pearce will be obvious draw cards (another legend of Australian screen, Claudia Karvan, also appears in later episodes). Some of the young actors in The Clearing, who were only brought on set for ‘a really short period of time’ to protect them. “It can be helpful sometimes, but it can also open up cans of worms that convolute what it is I’m initially picking up from in the script.” skip past newsletter promotion “I’m always nervous about how much research I do,” Pearce says. Joining for the promise of spiritual fulfilment, they were made to take dangerous amounts of LSD and had every aspect of their lives controlled. ![]() Pearce’s character, Dr Bryce Latham, is also clearly sketched from real life: the Family’s co-founder, Dr Raynor Johnson, was a physicist whose presence lent the group an intellectual authority that helped them recruit members, often handpicked from Melbourne’s wealthy elite. ![]() “I’ve done things before where things are based on exact occurrences … I find I’ve got to be very careful in how much of the original source material I delve into,” he says. Guy Pearce had heard vague details of the Family cult when he came onboard, but preferred to keep it that way, having been drawn in by the “really compelling and disturbing” story. The self-appointed guru claimed to be Jesus reborn as a woman and told the children raised in her clutches she was their birth mother, and that together they would survive the end of the world to become a new master race. Hamilton-Byrne, who died aged 98 in 2019, led the Family and holds the dubious honour of being one of history’s few female cult leaders. But one character indisputably based on a real individual is Adrienne Beaufort (played by Miranda Otto) a stand-in for Anne Hamilton-Byrne. Palmer’s character could stand in for the dozens of children who suffered at the hands of the Family. “Your past is with you all the time – you carry it with you in the present constantly,” he says. Walker, who co-directed The Clearing with Gracie Otto, says the goal was to capture the trauma that young people raised in cults experience. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning The exact plot details are being closely guarded – the Guardian was only given access to the first two episodes in advance – but it broadly tells the story of the cult, renamed the Kindred, in present-day scenes and flashbacks to the 80s as Freya (Teresa Palmer) reckons with her past and her connections to the cult. While the early episodes are a largely faithful adaptation of Pomare’s book, Walker says the story quickly expands beyond that source material “to take on a cinematic life of its own”. ![]()
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