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Information: Performances: Bold
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Cass's Change By: Simon Yeaman THE
ADVERTISER Life's a buzz for the young woman on SeaChange, as SIMON YEAMAN discovers. CASSANDRA Magrath seemed almost relieved when The Advertiser rang her at home. It was about 10am and her younger sister was running late for school. "We thought you were her teacher,'' she said. Cass's own teachers might wonder where their star pupil has been these past two years. The 18-year-old Melbournian a husky, good-humoured youngster has been busy filming the nation's most popular drama SeaChange, playing the feisty, scholastic young daughter of Sigrid Thornton. Magrath admits she's had 'a lot of time off school' for SeaChange. "So yeah, it definitely affected my school work (she's now studying one final subject for her matriculation at TAFE). I'm not a very academic person anyway,'' she said. Besides, show business is in the youngster's blood. "My older sister is a professional dancer, my uncle has been a dancer and an actor, and my mother's mother was a dancer as well,'' Magrath said. "My brother (Patrick) and sister (Charmaine) have both done TV but they didn't have as much interest in it as me." "Charmaine (who is 15) had a professional musical and then she went to Neighbours and got really bored and went `Oh, I don't want to do this anymore'.'' Patrick, 20, has appeared on A Country Practice. Her dad is a structural engineer and her mother a "student studying to be a welfare worker''. Having persuaded mum to register her in an acting agency, Magrath proved successful in her very first television audition, winning the role of Zoe on the children's TV series Ocean Girl. Then came parts in the movie Hotel De Love with Aden Young, and the lead role in the award-winning children's series The Wayne Manifesto. Playing Miranda Gibson on SeaChange is her big break. "I've had a few fan letters before, I've written back to a couple and called them up,'' she said. "I don't really get many so it's kind of exciting when I do. "One guy had written a letter and it was really sweet, so I called him up and it was really funny because he didn't know what to say." "It freaked him totally out. He didn't quite believe it was me for a moment and then, when he did ,he said `Well thank you for ringing and bye'. Two days later, I got another letter saying `Sorry, I got your phone call and I just totally freaked out, I couldn't believe you rang me'.'' The good-looking youngster doesn't have a boyfriend. "I haven't had a boyfriend for a long time. I've just met someone recently but I wouldn't say he's my boyfriend as yet, just working on it at the moment,'' she laughed. Away from SeaChange, Magrath is something of a spokeswoman for youth, having been involved in campaigns against binge drinking and in political forums on youth issues such as employment and drugs. "I just think young people are feeling negative about being young when they should be feeling really positive and wonderful that they're young a really moving, changing stage in their life. "A lot of young people carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.'' Magrath is now filming the third series of SeaChange, which will air later this year. The ABC is repeating the second series from Saturday. Magrath says she doesn't have a lot in common with Miranda. "She's incredibly dedicated to school work, which I'm definitely not. We certainly have a different sense of dress,'' she claimed. Alas, she can't fill us in on the direction of Max (William McInnes) and Laura's (Thornton) will-they-won't-they relationship. "We don't even know . . . we're not allowed to know. It helps if we find out slowly because we won't be distracted by what's coming up. We'll just be focused on what we're doing at the present time.'' Working with McInnes is a scream. "I, at the moment, am having a lot to do with William McInnes and I just think he's unreal. He's got an awesome personality, really good to work with, a really, really good actor,'' Magrath said. "You sort of act next to him and you feel like you're acting on the Bold and Beautiful by comparison because he's so good. "You feel a bit silly.'' And Ms Thornton? "She's fantastic, really easy to work with, she shares a lot of her experience with the other cast members, especially the younger cast members, Kane McNay (who plays Thornton's son Rupert) and I. She's an incredibly professional woman who works extremely hard, but you wouldn't really know because she never complains. She works the longest hours and has the most to say script wise. We don't really have a mother-daughter relationship, we have more of a friendship.'' * SeaChange repeats screen on ABC-TV at 7.30pm on Saturdays. |
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