1. Shrinking

2. Tolstoy

3. Staying with Expats. Shooting in Hong Kong in the pandemic. Leaving Australia when the government told me that I may not be allowed back in. We all give so much for what we do.

1. I May Destroy You

2. Jeff Buckley

3. Commissioning a film for the first time - How to Make Gravy

1. For the origin of an incredible screen family tree – The Thick of It leading to Veep leading to Succession.

2. Shonda Rhimes - The Boss, Taylor Swift - Another boss.

3. The big risks are most often invisible… Trust is at its center. Calling out these people for their screen stories: Corrie Chen for Bad Behaviour, Lucy Coleman for Exposure, Kick Gurry for Caught, Lucas Taylor and Kaylene Butler for Black Snow S1, Sarah Bassiuoni for Critical Incident and Tanith Glynn Maloney for Windcatcher

1. The Honorable Woman

2. Armando Iannucci

3. Everything I have in development right now!

1. Boys From the Blackstuff (1982) by Alan Bleasdale.
Edge of Darkness (1985) by Troy Kennedy Martin.
Tell Me You Love Me (HBO 2007) by Cynthia Mort.
The Bear (2022) by Christopher Storer.

2. John Cassavetes. Shadows. Faces. Husbands. A Woman Under the Influence. Opening Night

3. Stepping away from a growing career in theatre into film and TV (On Strictly Ballroom in the first instance) and then stepping away from a more lucrative and high-profile career in film in order to return to the theatre.

1. Killing Eve

2. Lucille Ball

3. Making Fake

1. The Handmaid's Tale

2. Kieślowski

3. Moving to London at 29 not knowing a soul and working for Anthony Minghella.

1. Bluey

2. Steven Moffat – Press Gang made me fall in love with television (and Julia Sawalha and Dexter Fletcher) and Dr Who and Sherlock are both examples of incredible legacy television

3. It was a big decision to leave law and strike out into screen

1. Veep

2. Kylie Minogue biopic developed by Shonda Rhimes

3. Encouraging the Victorian government to fund a four-year strategy to support the Screen Industry

1. There are so many but maybe Laverne and Shirley. Transparent as a director. Deadwood as part of the writing team.

2. Rodrigo Prieto collaborator

3. Black Widow was a risk.

1. The Office (UK) – brave comedy, new format, reasonably unknown talent, took a creative risk, built careers and legacy.

2. George Lucas – how do you create Star Wars? How did you make that happen?

3. Picking up Heartbreak High was a big bet, driving Matchbox to get the first Real Housewives commission was a risk, changing jobs and roles at key times, be that leaving the ABC to join Matchbox/NBCU or leaving Fremantle to join Netflix.

1. The kid in me says X Files but the adult says Breaking Bad. (Still X Files pedigree!)

2. Shakespeare? Jesus (more likely Mary Magdalene…) Gwen Verdon/Bob Fosse

3. Choosing to become an actor then quitting and becoming a director…

1. Stand By Me or The Exorcist

2. Tom Cruise. Easy.

3. Starting. Then not stopping.

1. Return to Eden (The original series)

2. Women! I have a mother who gave me the confidence and belief I would do anything. Collaborating with strong women is my happy place.

3. Leaving an SBS traineeship to take a job at a festival in Alice Springs to work with Rachel Perkins in 2000.

1. Utopia at HBO, and All Talk, the show conceived by Jonathan Safran Foer

2. I would have to say Joan Didion at this stage

3. Surviving this long! Actually a few things I would say would be to redefine the concept of authorship in TV, as well as championing the possibility of making TV into a long film.

1. Sort Of

2. Sally Wainwright

3. Please Like Me

1. Countdown (The Oz music show not any of the other multitude of global shows with same name) and Heartstopper

2. Lucille Ball and Russell T Davies

3. Moving countries (multiple times)
and going into a global pre-sales role to get shows funded & greenlit when I didn’t know what that even meant nor how to do it.

1. Succession - all that access.

2. Reuben Ostlund. Coming up with a series with him would be fun.

3. Setting up Kindling Pictures.

1. Girls. Modern stories about young women

2. Nora Epron and Carrie Fisher. But I don’t think they needed my help!

3. Saying no. Two jobs were offered to me and I said no before I had the other bird in hand, but I believed I might

1. Film DIVA (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1981). TV Show The West Wing

2. John Huston

3. Giving up medicine to write

1. White Lotus

2. Oscar Wilde

3. Moving to the US and starting again.

1. The (English) Office

2. Sam Richardson from the Detroiters

3. Telling the ABC Tom Peterson and I could direct Fisk and saying I wouldn't do the show if we didn't. 

1. The Leftovers. But maybe I could jump ship after season 2, and work on Severance instead?

2. David Lynch circa Twin Peaks. Or whoever designed the titles for season 2 of The Leftovers.

3. The biggest risk was trying to establish a career in screenwriting in the first place.

1. The Sopranos

2. Director Bong Joon Ho and Cate Blanchett

3. Beef

1. Deadwood blew me away when it aired so so long ago now. Also TheWire. More recently Atlanta, WhiteLotus, and of course Succession

2. Probably would have built a house with some architect Frank Lloyd Wright or Zaha Hadid? Oh - you mean to make TV with? Anyone on the lists of the Future Vision panels! George Orwell, Plato, Meryl Streep, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Strout

3. Starting a production company & running it for 23 years (moving from camera into producing).

1. The Sopranos. It's such an iconic fusion of sharp, unpredictable writing and perfect casting that delivered consistent powerhouse performances. And it’s almost entirely driven by character over plot.

2. Anne V. Coates was an English editor who started her professional life as a nurse and went on to win an Oscar for Lawrence of Arabia.

3. Directing on 3 Body Problem was a huge swing for me. It was going to be a VFX heavy show. I didn’t have tons of experience but I knew I wanted to try it.

1. The Knick… and then Girls

2. Bob Fosse or Spike Lee.

3. Letting my parents star in my first play. Sending an audition tape to ABC for Black Comedy, where I stripped, titled, “A Guide to Culturally Appropriate Stripping”. More seriously, focusing on US projects.

1) The Twilight Zone

2) Buster Keaton

3) Holding out for over 10 years until someone let me cast the actor I wanted, since we started, for the lead in Mr Inbetween.

1. Station 11, Friday Night Lights and South Park

2. Francis McDormand, Barry Jenkins & Steven Spielberg

3. Every job is its own challenge

1. Freaks and Geeks and Magic Mike

2. Shonda Rhimes and Mike Schur

3. Shifting from a career in post to commissioning. Every Australian title we commission for Netflix is a giant, terrifying, thrilling swing. When it comes to putting stories about us on a global platform, every bullet needs to be a cannonball.

1. Chernobyl

2. Frank Capra

3. Turning down The Flying Doctors for The Woolly Jumpers [A Geelong-based community theatre group]

1. Succession, Chernobyl, Beef, The Bear… but I have to go back to my childhood favorite, Fawlty Towers: acutely observed, laugh-out-loud funny, brilliantly performed, timeless, and, as it turns out, prescient.

2. Joan Didion: for her affecting and incisive examinations of politics, culture, and society, and ability to rip open our hearts with her brutal, intimate forays into vulnerability and emotional truths.

3. Pretty much all my career choices have involved sizable swings, usually directed by a gut impulse to just say “yes” or in some cases “hard no”. Probably the biggest personal/career l risk I took was heading off when my son was barely two years old to produce The Kite Runner, a studio film we researched and cast in Kabul, fought to make in its authentic language with an Afghan cast, then shot in a remote part of Western China.

1. If I made Seinfeld I’d be a lot richer! But probably Deadwood.

2. TV Writer: Dickens. Imagine how many seasons of great TV we could have made together! Film Writer/Director: Billy Wilder.

3. We bought our business back, in the middle of the pandemic, which was a fun time. Collie and I vowed to keep going even if it meant working in his garage. And he doesn’t have a garage, so.

1. Chernobyl – stunning and innovative way to explore real events in a powerful, humanist screen work.

2. Juliette Binoche. I remain hopeful we can work together!

3. Heading to East Timor to make Balibo in 2008 with a small crew of 15, the greatest and most rewarding adventure of my career.

1. Friday Night Lights

2. Elaine May

3. Little Lunch

1. Severance, Hacks and Lost Boys and Fairies. Oh, and can I have Station Eleven too!

2. Recent history, I’d love to have worked with Guillermo del Toro, David Chase, Sharon Hogan, Mike White, Charlie Brooker and Sally Wainwright

3. Lambs of God would have to be the biggest swing I’ve taken in my career.

1. Pamela Adlon’s Better Things. Everything I love about television - singular style; female-led; honest storytelling that pushes boundaries and is deeply funny. Bold, daring, poignant and beautiful.

2. Greta Gerwig. Even better if it’s with her husband. Noah Baumbach. Nora Ephron. John Cassavetes.

3. Writing strong female characters who I know are going to be called unlikeable.

1. Seinfeld / Fleabag

2. David Lynch

3. Leaving Network TV for Freelance Work. Heading to Hollywood.

1. The Boys

2. Robert Altman

3. Getting up in the morning