 A casual galance through the gossip columns
tells you a lot about a little portion of Dee Smart's
life. Cruising around the Whitsundays on Kerry Packer's
floating palace; sharing a Bondi Beach pad with James
Packer and Jodie Meares; attending the couple's
multimillion-dollar nuptials, where her financier husband
Chris Hancock was a groomsman; selling a Rose Bay
property for $1.9 million....It would be easy to assume Smart's life is one big whirl of fabulous frocks, cocktails, canapes and air kisses, and that she squeezes in the occasional episode of Water Rats between opening nights. But first impressions can be deceptive. We meet at a chichi cafe in Double Bay, Sydney's ground zero of overstated opulence where bouffant hair, chunky gold baubles and designer everything are de rigueur. So Smart, in faded denim jeans and a red singlet, face free of make up, no jewellery and wet hair tied back in a rought ponytail, stands out as an oasis of earthiness in a sea of excess. "She's more like a country girl," observed Water Rats supervising procucer Ted Roberts. "There  are two sides to her. There's the social side,
which is out there with the A-list and that's the side we
don't see. There's no sign of that on the set - she doesn't
behave like a princess."But people could be forgiven for suspectiong otherwise. When Smart joined Water Rats in the wake of the departure of Catherine McClements and her character (Rachel "Goldie" Goldstein) last year, there were low moaning noises about her friendship with James Packer and how this may have influenced her casting in the series, which screens on the Packer-owned Channel 9. Roberts is quick to dismiss suggestions of preferential treatment: "Obviously people are aware of her social connections but we were a bit inclined to think it could be a problem. If anything it worked ot her disadvantage more than her advantage, because she had to really probe herself." For Smart, who had avoided long-term roles since a stretch on Home And Away almost a decade ago ("it did nothing for my love of television") and favoured theatre (Miranda, Desire) and film (Welcome To Woop Woop, Audacious), the two-month audittion process for the character of Detective Senior Constable Alex St Clare was a trial of tenacity. "I've been offered quite a few long-term gigs on different TV show and at the end of the day I didn't want to do them because they just didn't feel right," Smart explained in her husky come-to-the-boudoir tone. "With this, as soon as the audition came up I thought, 'I want it, it's mine'. That might sound a bit strange to some, but organically I felt it was where I was supposed to go. I wanted it like I'd never wanted TV before. I just knew it was going to be mine even though we had so many auditions and it seemed like it wasn't going to happen for so long." Water Rats producers auditioned more than 100 actors for the part, with the short list comprised of the names of some of the country's most talented performers. "It was such a difficult casting because we had lost Catherine and Catherine was irreplaceable to us," recalled Roberts. "Catherine was just so good. So we needed to find somebody of the same calibre but who wasn't just going to be a carbon copy of Goldie." While Smart capably fleshed out the role, what really won the producers and the network over was her physicality....and the way she handled a gun. "Dee is very athletic, she's got a lot of stamina, she's got courage and she's dedicated," said Roberts. "And she can do something very few people can do - women or men - and that's shoot a .38 pistol without closing their eyes. She makes a very authentic cop." Smart - the seventh of nine children to a strict catholic family, born and bred in the South Australian bush and self-reliant since leaving home at the age of 16 to study dance at the Victorian College of the Arts - instinctively knew Alex St Clare, a woman who turns her back on her middleclass upbringing to become a cop, was for her. "I was surprised they took so long to say, 'Yeah, okay, you're our girl'," she said, sipping an orange juice and picking at a bowl of porridge. "But they were really nervous. They were terrified of losing Catherine and terrified about finding someone to fill the gap. I kept saying, 'It's me, you idiots, it's me!'." While Smart is aware there will be comparisons with McClements, an actor she greatly admires, she's pragmatic enough not to care. "I don't feel like I have any shoes to fill," she said."I don't feel as if I am competing, or trying to fill a gap. Catherine was Catherine, I can only ever be Dee." |