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Acclaimed actor and novelist Tasma Walton discovered her inner funny girl in the new television series Reckless. By Nadine J. Cohen.

Tasma Walton on writing and performance

Actor and author Tasma Walton.

Credit: Don Arnold / WireImage

Tasma Walton loves telling stories. Whether shooting films, treading the boards or writing novels, the beloved Boonwurrung actor and writer from Geraldton, Western Australia, revels in both the creative process and the transformative power of storytelling to drive social cohesion, social justice and social change.

“I have a mantra: if you can open people’s hearts, you can change their minds,” she tells me. “I’ve always had a desire to use storytelling to promote empathy, egalitarianism and alternate ways of viewing the world.”

Best known for her considerable acting chops, Walton has also been confidently forging a literary path. Her ABIA-nominated debut novel, Heartless (2009), is described as “a moving and confronting fable about the power of the human heart, the worthiness of its desires and the often dire consequences of ignoring them”.

Her second book, I Am Nannertgarrook, a profoundly personal, semifictional account of her great-great-great-grandmother’s 1830s kidnapping by a seal trader who then sold her into slavery, was released earlier this year. It was shortlisted for the Nib Literary Award and the People’s Choice Prize, and was the joint winner of the lucrative ARA Historical Novel Prize, shared with writer Robbie Arnott for his celebrated work Dusk.

On how writing compares with performance, Walton says that, while ultimately rewarding, writing can be hermetic – more of a slog. “I’ve always loved writing, but it’s relatively solitary and can sometimes feel like a marathon, a long, lonely marathon,” she says. “It can hurt, so it has to be a calling – you have to really want to tell that story to put yourself through it. It’s a labour of love.”

Acting, on the other hand, is most often the antithesis of a marathon: communal, harmonious, the sum of its parts. Acting is a relay. “The beautiful thing about acting is it’s a shared creative experience,” she says. “Even when you’re working on challenging material, there is such joy in collaborating with like-minded people with the same passion, drive and dedication.” The hyper-talented multi-hyphenate is grateful that she is able to move fluidly between the two disciplines.

Asked when and why she felt called to acting as a profession, Walton smiles, recalling two formative experiences in her teens that cemented her desire to pursue the “crazy career choice”. The first was when an “amazing” drama teacher – a common gateway to acting addiction – assigned her a monologue from Euripides’ Medea for a school performance. “I loved it. I relished the drama and sort of got a little bit of a hit doing that.”

The second came on a school trip to Perth, at Subiaco’s long-gone Hole in the Wall Theatre. As she watched the actors perform John Gabriel Borkman, the spirit of Ibsen reached deep into her impressionable young soul and told her this was her destiny.

“I had that lightning-bolt moment of going, yeah, I want to be one of them. I want to tell stories in that way,” says Walton. “I’d always loved reading and writing, but there’s something about that additional element of performance and the transcendence of self that comes with really tricking yourself into creating a character that even you believe. I fell in love with the idea of storytelling through that medium.”

Given the tragic texts in her own origin story, it’s no surprise Walton feels most at home in dramas, perhaps most notably in her Logie-winning breakout role as Dash McKinley in the iconic police procedural Blue Heelers, as Tracey Morrison on McLeod’s Daughters, and her multi-AACTA-nominated turn as Mary Swan in the acclaimed 2013 film Mystery Road and its subsequent, similarly lauded television series.

In fact, since committing the cardinal sin of dropping out of NIDA, the actress has enjoyed a long, hallowed, tear-jerking career in big-screen, small-screen and theatrical dramas. Comedy, on the other hand, is another story.

“If ever anybody tells me ‘this is a gag line’, I will fuck it up every single time,” she says. “I find the pressure to be funny far greater than the pressure to cry or try to elicit emotion in your audience. When my husband [Rove McManus] does stand-up, I get so nervous. I just drink so much vodka because I get very stressed for him. It’s a fate worse than death to me.”

Walton has been married to McManus since 2009 and the two have mostly stayed in their own lanes. But a leading role in Reckless, a four-part comic thriller screening on SBS and NITV from November 12, led the reluctant funnywoman to find her mojo.

Adapted from the 2019 Scottish television series Guilt, Reckless is a riotous journey of self-entrapment and moral unravelling: a cautionary tale of how one lie can quickly become a cascade of falsehoods. It centres on hifalutin, high-heel-loving lawyer June Reed (Walton) and her quasi-estranged, fully broke brother Charlie (the magnetic Hunter Page-Lochard, descended from the Nunukul people and the Munaldjali clan of the Yugambeh nation). The two are forced into an uneasy alliance by bad luck and even worse decisions.

After committing a fateful hit-and-run on the outskirts of Fremantle, the siblings attempt to cover up both their crime and cowardice, spinning a web of lies as fragile as it is outrageous, and entangling ever more people with every new fib. “It’s like a reverse whodunnit,” says Walton. “It’s got this thriller aspect and a wonderful, subversive thread of humour through it, but it’s also got deeply felt drama, the further into it you go.”

Reckless is a dark, absurd, existential cringe comedy from the “brilliant, twisted mind” of Djaru and Gija writer Kodie Bedford, who is also from Geraldton. Bedford “wanted to make a bold show with audacious characters that felt unapologetically Western Australian”. With the help of Warramungu and Luritja director and “force of nature” Beck Cole and a stellar cast and crew, she’s done just that. “I’m so bloody happy to be home telling this yarn with a team of creatives who have all shared the vision and taken it somewhere even wilder than I ever imagined,” says Bedford, who is also an executive producer on the project.

Walton and Page-Lochard are electric – she as the older, successful straight woman to his floundering younger funnyman. Their playful chemistry and gentle antagonism give off highly relatable sibling energy, and both performances are infused with a gravitas that grounds the farce and has us rooting for them despite their dubious actions.

Walton has siblings, which she says is why June is always hitting Charlie – though she was more used to being on the receiving end herself, as one of the youngest. Comparisons can be drawn to similar portrayals of family dynamics that follow the responsible older sibling/hot-mess younger sibling trope: think Fleabag, This Way Up, even Little Women. “It’s an archetypal relationship for a reason, replicated throughout human existence,” she says. “This push-pull dynamic of rivalry and resentment but with a profound love and blood connection that undergirds it all.”

The duo leads a powerhouse all-Australian cast that includes the captivating and appropriately Western Australian Jessica De Gouw along with Clarence Ryan, Jane Harber, Tracy Mann and the unfailingly hilarious Duncan Fellows. Separately, each actor surpasses the brief, delivering artful, nuanced and cry-laughing performances, no matter how big their role. As an ensemble, they are flawless, orchestral.

“It was such a joyful process making Reckless,” says Walton. “The beauty of this medium is that in its very best kind of representation, everybody is adding, building the flesh around the ultimate creation. It was all fundamentally there in Kodie’s incredible script, and with Beck’s amazing conductor-like direction, all we needed to do was make it sing.”

On what drew her to the project, Walton doesn’t miss a beat. “I would do anything for Ms Kodie Bedford,” she says. “She has such a singular vision and a lovely way of realising it. I also love the story’s multifaceted world, and think it’s very bingeable. You can always tell when you’re reading a script and you’re like, ‘Oh my God, what’s going to happen? Give me the next episode!’ It’s a roller-coaster ride and a lot of fun.”

Her character’s strength, complexity and genuineness also grabbed Walton from the first reading. “June is phenomenal. She was so strong on the page with an incredible Type A personality and many layers, which is what you want as an actor. She’s one of those characters that just fundamentally clicked for me.”

Named after Mrs Johnny Cash, June is a serious character trapped by increasingly bonkers circumstances. Heading home from a wedding, a thump changes her life in an instant, its potential consequences threatening to destroy her career, her relationship and everything she has fought hard for. While her decisions are questionable, her motivations are understandable at their core, elevating the series from a simple comedy of errors to a searing social comment.

“There is an authenticity that underpins everything June does and sincere reasons for her choices,” says Walton. “It comes from a place of self-preservation and a well-honed survival instinct from growing up as a Black kid in our society. It explains her desire to look after her younger brother, even though they are polar opposites, and her drive to protect everything she has worked for and built, despite the odds against her.”

According to the Screen Australia First Nations Department’s development and investment manager, Jorjia Gillis, Reckless isn’t only unapologetically Western Australian: it’s “unapologetically Western Australian mob”. With an Indigenous showrunner, an Indigenous director, two Indigenous leads and subversive Indigenous humour, it is part of the growing canon of work made by, with and about mob.

There have always been Indigenous stories on our screens, but they are becoming increasingly common, visible and funded. It’s about time. “When I started out in the ’90s, you would go for an audition and they would ask you to tick a box about what your racial mix was,” says Walton. “The advice was always, ‘Whatever you do, tick Caucasian, and then add whatever else.’ The reality is that we have a small industry and there weren’t many roles for people who didn’t fit a particular physical type. I’m happy to say that it has shifted in my lifetime.”

Does she think streaming services are generating more opportunities and propelling change? “Whenever you broaden the spectrum, you’re able to fit more things in. So yes, that’s probably what’s driving it, as well as the fact that viewers seem more prepared to watch stories that might reflect a different world view than their own.” There are, she says, some exceptional stories to be told.

At 18, Walton moved to Sydney to start her life and forge her path. As a small-town girl, she yearned to explore and devour the world, her ambition wrapped in a hunger for experience. “In my 20s, it was all about exploration, striking out, pushing boundaries, testing myself and the world around me, seeing what my place was in it, and coming up against the odd concrete wall.”

She envisioned a career of constant travelling and shooting in amazing locations. It is likely the most common dream among actors, she says, and perhaps the least fulfilled. Life had other plans and other realities set in, forcing a re-evaluation of priorities. “This is how we evolve as humans. Your value system adjusts and you learn how to ride that ebb and flow with a sense of grace, staying true to yourself and that idea of your purpose.”

Now, decades after leaving Geraldton, she is back living and filming in her home state, delighted to be able to showcase its beauty and tuck her daughter into bed at night. At 52, Nannertgarrook’s great-great-great-granddaughter – lover of storytelling, actor, writer, sister, wife and mother – is grateful to be working and excited for the world to meet the Reeds.

“I just feel very fortunate to be able, at my age, with the length of time I’ve been in the industry, to have a character like June Reed come along,” says Walton. “Because she is magnificent.”

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on November 8, 2025 as "Big sista energy".

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