TV Week
21st May 1988
Former Sons and Daughters star is behind bars in ACP.
Former Sons And Daughters star Antonia Murphy has had some first-hand experience for her cameo role as a young drug dealers in A Country Practice.
The attractive actress has seen her far share of dope dealers at various parties and has occasionally tried drugs. “I’ve smoked marijuana, but I don’t do it anymore,” says Antonia. “I’d much rather a glass of champagne.
“I’ve met a couple of drug dealers in my time and I’ve seen a lot of people who are into it at parties, but I didn’t model the role of anyone in particular.”
In episode of A Country Practice due to screen this week, Antonia plays Sally Lewis, a 19-year-old who has moved back to Wandin Valley after an unsuccessful stint as a fashion designer in Sydney.
Sally moves in with Jo Loveday (Josephine Mitchell) and starts supplying the valley’s youth with marijuana.
“Jo finds out I’m smoking dope and then she finds out I’m dealing and she doesn’t approve,” says Antonia.
But against all Jo’s protestations Sally keeps dealing and soon the long arm of the law, in the form of Burrigan’s drug squad arrives on the girls’ doorstep with a search warrant.
Sally and Jo are carted off to the station for questioning, but Sally refuses to talk until her lawyer arrives. With her reluctance to talk, Sally further incriminates Jo, who misguidedly sticks up for her flatmate.
“The last you see of Sally Lewis she’s behind bars,” says Antonia. “I don’t know what happens to her after the police are finished with her.”
Antonia says Sally is not a bad girl – the reason she is dealing in cop is that she has fallen in with the wrong crowd.
“She tends to rationalise her situation by saying that alcohol and tobacco are legal and they’re proven killers,” she says.
“She’s not trying to corrupt people. She’s just naughty.”
Since leaving her role as Lyn Palmer in Sons And Daughters four years ago, Antonia has done a stint with the Peter Williams play Caravan and has hammed it up in the ABC’s Dingo Principle.
Apart from that, jobs have been scarce, which Antonia puts down to the general lack of work in the industry.
“I’m still optimistic I’ll get work,” she says. “If I don’t get work I don’t know what I will do, because I never did a typing course of anything like that.
“I’ve been pretty lucky up until now. It’s just a bit hard when you have all this time off work and you try to find something else to do. I’ve become pretty addicted to the midday movie.”
Leigh Reinhold
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