The Cast of Last Days of the Space Age Talk Surfing, Clashing Fashion and Driving a Manual

As the 1970s draw to a close in suburban Perth, three families – and a much wider pool of neighbours, co-workers, friends and enemies – react to the cultural upheaval happening all around them. Unions, racism, sexism, homophobia, changing domestic roles and the Cold War are all in the mix.

That’s the ambitious set-up of Last Days of the Space Age , a Disney Plus period drama that sees familiar faces (and former Neighbours actors) Radha Mitchell and Jesse Spencer return to Australia after a significant stretch working in American film and television. As Judy and Tony Bissett, they lead a wide ensemble cast that includes French Vietnamese actress Linh-Dan Pham as Sandy Bui, a Vietnamese wife and mother grappling with a new life in Australia and ongoing family trauma.

Set in Western Australia, but primarily filmed in Sydney and Wollongong, the eight-part series is a time capsule of WA nearly a half-century ago. As the US space station Skylab hurtles towards a hopeful crash landing in the Indian Ocean, a few locals worry that it will hit (and devastate) Perth instead. At the same time, a global beauty pageant is underway, and a local power company clashes with its workers, while the community begins to acknowledge the toll of colonisation in Australia. Plus, there are the usual strains of parenting teenagers and those same teens trying to define themselves.

The cast also includes Deborah Mailman, Iain Glen (Game of Thrones) and George Mason (The Power of the Dog), with direction by Bharat Nalluri (Boy Swallows Universe), Rachel Ward (The Devil’s Playground) and Kriv Stenders (Red Dog). Created by Australian Welsh writer David Chidlow, the show weaves its many plot threads and thoughtful perspectives into a uniquely Australian story that should also interest an international audience.

Broadsheet sat down with cast members Radha Mitchell, Jesse Spencer and Linh-Dan Pham via Zoom.

When you got the script, did you get the sense that it was capturing this pivot point in Australian history?

Spencer: Definitely. We start with these families at different points in life, and very quickly [there’s] societal change.

Mitchell: They don’t know what’s ahead of them. There’s an innocence that’s about to end. Maybe that’s part of a viewing of it, looking at it from where we’re at now.

But we’re always feeling these things. We’ve always felt overwhelmed by these external factors. For me, growing up in the ’80s, it was the threat of nuclear war. These things still remain relevant, and there’s still satellites floating around in the sky.

Because it’s such an ensemble cast, did you have much time together in rehearsals?

Mitchell: I recorded [our] group read, so that was my rehearsal. We had this one read of it, and that’s how we got to meet each other and get a sense of what we were all going to bring to the table.

Pham: I felt so welcome, coming from so far away [London] and getting into the Aussie [groove]. I loved it.

Spencer: You don’t want to over-rehearse. You want to get a sense of familiarity and then roll from there. The casting was great, the characters were great, and when you’ve got those pieces in place, it’s just much, much easier to find those dynamics.

Jesse, you were born in 1979, when the show is set. Was there an element of being back in that era while you were on set?

Spencer: Oh, for sure. I think more than the clothes, it was the cars. I love old cars. My first car was a ’69 Holden HR: [a] three on the tree [manual]. That’s what we had [on the show]. Well, we had the station wagon.

Mitchell: I had to learn how to drive that.

Spencer: They’re such simple machines, and I just miss ’em. So I was fascinated by all the cars on set: the shape of them and the smell of them too. The girls who played our daughters [Emily Grant and Mackenzie Mazur] weren’t sure how the locking mechanism went. And rotary phones: we had to show them how to use those. It makes me feel old, but I love it.

Radha and Linh-Dan, did you have a similar feeling of being transported back in time?

Mitchell: For me it was the fashion story. Like, people wore those things? When we were preparing the characters, I was like, the more gauche the better. Let’s go for it. Let’s go in the direction that I’ve been running from for most of my life.

Getting to wear anything that clashed was like, “yes, let’s do it”. Everything fitted well: it was stylish yet unstylish at the same time. So that was a lot of fun.

Pham: I kept trying to put some fashion into it because [my character is] also a seamstress.

Mitchell: So she actually does have some flair.

This isn’t just an Australian story, but a multicultural and migrant one. It’s also not just about Australia feeling removed from the rest of the world, but Western Australia feeling even further removed.

Mitchell: [Perth is] still the most remote city in the world, even today.

Pham: I think for Sandy, it was already in the storyline that [her family] had left everything and they were trying to make a new life in this new city and new country. So yeah, the isolation was there.

Mitchell: There was a sense of languid time, and a sense of the banal. It certainly feels like where we are now, living as we do, we’re constantly scheduled for something and there’s no space to breathe. I think the show really gives you that sense of time.
That was our whole childhood – we weren’t in a hurry. I think maybe the show gives you a taste of that again.

With the Bissett children, whether it’s sketching things about space or going surfing, you see them just go off and follow their passion in real time.

Mitchell: And that’s Australia. That’s the vision of Australia, anyway.

Did you and Jesse have to get used to that slower pace in Australia after working in America for so long?

Spencer: Yeah. I came ready to work. I had this production-line mentality in my head. And I showed up and they were like, “Want a coffee?” It was so laid-back. It had been probably 20 years since I’d worked here. There was a lot of breathing room to get into the story.

Mitchell: And go surfing.

Spencer: Yeah, I went surfing. My character doesn’t in the show, but I did with George Mason, who plays Mick Bissett. We went surfing together a few times, which was quite a bonding experience. Except when those swells came in, in Sydney. I hadn’t surfed in probably a year and there was only one guy out there. I thought, “if I go out there, I’m toast”.

The season ends on quite a neat note, but was there talk of a second season?

Mitchell: Well, if you create an audience for us… I think if we do it again, let’s go to a different epoch.

Spencer: There’s always a chance they’d jump into the ’80s if they went for a second season. And that would be mullets and cut-off shorts.

Mitchell: Pastels?

Spencer: Oh man.

Last Days of the Space Age is streaming now on Disney Plus.