Nakkiah Lui and a mix of passionate oddballs face the apocalypse
By Bridget McManus
November 6, 2021 — 3.00pm
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By day, Nakkiah Lui is a celebrated playwright, actress, screenwriter, and, with the relaunch of Harper's Bazaar Australia, a cover girl. By night, she is a fervent reality TV fan, her category of choice anything involving doomsday prepping. This obsession, which she shares with her husband and co-writer, Gabriel Dowrick, has culminated over four years in the creation of Preppers, a six-part comedy about an Indigenous-led survivalist commune.
Nakkiah Lui (in blue): Aboriginal people were the first doomsday preppers. Credit:
"The idea came from Aboriginal people being the first doomsday preppers," she explains. "1788 was like the apocalypse for Aboriginal people. What does the apocalypse look like, in terms of, you lose your home, your whole world changes? What is it like living with fear? For my culture, there was a lot of fear for good reason, like living through the stolen generations. I come from people who managed to create hopes and dreams despite that and are very community focused, which I try to explore in this show as well."
Presided over by a wizened elder (Jack Charles), "Eden 2", somewhere in Sydney's Ku-ring-gai National Park, is a refuge for a "born leader" (Meyne Wyatt); a reformed hedonistic couple (Ursula Lavish and Chum Ehelepola); a Gen Z decoloniser (Aaron McGrath); and a conspiracy theorist podcaster (Eryn Jean Norvill).
Into the mix of passionate oddballs falls Lui's morning television host, Charlie.
"Charlie is so different to me, in many ways," says Lui. "She created this gilded cage around herself. She's ticking all the boxes of what a 'good' Aboriginal person should be, and she's lost track of who she is. In order to figure that out, she nearly destroys the cage."
Charlie's retreat from the world comes after a private crisis involving her partner and studio boss (Grant Denyer), and a public meltdown not unlike that delivered by Lui and Miranda Tapsell as satirical versions of themselves, when they called out racism on Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney's morning TV send-up, Get Krack!n.
"I hate that I'm a social commentator, because I'm not that clever," says Lui. "But being that exposed about something that's so close to you, and the kind of discourse that can follow, is a really hard place to be. Coming out of Get Krack!n, I didn't expect the outrage from people who found some of the content offensive. It was taken out of context on social media and some news outlets, as if it had been a genuine morning show, and that followed me for years."
Lui counts as a close friend network television's first Indigenous morning show personality, the Today show's Brooke Boney.
"Brooke has spoken out about crucial issues (such as Invasion Day and Black Lives Matter) so eloquently."
She loves that the current Bachelorette, another Brooke (Blurton) is the first Indigenous woman to wear that reality TV tiara.
"Inclusion on screen is so much more powerful than we give it credit for. My family gets excited if they see a black person in a commercial. It's getting to be able to see yourself as part of the community."
Lui would love to take part in a reality show.
"Real Housewives – arguing with people about trivial things would be fun. Big Brother, Celebrity Apprentice, or maybe as a guest on Below Deck. It's not like I could afford to go on a super yacht."
In the meantime she's adapting for television her Sydney Theatre Company play, Black is the New White. In the US, she's writing for the second season of Hulu's Catherine the Great dramedy, The Great; and developing a series for HBO based on a podcast about Ivanka Trump.
"To be working in an industry where you're not necessarily defined by your race – and my race plays a huge part in how I engage with work – but to be able to apply that to something different has been really empowering."
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Bridget McManus is a television writer and critic for Green Guide. She was deputy editor of Green Guide from 2006 to 2010 and now also writes features and interviews for Life & Style in The Saturday Age and M magazine in The Sunday Age.
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