‘Storytelling is medicine’: Brooke Satchwell opens up about her role on Stan’s emotional new drama Dear Life

There’s a contentment to Brooke Satchwell these days — it shines through as we speak via Zoom to promote her latest project Dear Life, Stan’s emotional new series which drops all episodes on New Year’s Day.

In the series, from the production company Gristmill, Satchwell plays a recently bereaved young woman who embarks on a quest to connect with the recipients of her deceased partner’s organs. It sounds like a heavy concept, and it is.

But like Satchwell, the show, which looks at grief and connection after loss, wears its heaviness lightly — and Satchwell packs a powerful performance in the light-and-dark six-part series.

“That’s lovely of you to say — thank you,” she says.

“It takes work to get to a place where you are able to see (grief) like that, from your own eyes.

“It’s not a big leap to understand what it would be to lose everything, and to feel what my character feels.”

Satchwell, who first came to prominence via her role as fresh-faced teen Anne Wilkinson on Neighbours in 1996, has lived a life in the spotlight, and it hasn’tt always been easy.

There was her well-publicised breakup with partner Matthew Newton, which made headlines in 2007 when he was charged with assaulting her.

Then, just over a year later, Satchwell was back in the news again after being caught up in the horrifying 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

The actress, who was in India filming, was having dinner at an upscale hotel when heavily armed gunmen stormed the venue, leaving at least 80 people dead. She hid in a cupboard to avoid detection.

It’s a lot for anyone to process. But almost two decades on, Satchwell has made peace with the more difficult aspects of her storied life, and she’s channelling it all into her latest project.

“I think in terms of depth of trauma and grief, just like everyone else, I have had my trials, and I know the hurdles,” she explains.

“I know the pains, I know the terrors, and I have done my work to heal them, and do what’s required to progress and move forward and live a healthy, rich life.

“But we all know that these things leave scars, and they live in the body — I’m incredibly fortunate that I get to use my body and express all that through something like this show.”

Dear Life is the creation of esteemed husband-and-wife production team Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope, whose company Gristmill is behind TV hits Upper Middle Bogan, Summer Love, The Librarians and kids’ favourite Little Lunch.

Dear Life was a project they’d long been thinking about.

“We began developing Dear Life several years ago,” Butler and Hope explain.

“The series needed a long gestation period to explore the true depth of the core idea: someone has to die so someone else can live.

“The series begins as one woman’s path to healing blossoms into a rich relationship drama about life and death, crime and punishment, and — our favourite Gristmill themes — love and connection.”

In the first episode, we see Satchwell’s character Lillian Vandenburg struggling to come to terms with a grief so heavy it threatens to consume her.

Her fiance Ash (Khisraw Jones-Shukoor), a doctor on an emergency ward, has been killed at the hands of an ice-addicted patient, and it had been Lillian’s decision to turn off his life support and honour his wishes to donate his organs.

The story picks up a few months on from the devastating events. Lillian is drowning in her grief when she unexpectedly receives a message from one of the anonymous recipients of Ash’s organs.

Going against protocol, she decides to track down the man, precipitating a chain of events that sees her moving towards healing from the trauma that has consumed her life these past few months.

The project was a deeply affecting one for all those involved — audiences will likely connect powerfully to it, too — and all those who were involved went to pains to make sure things were kept light on set.

“Everyone is human and everyone loves their people,” Satchwell explains.

“Everybody is terrified of losing their people, so it was very up close and personal, the subject matter, for everyone, whether they were holding a boom, or handing out Panadol (as a nurse on set).

“But what was so magnificent was the respect and reverence that everyone had for having this conversation, and for telling these stories and holding this space.

“The care for each other! I would look over and see inter-departmental support; people checking on each other and seeing how they were doing.

“We were working hard, and fast, as you do in Australia, but it was really magic — it was only ever really uplifting, because of the care (Robyn and Wayne) put into it.”

“At first glance, Dear Life may seem to be a show about grief, but to us, it’s about hope. And it’s about the preciousness of life,” Hope and Butler explain.

“There’s something really beautiful that happens in every hospital in the world, in the moment between life and death as a dying patient is wheeled through the hospital to become a donor, and everyone stops what they are doing — all the nurses, doctors, orderlies, cleaners — form a silent guard of honour to acknowledge the donor’s contribution.”

Before embarking on the series, which was filmed in Ballarat in regional Victoria, producers worked with DonateLife Victoria, which coordinates all organ and tissue donation across the State.

The organisation shared their insights, and also connected them with a wider transplant community .

Hope and Butler’s wish is for the series to prompt a discussion of the importance of this vital service (in Australia, organ donation rates are low). They are excited for the potential it has to raise awareness, and for it to have “a meaningful social impact.”

“Its absolutely a discussion that needs to be had,” says Satchwell, herself an organ donor.

“We had incredible briefings and resources available to us through DonateLife, who have been working so intimately with Wayne and Robin since they went to them with the idea years ago.

“Through that connection they have then been introduced to recipients and donors who have been incredibly generous with their stories.”

Satchwell says she’s proud of her association with Dear Life, and is looking forward to hearing what audiences think of the series.

“You walk long enough in this lifetime and you are exposed to a hell of a lot,” she goes on to explain.

“But that’s what I love about what I do — I love the storytelling, and that’s why I do what I do.

“Because it’s like medicine: it’s OK to feel all the things, and be upside down and back to front and completely messy . . .

“Life is this crazy rollercoaster that has taken me in these crazy directions, up and down and lots of roundabouts, and that is awesome.

“You just have to never, never, never give up.”

Dear Life premieres on December 31 on Stan.