“I can do awful!” Jackie Woodburne glams down for The Imposter

When it was agreed Neighbours‘ Jackie Woodburne would play the role of hotel proprietor Helen O’Riley in the new 10 miniseries The Imposter, she was adamant a dressing down was in order.

“I said, ‘Look, she’s got to look so different to Susan (Kennedy), because I can’t be on air in a show just a couple of months later and still look like Susan, because it just won’t work.’ Plus, I felt she was somebody who, her whole life, has been spent in disappointment and resentment. She’s just an angry woman,” she tells TV Tonight.

“I talked to the costume designer Nick Wakeley about getting most of her clothes secondhand, because I think 20 years ago, when the hotel was doing well, she probably bought pretty expensive, good quality stuff. But she hasn’t replaced it, because the hotel has not done well for a long time. So she wears these clothes that are 20 years out of fashion.

“We went online and looked at second-hand sites, and I went into a few op shops looking for little treasures.”

Then there is a wig, which, whilst far from flattering, is meant to add to Helen’s decline.

“The haircut that I had as Susan is pretty identifiable on me as Susan. But I didn’t think she’d be somebody who bothered colouring her hair. She would stay neat and tidy, but she would let it go grey. So again, I thought, she probably gets the same haircut every time,” she continues.

“So we found the wig, which I think is just gold. I mean, I look absolutely horrific, but I think I look exactly what she should look like! Her whole demeanour… there was no attempt to make me look pretty with lighting.”

Woodburne also has very little make-up for the role.

“There’s very, very little makeup… no attempt to make me look glamorous in any way. I tried to make her feel heavier, walking more with flatter feet… her whole demeanour is older,” she maintains.

“She’s not a young spirit. She’s not a young heart. She has no humour in her. No sense of joy in life, or anything. That’s what ages a person, I think.”

Woodburne was on board early for The Imposter after creator and Neighbours executive producer Jason Herbison wrote the role with her in mind.

“He said, ‘I’ve got this story, and I’ve got this character, and I want you to play her, and she’s awful.’

“And I thought, ‘Great, I can do awful!’ So it started there, but obviously that’s a long time before Neighbours wrapped up,” she recalls.

“That’s music to an actor’s ear, isn’t it? No audition. He just said, ‘Would you do it?’ Then when he started telling me about her, I thought, ‘Oh my God,’ because she is the polar opposite of Susan. She really couldn’t be more different. And what a gift that (role) was.

“So I really felt such a part of his writing journey as a someone who could listen to him bounce ideas around.

“What was great was being able to come up with Helen’s backstory. I said to Jason, ‘It’s great for somebody to play a complete arsehole but there has to be a reason why they’re an arsehole.’ That makes it so much more interesting.”

In The Imposter matriarch Helen refuses to sell her sprawling seaside hotel, despite pressure from her three adult children.

Little do they know, Helen is hiding a secret, a daughter she gave up for adoption decades ago, Amanda (Kym Marsh), suddenly appears. Helen welcomes her with open arms— but is Amanda who she says she is? It sets the scene for betrayal and ultimately, murder.

The series has already screened in the UK as an event across 4 consecutive nights.

“In the UK at this time of year it’s a great ratings period, because everybody’s at home watching telly. It’s cold. it’s Christmas, so people are at home,” she explains.

“It’s not the same as soap, but it is absolutely heightened in that way. Episode One has a lot of who’s-who and the relationships with each other because there are several main characters involved….. but I tell you by the end of Episode Two, it’s belting along.”

Also featuring as her three adult children are Jane Harber, Don Hany and Jackson Gallagher.

“What an ugly bunch of children! Can I just say?” she laughs. “I mean you look at Helen and go, ‘How the hell did that happen?’ But obviously, Reg, her late husband, was a very attractive man.”

Also featuring are Dannii Minogue, in her first locally produced television drama in more than three decades, Charlie Clausen (Prosper, Home and Away), Chi Nguyen (Class of ’07, Fisk), Kabir Singh (Plum, The Tourist) and newcomer, Adeline Williams.

Woodburne also performs the role with an Irish accent, which came naturally, but may surprise some Neighbours fans.

“Jason’s got connections through his family to Northern Ireland, which I think is probably one of the things that put me in his mind. I was born in Northern Ireland.

“I’ve grown up with that accent my whole life,” she says. “My dad and I spoke like that to each other always. Mostly for a joke, like, we would do it to extremes. My brothers have that accent. I hear it all the time. I was only three when we came to Australia so mine’s tempered a bit. And of course, as an actor, I had to find an Australian accent, which I’ve always done, because I grew up here. So that comes very naturally to me as well. But the Irish accent is very instinctive.”

In Australia the series screens across two nights, as a thriller with a $30m hotel business at stake, a “horrible mother” and a family dynamic thrown into chaos.

“People are prepared to go to extreme measures – about as extreme as they get – to get the outcome that they want,” Woodburne insists.

“If people want to watch four hours of a kind of fast-paced whodunnit -it’s not really a whodunnit, it’s a ‘whydunnit’- a bit of a thriller, I think they’re going to love it.

“It’s very entertaining television.”

The Imposter Parts 1 + 2 8pm Sunday, 21 December at 8.00pm / Parts 3 + 4: Monday, 22 December at 8:30pm on 10