It’s a golden rule for young actors. Or even old ones. Never, ever get attached to a script. “You can’t get too invested in a role just in case you don’t get it,” says Natalie Abbott. “Coz if you miss out, then you get the sads.”

For better or worse, though, Abbott ignored her own – and everyone else’s – advice when she read the draft script of Aftertaste. “I was, like, hooked. And I thought: Oh no. Now I really care about this show. And if I don’t get this role I’ll be so upset.”

Fortunately for everyone, Abbott did get the role: of Diana West in the wicked local comedy that became a breakout hit last year. Erik Thomson is Easton West, the arrogant a-hole of a celebrity chef who returns in disgrace to his hometown in the Adelaide Hills. Diana is his niece, a genius pastry chef whose desserts modelled on female genitalia create a sensation.

It’s a magnificent parody of both food porn, and our obsession with chefs, food and cooking as entertainment. It’s a family drama. It’s the story of a middle-aged guy steeped in toxic masculinity, trying to find his place in the 21st century. And it’s very much about Diana’s journey from youthful ebullience to deep self-doubt and out the other side to eff-you confidence.

“I love Diana,” Abbott says. “She’s such a beautiful person. She’s such a firecracker. She has so much passion for her art, her baking. And she really is the one in the family who’s a bit more self-aware.”

And Abbott says while, as an actor, you’re always trying to find the points of connection between your own nature and the character you’re playing, there are definitely areas where she and Diana diverge.

“I do have a bit of a potty mouth, but I’m not nearly as inventive as Diana.” (The character’s cussing is hilariously ingenious.) “I tend to stick to the standards, the classics.” The two young women share a passion for their art and their craft and a determination to give it their all. “But I think Diana’s a little bit more sure of herself. She’s much more confident than I was at her age. She was only 19 in the first season, 20 now. And at the end of season one she just went off to London. I think that is really ballsy – and something that I definitely wouldn’t do.”

Diana also relishes a fight. “I’m the very opposite,” Abbott says. “Just the word ‘confrontation’ sends a shiver through me. So getting the opportunity to play that is really exhilarating. She doesn’t hold back.”