Sally-Anne Upton is one of Australia’s most distinguished and respected actors. Perhaps best known for playing “Juicy” Lucy Gambaro on Wentworth, her latest role sees her guest starring on the supernatural ABC ME series Crazy Fun Park.

I feel like you’re one of those performers, who whenever you appear on the screen, people go, “Ah, there she is!” You’re a reassuring presence.
I don’t know what that is. I think I’ve always been interested in people. I have great compassion for people in distress, I think that’s why I became a nurse. My work with the Victorian Benevolent Actors’ Trust over the 24, 25 years I’ve been on that committee – you just realise how people have moments in their lives when they need help.

Do you think all the other work you’ve done – with the Trust, as a nurse, as a celebrant – makes you a better actor?
Personally, for myself, I draw off those experiences. When I teach, I say to the young people, “do you want to be famous, or do you want to be a working actor?” They look at me bamboozled, they say, “well I want both”. I think because of all the reality things and this influencing thing on platforms, people can be celebrities in that way. But I say to them, there’s only three percent of actors in that high million-dollar bracket. The rest of us are working actors. And therefore you need to get other skills that enhance it. When I went behind the camera as a unit nurse, I had a colleague come up to me on a show and say, “Aren’t you terribly embarrassed by what you’re doing?” I was floored, I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “You’re an actor, and you’re really good – why are you behind the camera?” I said, “Because there’s no work at the moment and it’s either this or go into a hospital – but at least I’m working around my crew.” I said, “What do you do?” He said, “I’m a telemarketer.” I said, “Aren’t you embarrassed?“

What attracted you to Crazy Fun Park?
When I first got asked to do this project, it was delightful, because it’s not very often, when you’re acting, that you don’t have to do an audition. But because they’ve got such a beautiful new young cast, and some of them it’s their first time on a major thing in front of the camera – you wouldn’t know – they wanted to flower it also with people who have been in the industry and will be sympathetic to the whole process. So I felt very honoured to be asked, and when I read the project and realised what Nicholas (Verso) has created, I wanted to ask him a million questions. And he was delightful, he was really good to work for.

You play Dawn in Crazy Fun Park. Tell me about Dawn.
Dawn’s just your local old-fashioned milk bar owner, which I love. It was done in a milk bar over in Williamstown and it was really a treat to walk into an old-fashioned big milk bar, still running the same way. Dawn’s there to give a bit of guidance – one of those moments where she notices that Chester (lead actor Henry Strand) is not right. She’s concerned about his welfare.

It sounds like you’re excited about the project, which must not always be the case for an actor, since you sometimes have to take whatever work is on offer.
Well, yeah, you do, and there are certain things that stick out as different. Like the whole premise of it being set in a fun park, and why was it set in a fun park. It was really interesting, because when it came to my attention, my mind immediately went back to the time in Sydney when the fire happened at Luna Park. I was nursing at that time and I was travelling back from Wollongong, so I was listening to the radio driving home, and it brought it home to me, because one of the kids who died lived up the road from me. It was always that thing of somebody going to have a fun day, and they lose their lives. And Nick’s taken it further: to what happens to the souls of those people.

There are a lot of heavy themes in this show – it’s about life after death, but also about how the living deal with death, which is something we all have to face at some point.
And we’re so frightened of it. I’m a celebrant, so I deal with not only marrying people, I deal with celebrations of people’s lives when they pass. And a lot of people find it incredibly difficult, especially if it’s their first experience at a funeral. People want to run a mile. We’re so removed from it, whereas there are a lot of cultures that aren’t, where they’re with the body for three days, they celebrate the life that was before they even get to the funeral. Our ancestors, the men would be out the back digging the grave and the women would have the body on the table preparing it. It was very tactile, very hands-on. Nowadays it’s all shunned away.

Crazy Fun Park premieres on ABC Me, Sunday, 6pm.