The first series of Foxtel’s The Twelve brough audiences into a murder mystery slowly played out week by week showing the case from the perspectives of the jurors, lawyers, the accused and family members of the victim.
For its second season the action has moved from the shores of Sydney harbour to a country town in Western Australia. Returning is Barrister Brett Colby (Sam Neill), arriving at the small town to defend a farm worker Patrick Harrows (Erroll Shand) who may have had a role in the death of his employer, the almost universally disliked Bernice Price (Kris McQuade).
Also accused of playing a part in the murder is Sasha Price, Bernice’s daughter and Patrick’s one-time lover. She has her own legal representation, Merideth Nelson-Moore (Frances O’Connor).
The gripping series in playing on Foxtel, with fans eagerly awaiting each weekly installment where more elements of the story are revealed. While the first series was brilliant drama, you can easily leap into the new series without having seen the first outing.
For actor Amy Mathews, best known for playing Rachel Armstrong on Home and Away getting cast in the role of accused murder Sasha Price was a dream come true.
“When I auditioned for it, I thought, ‘Oh, they won’t give me this role. But maybe I’ll get one of the jurors. That’d be really good.’ And they gave me this huge role. And I thought, ‘Holy shit! Okay, yeah, right.’
“I had a couple of months to kind of put myself together and go, ‘You can do this. You can do this.’ It was it was such a huge gift that I was really taken by surprise.” Mathews shared when we spoke about the series.
Mathews shared her love for the character of Sasha Price, saying she immediately fell in love with the character.
“She’s amazing. She’s from a wealthy family. It’s just her and her mum living on this huge cattle property, and they work their arses off every day. She doesn’t get out much, she hasn’t had a lot of relationships. She’s a little unlucky in love, a little insecure, a little romantic, but she’s also incredibly like visceral and strong and grounded.
Mathews says the choice to set the series is a small town was also inspired, because it creates the microcosm of what’s going on in the court, but also what’s going on in a very insular community.
“We take it out of the city, we go to the wheatbelt. It’s a legal drama and it poses the question of can you have a subjective trial, with no prejudice or unconscious bias, when everybody knows each other?
“I mean, word spreads like wildfire. That’s what the interconnectedness is all from talking and telling stories of what’s happening with everyone. It’s a tricky one, the anonymity of an urban city and people being objective, you don’t get that in a rural setting.”
Amy Mathews shared that she enjoyed shooting the series in Western Australia around the towns of York and Toodyay as well as working with WA trained directors including Stevie Cruz-Martin and Ben Young. She also got to work alongside acting legend Sam Neill.
It’s an experience she described as both amazing and surreal.
“I knew we had a couple of big scenes together. And I thought, ‘Just watch him’. He’s been doing it for so long and he’s obviously doing something right, because he continues to work and work.”
While audiences are loving the mystery of the series Mathews shared that filming it was also a bit of a mystery too because the actors were not given the ending straight away, at first she was only given the scripts for the first four episodes.
“I sat with the first four EPS for two months reading and reading and reading and reading and going, ‘what happens!’ I didn’t get the last four until we came together for rehearsal.”
See Season 2 of The Twelve on Binge and Foxtel Showcase.
