Shoshana McCallum Photo: Supplied
Harry McNaughton Photo: Screenshot
NZ’s latest comedy offering, Madam, is putting the spotlight on sex work. Based on the soon-to-be published memoir by Antonia Murphy, who ran an ethical brothel in Whangarei for three years.
Sex work was decriminalised in New Zealand in 2003 with the Prostitution Reform Act. While an ethical escort agency may seem paradoxical, for Murphy, consent was the key. The workers were never forced to take a booking, clients were told to be respectful and behave safely and the escorts were paid 10 times the minimum wage.
Murphy had written an article about her business venture in the Huffington Post before a television producer contacted her in 2021 about making it into a show. NZ creators and writers, Shoshana McCallum (INSiDE, Head High, Creamerie) and Harry McNaughton (The Pact, Under the Vines, Shortland Street) were approached to bring the story to life.
Madam Photo: Kirsty Griffin
It’s an all-star cast including Rachel Griffiths (Six Feet Under, Brothers and Sisters, Muriel’s Wedding), Martin Henderson (Virgin River), Robbie Magasiva (Wentworth, Sione’s Wedding) and Danielle Cormack (Wentworth, Rake). Griffith’s character, Mack, finds out her husband has been cheating on her with a sex worker, and her response to both the philandering and the mounting family debt is to start an ethical brothel in the small town.
But bringing sex work to the small screen in Aotearoa had its challenges and pressures. The concept of the show was widely welcomed but there were moments the pair had to check themselves.
“With this source material - a topic that’s very important, it needs to be told in the right way so I think we freaked ourselves out more than any resistance we had.
“We’ve got two responsibilities - tell a good story and fulfill the genre expectations and on the other hand, make sure we tell the story with integrity which is difficult to do with a topic like sex work.” says McNaughton.
One aspect the creators are particularly proud of was having sex work representation from the story table to the screen.
“But as non-judgemental and triumphant in terms of how it talks about female sexuality, that’s not always the case in the real world. There are women who are feeling whatever way they’re feeling about the show, but not as vocal as they could be.” McNaughton.
Madam Photo: Kirsty Griffin
The show portrays the industry as a complicated field - it’s not good or bad. The women are complex and their reasons for being in the sex work industry differ.
“Hopefully some of that has made it on screen.”
The cast is the core and heart of this story. The women portrayed as the ‘Sweethearts’ are a mix of different ages, experience, body types and backgrounds - representing the reality of the industry.
Long-time friends and both performers themselves, McCallum and McNaughton were excited to cast the actors, many of whom have a strong background in comedy, and from there, write to and around the cast.
Madam Photo: Kirsty Griffin
Finding out Rachel Griffiths said ‘yes’ to the project took some time to process.
“She’s an icon”, says McNaughton, “it’s a bit of that Kiwi mentality. Is she going to like us? Is she going to like the scripts? What will she think of us?”.
Working with the likes of Griffths and Henderson, who’ve spent the majority of their careers on US productions, the creators observed a different way of working.
“What I saw with them in different ways was a refusal to accept things that weren’t good enough. That’s something I really learnt from this process,” says McNaughton.
Whether it be the writing of a scene, or acting, there was a sense of never settling with the internationally-facing show.
With filming having wrapped last year, there’s been time to reflect. In the US there’s a culture of having the showrunner on set and constantly reworking scenes as you go - a rarity in New Zealand.
“We don’t really have that in New Zealand but we did on this show. At the time it felt so hard but now, it was the most incredible gift with everyone supporting that process,” remarks McCallum.
“This show is showing sex work in a very accepting light. It touches on stigma. We were really keen to show it in a positive way that hasn’t necessarily been seen before.”
