Fiona Samuel: Marching to success…

Interview – 2012

Fiona Samuel has found success as an actor, writer and director. Her first screen acting job was in long-running soap Close to Home. But Samuel’s greatest passion is for writing and directing. She was the creative force behind pioneering female-centric series The Marching Girls, and has written for Outrageous Fortune, The Almighty Johnsons and Interrogation. Samuel also wrote and directed award-winning TV movies Piece of My Heart, and Bliss: The Beginning of Katherine Mansfield., and wrote 2025 movie Pike River.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Samuel talks about:

Being too theatrical while acting on soap Close to Home
Creating The Marching Girls
Learning about scriptwriting while working on the show
Adding a prostitute to Fiona Farrell's original short story for TV film Home Movie
How a surprising statistic led her to create the documentary Virginity
The decade it took to get Piece of My Heart funded
Finding the powerhouse cast
Bringing a fresh yet authentic feel to Bliss: The Beginning of Katherine Mansfield
Wishing she had been given more opportunities in her career

This video was first uploaded on 10 December 2012, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview, Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside

We did want to make something beautiful, but beautiful in our own terms, which meant that it had to have that liveliness in it...
– Fiona Samuel on writing and directing 2011 telemovie Bliss: The Beginning of Katherine Mansfield

Fiona's Full Profile