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If Five Bedrooms, the share-house drama by Offspring writers Christine Bartlett and Michael Lucas, tapped into the housing crisis when it premiered on Network Ten in 2019, it’s reached peak zeitgeist with its fourth season.
The original five singles (Kat Stewart, Stephen Peacocke, Doris Younane, Roy Joseph and Katie Robertson) who pooled their resources to buy a Victorian-fronted home in a leafy street in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern, have become six, with the addition of Simmo (Johnny Carr), the partner of bubbly real estate agent Ainsley Elling (Robertson).
Katie Robertson’s Five Bedrooms character has endured the mostcatastrophic trajectory all the housemates.
Otherwise, they’re the same bunch of complicated individuals who have formed their chosen family, with whom we have laughed and cheered and cried as they have navigated life and love.
“Michael and Christine have been wonderful in allowing us agency with our characters,” says Robertson, from her home in remote Tasmania. “We have really big conversations throughout filming, but ultimately we have full confidence in them. We’ve got the utmost faith that they have this greater plan. Each season is better than the last and that’s really all you can hope for when you’re making a show that’s long running.”
Fans will be aware Robertson’s character has endured the most catastrophic trajectory of them all, with the stillbirth of Ainsley’s baby, Evie, in season two. Robertson continues to receive feedback from viewers praising the show’s treatment of the subject.
“I’m really, really proud of that episode and I’m proud of the story that we told,” she says. “It’s a subject that is still really uncomfortable. People are still reaching out and saying how touched they were – ‘That happened to me’ and ‘That happened to my friend’. I look back on that time and it was a bit of a blur, but it was also really quite precious.”
The cast of Five Bedrooms (from left) Katie Robertson, Stephen Peacocke, Kat Stewart, Roy Joseph, Doris Younane and Johnny Carr.
When she filmed that devastating scene, Robertson’s own baby, George, was 11 weeks old, and being brought into the house every three hours by Robertson’s partner, Jesse Dugan, who she also worked with on Rosehaven. George had made his appearance on the show much earlier, when Ainsley discovered she was pregnant to her dastardly ex, Lachlan (Hugh Sheridan, who returns this season). It was the same day Robertson also found out she was pregnant.
“It was kind of a surprise for me, too, as well as Ainsley! I did actually say to Hugh, ‘Just so you know, this is for real. I actually am pregnant!’ It gave the scene this extra special thing.”
This season promises more fireworks, curveballs, and shatteringly real plot twists. There will be a life-changing inheritance, graduations, milestone birthdays, and another funeral. Evie will remain part of the storyline.
“It was important to me and to the writers who, without sort of whacking you over the head with it, make it known that Ainsley is always going to be carrying that with her,” says Robertsoon. “We wanted to look at truthful and real ways that a person is changed after going through something like that. There’s the grief that doesn’t go away, but there are also moments of her really bravely saying, ‘I also want to accept joy in my life again and I’m going to allow myself to be happy and figure out what I want.’”
Robertson shares Ainsley’s relentless sense of optimism.
“That’s what inherently drew me to her,” she says. “When I first read the script, I just went, ‘Oh God, I know her’. I kind of am her in a lot of ways and the optimism is one part of it.”
When not filming Five Bedrooms, Robertson is enjoying family life in Tasmania, and the increased work opportunities there. She puts that down to The Kettering Incident and Rosehaven putting the state on the entertainment industry map. Last year she shot Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan’s forthcoming Amazon Prime series, Deadloch, in a role she says is a “huge departure” from Ainsley and her Rosehaven character, Grace, the sweet GP girlfriend of Luke McGregor’s alter ego. “I hope people don’t realise it’s me!”
Five Bedrooms streams on Paramount+ from May 14.
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