The Lancaster Miller Affair
1985 film by Henri Safran
The Lancaster Miller Affair is a 1985 Australian television miniseries that first aired on the Nine Network on 6 July 1985. The five hour-long episodes tell the story of the relationship between Bill Lancaster and Jessie Miller.
Cast
Kerry Mack as Jessica "Chubbie" Miller
Nicholas Eadie as Bill Lancaster
Malcolm Robertson as James Carson
Wayne Cull as Haden Clarke
Peter Kowitz as Maddox
Barry Hill as Edward Lancaster
June Salter as Maud Lancaster
Lisa Armytage as Anne Lancaster
John Lee as Charles Colby
Maureen Edwards as Alice Burgess
David Nettheim as Dr Tallman
Gerard Maguire as Frank Upton
John O'May as J.F. Russell
Bud Tingwell as Sam Hayes
Gus Mercurio as Harry Middleton
Paul Dawber as Carson's Associate
Peter Moon as Reporter #2
Production
The mini series became notorious for a clash with Australia's Actors Equity. The lead male roles of Lancaster and his friend Hayden Clarke were offered to Sam Neill and John Hargreaves, who turned them down. The producers then tested a large number of actors but claimed none of them were suitable and cast non-Australians Peter Firth, Don Batte and Joseph Bottoms. Equity objected claiming the tests of the Australian actors rejected had not been properly carried out. Shooting was put back but eventually Australians Kerry Mack, Nicholas Eadie and Wayne Cull were cast.
The miniseries was filmed in and around Sydney and Melbourne. The shoot went for twelve weeks. $545,000 of the budget came from Film Victoria.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Lancaster Miller Affair” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.