The creators of the SBS family history show, Who Do You Think You Are ?, do not reveal the final cut of the show to the participants, so Simon Baker is accepting the word that his episode is a piece of excel TV Slow and very moving. .
The 52-year-old actor had approached a couple of times to do the show, but he always said no, “even though my mother, sister and children said ‘you should do'”. Finally, he capitulated, “I thought, we’ll just see what kind of adventure it is and where it will take me.”
In its episode, the first of the 13th season of the popular SBS show, historians highlight Baker’s Dutch-Australian heritage, focusing on what happened in Australia. (Staying during international border closures meant doing anything outside the country would have been difficult, anyway.)
The actor and director had recently returned to Australia after spending decades of his career in California, where he starred in the hit television series The Mentalist and The Guardian. Since returning home, he has directed an adaptation of Tim Winton’s novel Breath and, more recently, appeared in the feature film debut of Kathryn Barton’s artist Blaze.
The last invitation to the show came at the right time for Baker. “I’ve seen the show before, and people have a very focused idea of what I wanted to get out of it,” he says. “I didn’t really have that, but it came at a certain point in my life recently where there were a lot of changes and changes, so it was a good time to take stock.”
The trailer for the 13th season of Who Do You Think You Are?
Baker was born in Launceston in 1969. Her father, Barry Baker, was a school mechanic and janitor, and her mother, Elizabeth, was a high school English teacher. He was only 19 when Baker, the second of the Bakers’ two children, was born.
“And soon after, my parents moved to the highlands of New Guinea, with two children, to a remote area,” he says. The show sums up the family’s brief time there: “They went on this amazing adventure, and they weren’t together again.”
His mother remarried. Baker had contact with his father, but as he reveals on the show, “I didn’t know he was my father. He was a family friend, Uncle Barry. I struggled with that.”
A reunion would take place when Baker was 18, but in the meantime the family moved to the beach community of Lennox Head, north NSW, where Baker became an avid surfer.
“It was a small community and then it was an idyllic place to live,” says Baker. “I felt a very strong sense of belonging to that place and I still have it. It was a phenomenal childhood in that sense, but personal family life was difficult.”
“I looked back on my immediate family like this kind of disaster. But the truth is that families have many different forms … Baker and his mother, Elizabeth. Photography: SBS
Before continuing Who do you think you are ?, Baker “looked back on my immediate family like this kind of disaster,” he says. “But the truth is that families have many different forms and I think if you can look at your own past and the past of your ancestors with compassion, you can take it forward with a little more wisdom.”
Revealing her parents ’story was“ a challenge, ”she says. “I’m pretty shy … But there’s a kind of psychological reason why I became an actor. The initial desire when I was young was to connect with people, the idea of seeing someone in a story on a screen with which you could identify, and it could help you understand feelings within you that you didn’t necessarily know how to articulate. When I saw certain episodes of Who Do You Think You Are ?, I felt a connection to that person, and with that, you don’t feel alone. “
Sign up for the Guardian Australia Weekend Culture and Lifestyle email
Baker delves into both sides of his family tree and each branch offers amazing stories. There is the three-time great-grandfather, an orphan with a connection to Oscar Wilde who eventually opened Melbourne’s first eye and ear hospital (now the Royal Victoria). There are the ancestors who walked for weeks from the hills of Adelaide to the outskirts of Ballarat, in search of gold with their six children in tow. And his paternal grandmother, a particularly resilient woman who overcame poverty and raised her children alone after World War II.
“Doing the show really illuminates your own insignificance,” Baker says. “All of these ancestors have these stories, and some of them are so remarkable and powerful. I still constantly think of the ancestor who walked all the way to Ballarat.
How would it have gone for Baker, in the circumstances of his ancestors? “It would have gone well. All the harshness of the circumstances was relative to the time. The luxuries we enjoy now shape our perspective. What people did in the past, like walking to Ballarat, may now seem outrageous to us. But then, if you go to the golden fields, the only way to get there is on foot. “
Each side of his family tree experienced both wealth and poverty, and his stories illustrate exactly how money can shape destiny.
“I understood the side of my father’s family, because I grew up in a blue-collar environment,” he says. “But at the same time, my life has given me enough money to be financially stable. Sometimes, with privileges, you can get to a place where you assume everyone is in a place where you have a choice. Sometimes for the privileged It’s hard for them to know that the vast majority of people have moments of struggle. “