A new Australian comedy series 'Nugget is Dead' explores the world of public relations with witty satire, focusing on two young women navigating the cutthroat world of spin and scandal. The series, starring Jessica Zerbst and Fiona Owen, delves into the manipulation of narratives, the use of social media, and the influence of political powers on public perception.
We all know how it goes: a celebrity, businessman or sportsperson is caught out doing something they shouldn’t. The press and social media swoop and then the damage control starts. Think sympathetic photo opportunities. A long-suffering partner roped into an interview. A charity is created. And then – bingo! – a scandal is forgotten, a new narrative has been produced, and a career is left, mostly, intact. We’ve seen it all before.
“The Johnny Depp case was the big one while we were writing and pitching the show,” says Zerbst. “Teenagers were coming with information, your grandparents knew about it. It was a conversation where everyone had a perspective on it. And it was also the main one where you were learning about the bots, the infiltration and the influence from political governments.” For the uninitiated, the Depp scandal centred around the 2022 defamation case between Depp and his former wife Amber Heard, who accused each other of domestic violence. The trial became a media sensation, with Heard trolled relentlessly by Saudi-backed Twitter accounts, while Depp was largely painted as innocent. It was seen as a classic case of “Darvo” – deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender – a tactic used by PR firms to discredit women. “For the Amber v Johnny case to be a global and political sort of issue, where you’ve got Saudi Arabia funnelling all these trolls into a debate between a married couple in Hollywood, it’s absolutely insane,” Owen says.The show is set in the public relations firm of Fritz & Randell, Owen and Zerbst play Nicole Kidman and Greta Goldman, two junior PRs suddenly thrust into leadership when the firm’s decrepit CEO Frank Fritz (Peter Carroll) dies. To distract from an impending PR disaster, the company’s owner Bobby Bahl (Claude Jabbour) anoints Nicole and Greta over long-time executive Ian Randell (Charles Firth). Together, they have to navigate a footballer’s disastrous night out, spin a bullying CEO out of a PR disaster by targeting “the misogynistic medical profession” and bury a young Hollywood star’s kink. Is it a genuine promotion for the two women or, you know, optics? “It’s the idea of that glass boardroom,” says Zerbst. “For so long, they have been outside of that glass boardroom and for the girls that represents, for them, the inner circle. We can be part of this. We can have this power. “But when we were doing our research, we came across this term … ‘glass cliffing’, which is … where women are promoted to positions of power when a company is in turmoil, and she’s not given the structure of support, she’s put there to take the fall, to be a pain sponge.” Owen jumps in: “And mop up the blood, dispose of that, and then get the man back in.” Nugget is Dead: A Christmas Story “We anchor each other,” says Owen. “I don’t really remember the last time we had an actual argument about anything creative.” Says Zerbst: “We are so lucky to be in a place where we can turn up to work as our full selves and be who we want to be, and be strong and be excited. And that can be a difficult thing to find a partner that gets you and knows that.” gained more than 90 million views online – and it builds on their previous characters, situations and satire. “The news stories that were the most inspiring and interesting to us were often these corporate scandals, these cancellation stories,” says Zerbst. “So we’ve always been across creating satire around that, and finding the satirical lens for those hot-button topics.“And then we’ve always had these characters, these PR girls who are savvy, who are switched on, who are so smart and intelligent about the way the media operates and we wanted to combine our interest in these corporate scandals, our background in political satire and comedy, and creating a universe in which it is plausible that two young women can become the new power brokers in their office environment.” Adds Owen: “Exactly. There’s not that many areas in which your youth and even your gender can help you because so many institutions are so male dominated, and this is the same thing, until it’s not.” As the bumbling Ian Randell, Firth is the perfect foil to Owen and Zerbst’s characters, a dynamic reflected in real life. “It’s not too dissimilar,” says Zerbst, laughing. “We joke that the show’s a documentary because he comes to the writers’ room with this different perspective, these different generational references, and we just go, ‘What are you saying?’” Adds Owen: “And sometimes we’ll just say, ‘Was that gibberish?’ He’ll reference names and say, ‘Oh, it’s kind of like Baby John Burgess.’ And we’ll be like, ‘Who? Have you just made that up?’“One of the best parts of the show was just seeing him come to life as that character. He just wears his heart on his sleeve. A lot of actors are so wooden, self-conscious. He just gives you everything.
Television COMEDY TELEVISION PUBLIC RELATIONS SATIRE AUSTRALIA 'NUGGET IS DEAD' JESSICA ZERBST FIONA OWEN JOHNNY DEPP AMBER HEARD MEDIA SOCIAL MEDIA POLITICS
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