It's in the news today, but it was actually on TV Reload.
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Hey guys, welcome back to TV Reload. I want to thank you for clicking and downloading on today's episode with Kelsey Munroe, the creator of Bump, which has its final series now available on STAN Australia. I have been such a big fan of Bump right from the start, like a lot of Australians watching it on Boxing Day or binging it on Boxing Day. I originally thought it was going to be quite different to the previous collaborations of
John and Dan Edwards with Claudia Carvin. Growing up with shows like Secret Love of Us and Love My Way, I was used to a particular tone. But I quite quickly realized that Bump had every single aspect of their extraordinary vision and Kelsey had brought.
Them an idea that would keep us in thralled.
For five seasons, something very rare in Australia. Kelsey will unpack the way on which she found herself leaping from being a journalist to a TV content creator. We will chat about her relationship with Claudia Carvin and.
How they shared very similar ideas on humor. I find out what it was like to.
Bring Natalie Morris, the actress who plays Ollie, into the writer's room for season five. You will get everything from how Kelsey felt about this being her final series, what moment offered her closure, and what is next for Kelsi Munroe moving forward. There was actually so much to talk about, as usual, with so many inside revelations, So guys sit back and relax as we unpack the wonderful world of Bump,
now available on Stan Australia. I wanted to ask you about what the decision was consciously I uncouple with this show.
My kids were.
Really little when I started making this show, and that kind of when I look at them now, I gotter started high school, and that makes you realize how much time there's been. Kids on the show have growing up. Nat and Carlos and Yanni and Sofia. They're all like babies in their very early twenties or teens in Yuannie's case.
And it's been a really beautiful process.
And I feel like we could do it in this creatively satisfying way and totally go out with a bang, And the risk otherwise was I think we could have turned into something that was treading water and maybe become soapy, which is we've always been aspired to something more elevated than that, and we really wanted to honor that in the show and tie it up in this very powerful kind of way that we're really happy with.
It's always surprising to me how you can make television so potent like this compared to something like a home in a way and neighbors. It could be so easy to create characters and write it like that where it feels like every thought that goes into Bump is very deliberate.
That's good, thank you.
It's extremely thought through, and we take Claude and I take it really seriously everything we're doing, and in so much contribution from the cast now as well, so they all have a lot of ownership over their characters, but certainly in the writer's room.
I like the show to be fun to watch, but I.
Take it dead seriously in terms of like plotting it like the real people with real wants and real interests and real senses of humor, and so yeah, we work really hard to make it as good as we can.
How much of where you started is this where you thought these characters would go how did you go with that process?
This is my first TV show, and I never imagined we would get five seasons. I was always pretty adamant that I wanted to end with olli second pregnancy. I knew that would be a beautiful bookend to the series. So that was always in my head. But so much of it we've figured along the way. Also, the characters kind of told us what to do. They really do feel like fully formed people to me, so there's an internal logic to them to getting too where we got to.
And you were saying that you've had conversations with the actors. How did you go about having those conversations with them? Was that just like on set? Or did you go out for dinner and say, what do you think about Ollie doing this?
Like?
How did you go about those conversations?
It was like a kind of really organic thing because at the beginning, when it came from a sort of all made up story, I was a lot more like protective and I was like, these are the characters, is who they are? And then once we started making it, it was so clear what the casts were bringing to it, and we really felt like we wanted to lean into elements of their real lives, because it just brought this beautiful naturalism to the show. And so we talked to
saff about her faith. We got Yanni to play, you know, suggest music that they really loved in real life. Nat and Carlos have been hugely involved in shaping their own characters' stories, and sometimes it's just little ancdotal things and other times it's like, well, I think, you know, I think they want to do this or that Hollywood pay like this. But it's a really warm conversation and it's I think it's given us a lot of authenticity to the show.
And Paula, oh my god, Paula, like, you know, beautiful Pala plays Rossa. She's just been like she's been a translator for a few seasons now, Like she's just brought all these amazing ideas, like Laura Loca in season four at the wedding, like big Colombian tradition. She's just been an absolute gold mine of like wonderful contributions and suggestions for Rosser, who's just become I think, like a favorite character for everyone.
She's just so good.
Do you know what it's so funny about her character was when she turned up I was like, Oh, I'm going to hate this character, and then as it got to the end of series five, I just was like, I can't believe the trajectory that I've been on with this woman. But now I'm obsessed with her, Like she brings so much heart and a different perspective and a different voice, and I think we need that, we need different voices in television.
Absolutely, And I mean she's brilliant, she speaks four languages, she's just got the most impeccable comic timing. I just think she's amazing, and she's like she's a big star. She's just been a gift to the show. I think she'd only just moved to Australia with her partner when we had the original call out for auditions, and she'd done a little bit of acting before overseas. But she gave her this really low fi self tape in and Claude and I were just like, she's the one, She's
the one. She's amazing, and yeah, she has really grown with the character over time, and I think everyone loves he now.
Claudiger, I think was saying to me that when you guys were doing casting for these characters, that you were looking for real people that felt like people that live in the real world.
So a lot of the people.
That you had in this were first time actors, some of them had never been on screen before. And that's a huge gamble, Like you know, that to me sounds like I'd be nervous about it, but it really has. It's paid off with the authenticity of how real these people feel.
To me, totally, it's a huge gamble.
I mean not only that, but I didn't have a single TV credit before this show, and John and Dan and Claude took a chance on me too, So I guess there was a sort of built into the show's DNA,
an open mindedness about giving new people a chance. And we've and that's been true a crew as well, and people that have come through on the crew side, And I think it's sort of a philosophical approach that Claude and John and Dan have always brought to their shows, which is amazing because it is such a hugeist as so much money involved, and not many producers are brave.
Enough to do it. You know.
I did message Claudia on Instagram when the trailer dropped and I said to her, the trailers every year are so impactful, Like you just amused the choices of music, and so I see the center of message because I rode my bike to the gym and just looped the song from the trailer and just played that over and over again. You also enamored with the way in which the music has suited this series so well.
Standard is a credit for the trailer songs.
But with Claude and I are very closely involved in music, every aspect of music in the series where we're both total music snobs. We love music and we work really hard to with the directors who have amazing inputs in that to get the right kind of interesting and songs.
There's there's sort of two musical parts to show. There's the South American music, there's Colombia and Chilean music, but then there's the like we really are very local like we have you know, local independent Sydney musicians as well, and as part of what it's so much part of the show's DNA and what makes it of the place it's from and the people who are in it.
Yeah, the score is really good.
I always think of the score being the origin story for the White Loatus theme song. Did you watch White Loatus and then did you keep it?
Yeah? I love that show.
I also that's sort of a bit of the bongo drum in the background to create explaining what these characters.
Are going through.
And that's kind of what my loatus started doing. And I was like, where is this thing come from? And I was like, oh my god, it's bump. It's that, you know, letting the audience know that things are silly or intense by the levels of these bongo drums, sort of creating in the background.
Maybe Mike White can give me a job next time. I'm trying to track credit for it.
I's the limit for you.
Like, I just think I loved your story. I remember reading it and hearing about you being a journalist and just teaching yourself the writing or wanting to just write the scripts and see how you do it.
I think it was clicks or there was a short that you were working on.
So that was the spec script that got me in the door at Ralph Diamond. It was a half hour DRAMAEDI set in a broadsheet newspaper, which coincidentally was where I worked for twelve years in a broadsheet newspaper. But it was very funny and quite heightened, removed from real newspaper journalism. But I love that world and I'd still love to make that show. One day you'll be a retro piece one day, you know, the Internet destroying newspapers.
No, I love of it.
But I think one of the Edwards, John Old Dan, one of them, had said to you, no one wants to hear about journalists or something.
That's right.
I tried to remind him of that periodically. I'm like, yeah, I remember you said, no one gives a shit about journalists.
I want to read that script. I want to see that. I want to see that show.
I think it'd be a pretty fun one to make.
Yeah, I know, I was self taught as a screenwriter, and yeah, I had been a journalism for a long time. And I thought, if I want to give it a crack, I really need to. You know, I'm not getting any younger. And I had my second kid, and I tried to spend some of my maternity leave just figuring out how to do this.
I actually know though, to contact John Edwards. Though, had you been a fan of Secret Life of Us and Love my Way and just being up puncher and thought, well, they're the shows that I like, I want to make something like that, and reached out to them directly. I mean, how did that all come about?
I absolutely wish I'd been that strategic, and I absolutely was a fan of Love my Way in particular and a lot of the shows John had made. But I didn't know a single soul in the screen industry. And my one friend worked in our acquisitions at the ABC on the commercial side, and he was the first and only person to read my specscript and he's like, ah,
this is quite good. I might give it to my mate Dan Edwards, and I was like cool, like not having a clue how lucky I was to have that sort of pathway in and I'm and Dan kind of called me a few days later and was like, this is really good.
We want to talk to you.
So it was just I just threw some miraculous stroke of like landed with exactly the right people, and I didn't know anyone else.
It was just a life changing fluke.
It's an interesting story because like there's kind of a premise to bump, you know, like there's no premise that had been there for like Secret Life of Us or Love my Way where there was sort of a concept where with this there was kind of this concept of teenager has a baby, and what was interesting about that concept was, I'm sure I got people to watch it, but this show became so much more than just a teenager having a baby and a toilet.
It was immediately watching.
Episode one you realized that these characters were and could live in the world of Love my Way and secret life of us, Like, these people are real and this isn't just a trick to the show, do you know what I mean?
Yeah, that's really perceptive.
I think like it honestly felt like, in a way, a kind of mildly transgressive trick to pitch this is what the show is. But honestly, I don't know that I would be an audience member for that show if it had been the dumb version of that, you know, like teenage mother, And so I wanted to do a stealth away into like a really fun kind of relationship dramady with that as a sort.
Of a hook. But you're right, no, it was exactly like that.
And I think John and Claude they've always pushed the bounds of what can be made in a join TV and pushed for more realism or naturalism, and I was calming at it from a purely audienced perspective because I've never made anything before to know how to make anything, and I just I just sort of said, well, no one's got time to watch hours like I just want to. It's got to be half an hour.
It's going to be quick, it's got.
To be funny, Like, let's not waste the one time people can watch whatever they want from anywhere in the world. Let's just try and get their attention with what we're making by making it as real as we can.
Yeah, the balance of the humor with the serious is so well put together because there are things that are happening in series five that no spoiler to the audience that are watching it, but there is some really heavy content. But yet we're still finding this lifeline of this humor trickles along through the back. That means that it's not depressing. It means that it feels like life, it feels like it's uplifting. I think that that is a really hard tightrope to walk as a creator.
Yeah, Oh that's great.
I'm so glad you felt that, because I know you've seen all of season five and one of our first audience members.
It's so exciting to hear some feedback on.
It, But that is I mean, it's just life, right, Like I have a lot of close friends who've lost their parents in the last couple of years, and even through the just devastation of it that there's always laughter. And I think that's that's just how we wanted to tread the line in this show. Like I hate watching Ernest Pofos television.
I'm just like, ugh, if I want to be sad, I'll go read the news. I don't.
It has to be fun, it has to be entertaining. But also I think the tonal thing is just it's just our sense of humor. Like claud and my sense of humor, we like having that mix of you know, the occasional gut punch with stuff that's just really fun to watch.
Yeah, I think that that's a part of Claudia's DNA. Like I was watching her Australian Story the other day. I've seen it a couple of times. But what I really like about Claudia is her ability to represent her art as an actor as a producer by creating these moments that I think for her she's lived through you know like she's gone into it, if that makes any sense, She's allowing herself to process things and to think about it. What's interesting about that is that there was two points
where I stopped watching. I watched eight episodes in a row, and then I went and sat in the park. And what was really interesting about my reflection of what I was up to at that point was it was hope. I wasn't sitting in the park. It made me feel invested in life. If that's not too wanky, you know what I mean?
Like I just felt that's fabulous.
I let the wind blow against my face and I took the dog to the park and I just sat there with no music, no nothing, and I was letting this show wash over me.
That's divine, God. I wish we had you know, all the audience was paying as much attention as you are.
That's beautiful. But we really hope for that.
Like that's I love that invested in life. This is a great way of putting it.
There's something really quite beautiful about the investment that people have had as an audience in these characters, and you guys understanding those characters and still delivering.
Them to us.
In a final series like this that is so impactful as an audience.
I'm delighted to you that that's really great.
Are you feeling nervous about the fact that it's also coming to an end or are you ready to do something else?
Like what's going on for you?
I'm feeling like it's a very bittersweet to be kind of winding bump up, like especially when we finished the shoot a few months ago, it was just like, oh my god, all these beautiful people won't all being in the same place again, and that was kind of very bittersweet. But the I feel like we've just made such a
good season and creatively it feels very satisfying. So that kind of makes me excited for people to see it, even though I think there are going to be Yeah, I hope people love it, like you put it beautifully, like there's that sort of roller coaster of emotions, but it's very life affirming, I think. So I'm excited for people to see it. And it always comes out like
when everyone's away. So I've watched most of this like when I'm away down the coast or something not with my friends or with the cast and crew, So it's just exciting to think it's fun.
They're going to be out there.
In the world.
I know so many people that have watched it, they watch it in a chunk, And that's kind of the reason why I watched it in a chunk as well, because I know that people on Boxing Day have eaten a lot of Christmas lunch and they edge out and then they can disappear into this world, which is almost a bit of an antidote for the after Christmas, you know what I mean, Because it is about family, is about the complexities of family, and it makes you think about,
you know, what just happened on Christmas Day. I think that's how a lot of people will find it.
Yeah, and like an escape from your own family.
I was going to ask you about Natalie getting brought into the writer's room because you know, she'd been working as a young actress in this you know, from the get go, and then from season four to season five you welcomed her into the writer's room. Because it's kind of beautiful watching Claudia's relationship with Natalie, Like they look like they've found each other in some kind of soulmates or it. Somehow it feels like Claudia's looking back at
who she was when she started out. There's something kind of a mentorship there and giving back. But yeah, what was the decision in getting Natalie in there and what was that like?
And that's just so clever.
And I think she started over the course of several seasons she started becoming more interesting in the sort of behind the camera aspects of it and the storytelling and direction. And I think I think she wrote a spec script and we saw that and we were, like Jesus, pretty good, and so we brought her in. She co wrote YEA five with beautiful Shanti Gushan, who's one of the writers
to Gooments for a couple of seasons now. And I don't want to speak for that, but I think she really enjoyed being in the writer's room and just sort of seeing how this she just made.
I hope she enjoyed it, but yeah, I think it was.
It was a really great thing to be able to bring her in and get her insight into the character and see her developed that new skill.
It was awesome.
What a collaboration.
I mean, the writer's room are always so fascinating to me, with getting a collection of ideas together and making a conscious narrative, but then having young voices come in. I think that's so important with these shows because so often shows had been in the past written by you know, adults writing for children, and the author is always missing. Where bringing people in from different diversity, in different ages.
You don't know.
It, but you can feel it with bump that that's obviously what's happened.
No, that's really good to hear.
Although I do remember in the first season somebody did, how do you get the you know, the teenager's lingo so authentic? It was kind of like a man a teenager for some some decades.
But well, you know, we talked to people, we listen to people.
A lot of the people involved have kids, but then once we got the cast involved, they were really from that generation and that really helps too.
Do you have a favorite moment from this series, by the way, not maybe not what goes to camera, but maybe a personal reflection from you, maybe while it was being shot or when you were writing that scene for you, Is there a moment that you really feel proud of or resonate with.
Oh, gosh, there's so many. That's a hard question. We think.
I just want you to know one. It's like Sophie's choice.
It's awful.
What is this.
Podcast only allowed one?
I mean, it's actually weirdly, it's hard to not think of the last day of shoot because we had that motif with the candles and the beautiful director Becca O'Brien and her first Michael Sama. They got me to for the final wrap. They got me to come in and blow out the last candle and it was so touching.
I just almost like tear.
Up thinking about it, and everyone was clapping and hugging, and it was kind of when we were all sort of just, I guess, just kind of basking in what we'd made together and that that was really lovely.
There was a scene with a magpie, So for people listening to the podcast, when they watched the show, they'll know what I'm talking about. Doesn't happen at the end. It's sort of close towards the end, but it did feel like something quite special and it felt like closure.
Great, that is what I was hoping for. That is always hopingful. And did you hear about the magpie.
He's a real.
Magpie called Banjo who is a trained magpie. He lives up in Queensland and his amazing handler drove him down and he was actually I think we had food sort of stashed in different corners of the room that he would fly around too to sort of swoop, and we had to do a bit of VFX stuff.
But yeah, he was incredible.
And we were like, that's going to be like twenty cast and forty crew and are you sure this bird's going to be okay? And he's like, yeah, yeah, he's trained at bird shows, you know, like those zoo bird shows, so he's just completely used.
To screaming people. It was incredible.
It was an amazing bird, and he was just really chilled out with like all these mad people flapping around him.
Who finds these people? Who? How do they exist?
I know, it's such an extraordinary skill set, and I don't think there's too many trained magpies in the world, so it was pretty amazing. But that scene, yeah, I don't want to spoil it either, but it was that feeling of trying to find an emotional balance in the new world that the characters are in.
I was, I was. I was very stressed out on set that day. I got got a bird. We've got like every cast member.
It was just there was no time but Yeah, it's a beautiful scene and thank you for pointing it out.
Yeah. Yeah.
They say, don't work with animals and children, and you're like, I've got an idea for a show Bump with children, having children more put them there just to make it difficult.
Why not just chucking in a couple of dogs. Yeah, I know, I know, I can't. Let the director's still talking to me.
Yeah, they'll call you up and ask you can you deliver another a successful show like this. We want to make another show that can do five seasons, which is so rare, you know. I think what another journalist was saying to me the other day. He was saying it was sad that Bump is finishing because he really enjoys series that are five season but he couldn't think of another show that's up to five seasons at the moment.
They have been shows that obviously Australian shows like that, but he was like, I can't think of anything that's at season five that's made in Australia at the moment.
So it's quite an achievement. Yeah.
No, it's kind of a miracle. And when you think about how many miracles have to happen to just even get one season made like it's just been an extraordinary ride. And I would like to say it's you know, there's a replicable model.
But I'm I don't know.
It's like catching is I catching lightning in a bottle? Like I think we just we got so lucky on so many fronts. And yeah, I just I love the show. I'm so proud of it, and I just it's just really makes me happy that it's been able to breathe and stretched out and had this amazing run on stand.
It's been incredible.
Something tells me that you're going to catch that lightning in a bottle again. I just feel it. I just feel it. So you know, we'll keep that vision board going for you. Everybody joins the podcast. We finished with this last question, which is what is something from behind the scenes, maybe something that we as an audience may not know. I know that that Magpie one was pretty good and I probably should have thought about that, But is there there is something from behind seeing something that
you can reveal. It's just that this episode five hundred and five, it would be remissive me to not ask.
That you know you're gonna have I was putting the pressure.
On as well.
I always say that to people. I'm like, I shouldn't email them in advance the email and say what I think of this, because oh yeah, it's.
Hard to top the Magpie. That was a really amazing day. Bluey the Dog.
While we're on like hiring children and animals, Bluey the dog was pretty amazing. Actually, this is cute that we really because Bluey was really I've forgotten his name. It was a beautiful, beautiful little I mean, he's just old enough to be able to work on set because they have to be vaccinated like humans to work on set, and he was just mad as a cut snake, like he was just everywhere, and it was a miracle to get like a shot of him just playing with beautiful
Aba who plays to Cinder. But the trainer came the whole is probably not giving away too much because it happens in the first five minutes. But when Jacinda like kidnaps the puppy, we had to get that shot of
the puppy inside her school bag. And that dog was not getting inside a school bag, like it was just you know, it was no way anyway, her owner and trainer came up with this ingenious idea of kind of opening the top of its crate and sort of fitting this school bag over the top of the crate, so it was you know what I mean, like sort of a lid over the crate. So the dog just had to pop up in its crate where it normally lives and it's happy, just had to pop up and take a.
Treat to look like it was in this school bag.
And that's how we got that little shot that you're like, yes, yes, the dog's in the school bag. So yeah, no bluies were harmed in the making of it. It was really clever solution.
It made me want that breed of dog. That dog was so cute.
When it was so cute, I've always wanted one. A blue Healer.
Yeah, beautiful, beautiful.
Well, I have to say thank you so much for your generosity with your time and unpacking this show. I am so in your audience and can't wait to see where you go with this. And I can't wait for you to hear the feedback from season five because I think that you're going to get I.
Think it's going to make you feel better about the.
Fact that it's come to an end, that you've delivered something like this and that people have enjoyed it.
That's so lovely, Ben, thank you, It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you.
Yes, So I was like when I when when I found out from Stanle that you said yes to doing this, I was like, yes, and I texted Claudia.
I was like, I've completed the.
Puzzle because I've had Claudia, I've had John, and I've had Natalie y. So like, this was a real joy to have you at the end. Who's the creator and the genius behind this And it was so lovely to hear all of these other people that have been on the podcast talk about you and seeing your praises then to come together with today, which is great.
Yeah, that's great, thank you. I really knowed it