Netflix greenlights locally made My Brilliant Career series
A $17 million Netflix remake of Miles Franklin’s coming-of-age classic is already underway in South Australia — with a Sex Education director and Star Wars star attached.
A new series-length adaptation of Miles Franklin’s 1901 novel and staple of Australian high school reading lists My Brilliant Career is bound for Netflix, with the streaming giant this week announcing production has begun in South Australia.
In what is being billed as the most expensive television production ever made in South Australia, the $17 million project — backed by the state government and South Australian Film Corporation — will be led by writer and showrunner Liz Dolan, whose past credits include Please Like Me and the 2022 ABC surfer drama Barons. Australian director Alyssa McClelland will be behind the camera, fresh from a stint on Netflix’s hit series Sex Education.
The show will star young Australian actor Philippa Northeast (Territory, The Newsreader) as the literary heroine Sybylla, alongside Christopher Chung — recently seen in Apple TV spy thriller Slow Horses and Steve McQueen’s wartime drama Blitz — as love interest Harry. They’ll have big shoes to fill, with Gillian Armstrong’s 1979 film adaptation helping launch the careers of Judy Davis and Sam Neill as Sybylla and Harry.
The cast will also feature Irish Australian star Genevieve O’Reilly, fresh from a widely acclaimed role as senator-turned-rebel leader Mon Mothma in the Disney+ Star Wars series Andor.
It will be a homecoming of sorts for O’Reilly, whose family relocated to Adelaide from Dublin as a child, where attending State Theatre Company productions during the early 1990s tenure of artistic director Simon Phillips had a “seismic” influence on the teenager. O’Reilly later moved to Sydney to study acting at NIDA, where she booked small roles in The Matrix and Star Wars and has since starred opposite Eric Bana in Jane Harper adaptation The Dry, alongside recurring roles in Glitch and Tin Star.
Irish Australian actor Genevieve O’Reilly will return South Australia to film the new series, after a critically acclaimed run in the Star Wars spinoff Andor. Photo: Disney / Lucasfilm / Supplied
O’Reilly will also be joined by English actress Anna Chancellor (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Pride and Prejudice, and The Crown), and Australian actor-playwright Kate Mulvany, who posted on Instagram that she was “busting my corset with joy over this one”.
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Stella ‘Miles’ Franklin and her 19th-century bildungsroman — written when she was still a teenager — have received renewed attention in recent years, with Melbourne Theatre Company mounting a new musical adaptation in 2024, while author Amy Brown’s 2024 novel My Brilliant Sister imagined the hitherto under-explored life of Franklin’s sister Linda. Earlier this year, journalist and historian Kerrie Davies also explored Franklin’s lesser-known post-Brilliant Career journalistic career in Miles Franklin Undercover.
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South Australian Film Corporation CEO Kate Croser said the production will make use of the corporation’s Adelaide Studios at Glenside, while also filming on location around the state.
“Since the establishment of the SAFC more than 50 years ago as Australia’s first screen agency, South Australia has been the driving force behind so many iconic Australian stories on screen,” Croser said. Few are more iconic than My Brilliant Career, a story that has inspired generations of women to forge their own paths and independence, and we are thrilled with this addition to South Australia’s pipeline of high quality screen production.”
The new series will receive a worldwide release on Netflix, with an air date yet to be set. In the meantime, the 1979 original is now streaming on Netflix and ABC iView.