Why Anna Friel said no to acting job for 30 years – until this Aussie series

Exclusive: Anna Friel has been an international TV and film star for over three decades. You might recognise her from her Golden Globe-nominated role in Pushing Daises or Emmy Award-winning performance in the crime drama Marcella.

But in her career she has repeatedly and politely turned down one of television’s most beloved genres: the medical drama. Until now.

“I’ve been offered them, but I always found the dialogue way too scary,” Friel, 49, told nine.com.au. “I’d be thinking, ‘Oh gosh, that’s harder than Shakespeare to learn.’”

So what finally changed her mind? An Australian series about a hospital full of failures, teetering on the edge of the ocean.

Friel stars as Dr Gloria Wall in The F Ward, the new Stan Original medical drama. The role lured the British star from her home in the UK all the way to Sydney’s northern beaches.

“The doctors who have failed their first time around are given a second chance, and land in a hospital with no electricity, no money, scraping by the skin of their teeth.

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Taking beats from Grey’s Anatomy and more recently The Pitt, The F Ward offers viewers more than a traditional medical drama.

“There’s also affairs and love stories and reveals and lots of gory operations, all set with a backdrop of the beautiful northern beaches.”

Friel had been keen to work in Australia for years, and was already a fan of creator Kelsey Munro’s hit Stan series Bump when the offer came.

“They said, ‘Do you want to come work on the northern beaches? It’s a hospital drama set on the beaches, and she’s a good kick-ass character,’” she recalled.

“They showed me the cast and we went on from there.”

It helped that medicine runs in the family. Freil’s brother is a doctor and her sister-in-law is a medical consultant, but nothing quite prepared her for surgeon school, rehearsing procedures on studio tables with some unusual props.

“We had two surgeons constantly with us. We would rehearse on a table at the studio with sausages and a tennis ball,” she said.

“There’s one surgery where I literally have to keep pulling out all the intestines. I said, ‘Surely it can’t be like that – the patient would be dead if they’ve got the whole of their insides outside.’ And they said, ‘This is how it is.’”

Her verdict on the medical jargon that had scared her off the genre for so long? “I studied and studied and studied because it was really hard to memorise words that you didn’t know. I was in at the deep end.”

Gloria is brilliant, terrifying and holds a secret involving one of her interns. She is not written to be easily loved, and Friel said the real surgeons on set were the ones who defended her hardest.

“I said, ‘But is she not too harsh?’ and [our consultants said], ‘No, it’s the fact that it’s such a male-dominated world, the world of surgery, still to this day,’” Friel said.

“If she’s not tough and strong, then she wouldn’t get the job that she does have. If you were a man, you’d be called strong and brilliant, and people would be in awe of you. But her being a woman, she’s called a bitch.

“Her driving force and cares are about saving patients, full stop. She doesn’t have time to care whether people like her or dislike her.”

Only about 18 per cent of surgeons in Australia are women – a statistic that shaped the character’s armour.

Off camera, Friel found herself surrounded by a young Australian cast led by Bump favourite Ioane Sa’ula and one local ritual she refused to join.

“I couldn’t believe they all got a swim in before a 5.45am call,” she says. “I’m like, ‘What, at five o’clock, in the dark, with the sharks? No.’

“Everyone was a water baby!”

Nearly two decades on, Friel still gets asked about Pushing Daisies, the much-loved series cancelled in 2009 but she hasn’t ruled out a return.

“One of the hardest directions I was ever given in my life was they said, ‘Chuck never, ever is unhappy. She’s never depressed, she’s always positive,’” she reflected.

“It was ahead of its time. [Chuck] understood manifestation before it was [popular]. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to play such a beautiful love story.

“I look back at it with sadness for it to come to an end, but very, very proud that we all encapsulated something very beautiful. And I can still hear that rich voiceover to this day.”

As for whether Gloria will get a second chance of her own in a second season of The F Ward, Friel is hopeful.

“That depends on whether the audience want that,” she says, adding the series has “just done big sales pitches around the world in Los Angeles, which have gone really well”.

“I’d love to come back to Australia and see all those wonderful people and work with them again.”

The F Ward episode 1 is on Nine, Wednesday after The Block.

Nine Entertainment Co (the publisher of this website) owns and operates the streaming service Stan.