The first time actress and singer Natalie Bassingthwaighte visited WIN Television’s Mount Saint Thomas headquarters, she was 13 years old.
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Ms Bassingthwaighte was one of a number of Ten identities who packed out WIN for a launch function this week, ahead of the channel changeovers which link Network Ten with WIN, and Nine with Southern Cross from Friday.
“As we drove in here, I remembered the last time I was here in WIN, and I was 13 and doing one of the telethons with [entertainer] Rikki Organ and dancing as a back-up dancers. So that was a real flashback coming in.”
“There’s probably footage somewhere – it was myself and three of my friends. It was my first thing ever on television, so I was really nervous and excited.”
The Wollongong-born personality will star in a two-part miniseries based on the life of racing-driver Peter Brock airing later this year, and said it was “humbling” to know the show would be broadcast to an Illawarra audience through a homegrown station.
“It just feels really nice, like I kind of get to come home and celebrate my work with my friends and family – the people that I grew up with,” she said.
“I’m here with my dad [Michael] which is bizarre because when I told him I was coming to this event for WIN he said ‘Oh, I’m already going’.”
She said the miniseries would explore the idea that “Peter Perfect wasn’t always perfect.”
“He was a great man, but you get to see the legend that you know and love, and also the life outside the legend,” she said.
Ms Bassingthwaighte plays Brock’s long-time mistress Julie Bamford, who was his partner when he died in 2006.
“It was really one of the most beautiful experiences of my career because I got to meet Julie, who was with Peter when he passed away,” she said.
“It was a very emotional experience, I felt very connected to her and then Peter because I got to hear about her life with him. So it sounds really weird, but it was spiritual for me and a great challenge.”