When Miranda Tapsell appeared on a satire of breakfast TV four years ago and bared her fury at the way the media had been stoking the fires of racism and xenophobia, she also braced herself for a backlash.
"I was so surprised by how people reacted to it," she told David Wenham for ABC TV's The ABC Of…
The scene was part of ABC TV comedy show Get Krack!n, where comedians Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan poked fun at the breakfast television industry.
Tapsell, a Larrakia woman originally from Darwin, and episode co-host Nakkiah Lui, a Gamilaroi and Torres Strait Islander woman, starred in the final episode of the show's 2019 season.
In a goosebump-inducing final scene, Tapsell — sick of listening to three white, faux commentators giving their two cents on whether racism exists — takes to her feet and interjects, delivering a searing monologue about the media's attacks on marginalised groups.
"I'm done not being angry, I am angry and if you don't like me being angry then by all means Australia, take my fury as a baton and run this race for me," she said.
"Because we are dying in infancy, we are dying in custody, and we are dying decades earlier than you, and you should be as angry about that as I am."
Reflecting on the segment, Tapsell said the audience response that followed came as a surprise.
"I was expecting a whole tonne of death threats and, you know, people finding out my address but I was met with such support," she recalls.
"All these people going, 'yes!', then all of a sudden I had all of these people commenting and messaging me saying 'I will now take the baton'.
"To see so many people pledge that and say that they're gonna do that was a very, very meaningful and heart-warming thing."
'Art as a form of activism'
Tapsell said she drew on her own personal experience as well as those of other Aboriginal women ahead of filming the scene.
"Maybe it had just been sitting there all this time, you know. I thought about all the times I'd been misjudged, mistreated and I'd taken on anger for other people," she said.
"I'd been angry on behalf of ... all the other Aboriginal women that have had horrible things happen to them and so, yeah, it was cathartic."
She described the moments after filming as feeling like she was "completely out of my body".
"It was as if I hadn't been there when we did it, and all of a sudden they call 'cut' and you know, people didn't know what to do with themselves at the end of it because it was like, there was this … it wasn't anything negative there was … an energy," Tapsell said.
"I'd actually come out of it shaking, I was like, 'wow'."
Tapsell also reflected on her acceptance speech at the 2015 Logies, where she called for more people of colour in Australian TV and films.
"I don't see myself being an activist because there are so many people who are on the ground marching and protesting and informing people," she said.
"But I do love using my art as a form of activism.
"So if there is an opportunity for me to speak honestly and authentically about what my mob deal with on a daily basis, then I've done my job."
And, Tapsell said, speaking honestly can also come through other genres like comedy which also allow for "bigger conversations".
"I think there's a time and a place for anger, I think there's always room for that," she said.
"But there's also times where you can sort of have a conversation with a smile."
Watch Miranda Tapsell on The ABC Of... with David Wenham tonight at 8pm, or on ABC iview.
