It seemed all of Australia was holding its collective breath and then dissolving into a nation-worth of tears as Mary Coustas gave birth to her treasured baby girl Jamie at the age of 49, after years of trying to fall pregnant and the earlier tragic loss of her first daughter, Stevie, who was stillborn. Jamie's birth and her first cries were shared with the nation, shown intimately on current affairs flagship 60 Minutes.
It's one of the many reasons so many people keep Coustas close to their heart, as someone who has shared her life so openly and with honesty and authenticity.
Hard to believe all that happened almost a decade ago.
This year, Jamie turns 10 and Coustas is a busy working mum, taking her one-woman show This is Personal on the road after a successful and much-lauded season at the Sydney Opera House last year. First stop on the tour is the national capital on March 3 and 4.
The Playhouse in the Canberra Theatre Centre is the perfect location for the intimate evening Mary Coustas has planned for her audience, a mix of humour and drama; sharing insights and her life. The highs and the lows. Storytelling at its most basic, as she alone brings to life all the important people in her world.
"I've never done a big show in Canberra," Coustas says. "I've done a lot of corporates and I've done a lot of gallery-ing and eating and seeing people but I've not done a lot of entertaining on my own terms with my own show, so I'm very excited."
As Effie might say, "See youse there legends".
Oh Effie. Greek goddess, cultural icon. Big-hair, tight dresses, zero filter. A character who Richard Fidler so aptly described as being in the "long Australian tradition of over the top comedic monster characters like Dame Edna, Norman Gunston, Kath and Kim".
Effie is Mary's famous creation, the star of the Wogs Out of Work play, which debuted in 1987 at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and later Acropolis Now television show, which ran from 1989 to 1992 on the Seven Network.
Effie was a second-generation Greek girl who was beautifully herself. Audiences loved her ballsy-ness. Her catchphrase "How, embarrassment". The way she greeted everyone with "Hello, good thanks" before they'd uttered a word. Effie was gloriously up herself. Der, Fred. "Beauty's a curse - and I've got it."
But after Coustas wrote her memoir, All I Know, detailing her decade-long attempt to become a mother, her 23 IVF attempts and her multiple losses - including the death of Stevie - and her story was then broadcast nationally, things started to change. Effie was no longer the only star in the family.
"When I was doing my Effie shows, for the first time ever in 25 years, people would want to try to talk to Mary, which they'd never done before because, you know, the audience is very loyal to Effie," Coustas says.
"When I was doing these big comedy shows, people would try to get to Mary instead of Effie, when I was doing photographs and autographs and stuff like that.
"And I came home one night and I said to my husband George, 'They're calling for Mary. I don't know what to do about this, it's never happened before'. It was very apparent they wanted to get close to me because they'd seen the most intimate part of my life and the most traumatic part of my life.
"So that was sitting there as one of the things that was happening. And the other thing was my closest friends would say, 'Why aren't you doing Mary?'. And I'd be like, 'What do you mean? I can't act if I do Mary. What am I acting with? I don't know how to do Mary for the public.
"I know how to do men and children and animals and boofheads, but I don't know how to do Mary. That's like going commando'. And my friends were like, 'No, no, no, it's time to do Mary'."
So she sought the help of her long-time friend collaborator, Chris Anastassiades, "the king of structure". Coustas and Chris went to Abbotsford Primary School in Collingwood together. At the same school, Chris was best friends with Nick Giannopolous, the eventual creator of Wogs Out of Work and Acropolis Now.
Chris Anastassiades was also a scriptwriter and editor on Acropolis Now and worked on Coustas' first one woman show in 1992, Waiting for Effie.
"He's just a guy who knows me so well," she says.
"So I said to him, 'The Opera House has approached me to do a one-woman show and it's time I did Mary and I need you to help me tell the story in a way that keeps people leaning forward in their seats'.
The collaboration worked. Anastassiades knew just how to weave the stories of a woman he'd known since she was a girl.
"Long story long, as Effie might say, I gave him gold and he turned it into jewellery. He was able to do exactly what I wanted to do with the show, which was not tell any of the stories chronologically but to make it like this puzzle that gets put together as the audience is watching it."
This is Personal became less a telling of her life and more an experience for the audience to savour.
"I said, 'I don't want it to be a vanity project. I don't want the audience to be privileged to listen to me talk about myself. It's got to go from my stuff. It needs to be infecting them in a way that it will stay with them forever and activate things in them about their own lives'. I wanted it to go, essentially, from 'me' to 'we'. And we were able to do that."
The show covers everything from the early years as the child of Greek migrants in Melbourne to her career to her family; always as dramatic as it is comic.
"I'm very, very excited to tour it and bring it to places and people who perhaps haven't seen what I do live, which is my medium. As much as I love television, stage is my place. That's my home.
"And this is the best show I've ever done." And, one day, she may have Jamie up on stage with her. Coustas says Jamie, who turns 10 in November and is starting year four at school, is following in her footsteps.
"She's a very passionate, articulate, funny girl," she says. "I suppose children of musicians know notes and keys, I suppose the child of somebody who has really heavily lent on comedy and laughter to get through life, knows how to put a joke together. Aside from that, she's a very kind-hearted, curious, affectionate girl."
When Coustas posted a clip of Jamie as Effie's daughter Aphrodite, (Affie), Jamie - wouldn't you know it? - immediately scored an agent.
"Who she spent the day with yesterday. She was like, 'Mumma, I might be put up for something. It'll shoot in Auckland'. And I'm like, 'That's cool, that's cool'. She's in it for the money, which I really really respect."
Coustas says Jamie understands her start in life, when her parents ended up using a donor egg in fertility treatment in Greece; their 23rd IVF treatment a final, emotional success.
"She knows that No.23 is my lucky number as well as Michael Jordan's," Coustas says.
"We're very close to my IVF doctor who got me over the line in Greece and we holiday with him every year and his eight children.
"She knows all of that. She knows that she had a sister who died, she's very aware of that. Mother's Day often coincides with the anniversary of my daughter Stevie's death, so she knows that Mumma needs a couple of hours in the morning and then everything will be okay. We go to where we scattered Steve's ashes.
"I don't really talk it up, but I don't hide it."
Coustas' father passed away when she was in her 20s. Her mother Fani has seen This is Personal and given her approval, even a reference to herself which is innocently hilarious. Coustas says her parents gave her the best start in life possible. "I had a great life and I felt privileged at every step of the way. And I still do," she says.
And as for Effie? Near four decades after Effie was created, Coustas is still proud of her ground-breaking work, presenting ethnic humour to a national audience.
"Wogs Out of Work was socially so important, especially in a conveniently blind time in history. The colour-blind period. When it was white and that was it," she says.
"I'm very issue-based in the work that I do. I want to give more than just laughter. I thank God that I'm commercial. I've never received a grant from the government to go and do interesting little multicultural work. There was such a huge audience that was so desperately needing what me and the boys were doing back then. They needed to feel validated in their own lives. They were in the shadows for way too long. The motivation behind everything I've done for the last 35 years, you see the seeds of that in this show."
Effie may be in the show in spirit. But not the wigs and dresses. "I just stick her in a suitcase and put her under a bed," Coustas says.
Looking at her, it's hard to believe Coustas turns 60 next year. "Take it easy! We've just entered this year!" she says.
"Look, you know, life is proof that ideals don't exist, for any of us. It wasn't ideal for me to become a mother at 49. But I know people who had children very young in life and it has not panned out the way they hoped. And I know you've got to make the most of whatever it is and treasure a gift when you see one."
And that gift is Jamie. "My daughter will get an elite understanding of what's life's about. She's with parents who did everything humanly and scientifically possible to have her. She feels loved and adored. And I wish that had happened 10 or 15 years earlier, but it didn't I do everything I can to stay in the best health possible. I'm conscious. I'm very grateful."
- This is Personal , Canberra Theatre Centre, March 3 and 4. Tickets available here.
