The Clearing stars reveal importance of their onscreen transformations

The Clearing is the first scripted Disney+ show to be filmed in Australia, featuring an incredible cast including Miranda Otto, Kate Mulvany, Guy Pearce and Teresa Palmer.

The show is based on the real-life Australian cult The Family, which was led by one of the most famous female cult leaders in the world Anne Hamilton-Byrne, who claimed to be Jesus Christ in the female form.

In The Clearing, a local girl goes missing, triggering Freya (Palmer) to remember her childhood as a member of The Kindred, one of the few female-led cults in history. Freya must confront her past to stop the mysterious cult from abducting children and forcing them to live in gruelling conditions in a remote cabin to fulfil its master plan.

The show alternates between past and present timelines and will keep you on the edge of your seat with plenty of surprises and twists.

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Miranda, who stars as cult leader Adrienne, and Kate, who plays Aunty Tamsin, a leader within The Kindred who works underneath Adrienne, spoke with Yahoo Lifestyle about what drew them to the story, which they described as a "delicious jigsaw puzzle".

"I'm fascinated by cults, always have been, so automatically when I was told that it was about a cult and to play a cult leader, I thought that was would be really fascinating and challenging," Miranda tells us.

"But to me, it was when I read the scripts just the way they're so layered, and you're only finding out bits of the story at a time, and then you're making these assumptions and then you find out that your assumptions are incorrect. And I just love the way the story developed, that sort of thriller aspect of it."

Kate agreed, saying, "Same here, it was like putting together a really delicious jigsaw puzzle, just even having the scripts. And as soon as I'd finished one I wanted to go straight on to the next, you know, no break, I just wanted to binge on the script. And I thought, if that's got me doing that with the scripts, then you can imagine what it'll be like with all the bells and whistles."

'Really fond memories'

Both stars undergo quite the transformation for the role, with Miranda going blonde and Kate sporting a brunette bowl-cut wig.

"That's the greatest gift to me," Miranda says of the transformation. "When you go and the hair, makeup and wardrobe completely transform you into someone else. Because, as an actor, you're always trying to find new characters and new ways of presenting them and I love all that textural stuff that you get from those things."

"I have really fond memories, actually of the first time I ever put on the Tamsin look and you were next to me doing your Adrianne – picking things that felt right to you for her," Kate said to Miranda. "And it was sort of the start of the onscreen relationship in a way, I was going 'Is this okay? Tell me Adrienne, please!' And yeah, it was amazing for us as performers to find those little bits of our character and then to see it in full glory on screen is pretty amazing."

'A lot of research'

Miranda revealed that her interest in cults meant she's done "a lot of research" in different cults, and particularly their leaders.

"Just the way they work, and what is so charismatic about their leaders that they're able to seduce people into doing the things they do," she said.

Conversely, Kate didn't want to do much research for Tamsin, with the star telling us, "There's not a lot of research I could do for Aunty Tamsin, because I don't really want to go to that place with such a dark force.

"So a lot of the research I did was from, purely from the script from what our incredible writers team came up with. And then it's when you walk into a space and you have the children, for me, acting in complete fear of you, whereas just off-set a couple of minutes earlier, we're all playing games. It's not hard to kind of get dragged into that world, and match them or, hopefully, match them for their performances. The kids in the show are just amazing!"

Behind-the-scenes secrets

Given the heavy subject matter, the actresses reveal that it was important to keep things quite light on set with games, and ensuring the children felt safe and appreciated as equals.

"I think people would be super surprised by just how warm and generous and fun it was," Kate said of the set experience.

"Jeffrey Walker, who was our setup director, and then my sister Gracie [Otto] was the other director on the show, and they're both like, super fun and just so warm with the kids and all that, like it was actually a very warm set."

The stars also paid tribute to Chris Webb, the first assistant director, who sadly passed away last week.

"This is his, I think, one of his last jobs and he was famous around the world for his generous warmth, keeping the craft alive," Kate shares. "And I get tingles, even just thinking about him, because he kept this very, very dark content buoyant whenever the cameras weren't rolling. And was so loved, there was a lot of love on this."

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