Megan Washington has many accolades on her CV for her music. Her Platinum-selling 2010 debut I Believe You Liar earning the 27-year-old songstress both an ARIA and APRA Award, but now she’s set to add a new string to her talented bow: actress.
Washington plays a starring role in a new Australian feature film, alongside fellow musical countrymen Tim Rogers and Paul Capsis, entitled The Boy Castaways, which debuts at the Adelaide Film Festival this October, as The Australian reports.
Washington plays Sarina in the musical film, in which “four men are gathered in a theatre where they enact a twisted version of Peter Pan, singing songs to tell their stories, their wishes and their fears,” according to the plot synopsis of director Michael Kantor (as listed on IMDB).
“When one of the men falls in love with the leading lady, the rules of the game are threatened,” continues Kantor’s description of Washington’s role as Sarina. The director completed filming of the fantasy feature at Adelaide’s Her Majesty’s Theatre earlier this year, but only after initial troubles convincing his leading lady to take on the role.
Washington says that despite her desires to pursue acting when she was younger, she was initially reluctant to take part in the feature, rebuffing Kantor’s offer several times. “I said ‘no’ for about a year,” she reveals, “not because I didn’t want to do it, but because I thought I couldn’t.” “He’s (Tim Rogers) a great performer, and I guess whatever history we share I’ve never been able to see him work, so it was amazing.” – Megan Washington
“I had always acted through high school and at uni, and there was a time when I thought that was what I wanted to do, but then I got bitten by the jazz bug and here we are,” she explains.
There may have been another hidden factor at work for the 27-year-old’s reluctance in that one of her singing male co-stars “engaged in a dangerous game with their own mortality,” was Washington’s ex: 43-year-old Tim Rogers.
Though she was in a relationship with the You Am I frontman that ended some time before co-starring in The Boy Castaways, she has only positive comments about working with the Aussie rock star.
“He’s a great performer, and I guess whatever history we share I’ve never been able to see him work, so it was amazing to see how good he is,” she says. “I got to see a new side of him.”
Rogers’ acting role follows on from his hosting duties on the new music TV programme, Studio At The Memo. The six-part series, in which Rogers hosts (and occasionally plays) alongside a series of guests performing cabaret, theatre, comedy, and music aired this past Tuesday on Foxtel’s SBS-run subscription channel STUDIO.
As for Megan Washington, after shooting had wrapped on The Boy Castaways, she quickly returned to London, where the singer has been camped for most of the year, to continue work on her new studio album, after first beginning work over a few months in New York on new material.
Having started recording in London this week on the follow-up to I Believe You Liar, Washington hopes to release a new single before the year is out, with her second studio album then due early next year.
That is of course, if more acting offers don’t crop up. “I haven’t had time to think about it,” she replies to the query of whether she’d be tempted by more opportunities on the silver screen, “it’s definitely something I’d like to do more of and something that I feel good about.”
The Boy Castaways debuts at the Adelaide Film Festival on Sunday 13th October and one of three films being screened that was backed by the HIVE Production Fund, a project backed by the Adelaide Film Festival Investment Fund, Australia Council for the Arts, ABC Arts and Screen Australia.
