PRIVATE SYDNEY
Private Sydney: Who will play Schapelle?
Cameras roll on a new television series featuring the story of convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby. Columnist Andrew Hornery takes a look into this and other stories in Private Sydney.
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Channel Nine's upcoming mini-series about convicted drug trafficker Schapelle Corby goes into pre-production in September, with an interesting assortment of actors, both known and emerging, in the mix as potential suitors for key roles.
Titled simply Schapelle, the drama will be based on the book Sins of the Father: the Untold Story behind Schapelle Corby's Ill-fated Drug Run, written by Fairfax Media investigative journalist Eamonn Duff.
Channel Nine has commissioned Freemantle Media to produce the mini-series, which PS hears has enlisted one of Australia's top screenwriters to bring the book to life. Freemantle was the production house behind similar critically acclaimed Australian TV series The King, Killing Time and Devil's Dust.
Hopefuls: (from top) Krew Boylan; Michael Caton and Jackie Weaver. Photo: Getty, Supplied
PS had previously reported that a sizeable chunk of the budget has been set aside to hire a marquee actor to take on the role of Schapelle, namely Abbie Cornish, however another lesser-known name has entered the fold: actor Krew Boylan.
Boylan is appearing in a recurring role on Channel Seven's hit series A Place to Call Home, playing Noni Hazlehurst's maid, though she is best known as the star of Dirtgirlworld, a children's series on the ABC in which she featured until 2011.
Other names which have been bandied about include Jacki Weaver taking on Corby matriarch Rosleigh and Michael Caton as Corby's father. Last month defamation action brought by Corby's family against the book publisher Allen & Unwin was dealt a blow in the NSW Supreme Court, with her brother's case dismissed and her sister's claims narrowed.
Struggle: Lisa Ho at her studio last year. Photo: James Alcock
Corby's sister, Mercedes Corby, her brother, Michael Corby Jnr, and her mother, Rosleigh Rose, launched defamation proceedings over Sins of the Father. The case will now proceed on the remaining pleadings made by Mercedes and her mother, which deal predominantly with claims about their dealings with the media. When it emerged Channel Nine had commissioned the mini-series, Corby's supporters started to mobilise with a Facebook support group calling for viewers to list major advertisers on Nine and to lobby them to refuse to advertise if the film proceeded. It appears to have had little effect.
Fremantle has also confirmed that filming and post production will be done on the Gold Coast for the project, where the Corbys hail from.
Casting agent: Gloria Payten in 1960. Photo: Barry Newberry
New man may hold key to Ho's future
Embattled fashion designer Lisa Ho's empire is in tatters. However, her personal life appears to be blossoming, amid speculation her new boyfriend could provide a lifeline for her beloved label.
PS hears Sydney ragtrader Nick Jacenko, father of Celebrity Apprentice star Roxy, has been making himself at home with Ho at her $4 million-plus Randwick property, which she was unable to sell as part of last year's fire sale to raise cash to inject into her troubled business.
Prenups and postnups: Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng Photo: Reuters
Whispers in the Sydney ragtrade predict that Ho, who this column revealed last year had split with her previous ragtrader husband Philip Smouha, will now buy back the intellectual property rights to her label for as little as $100,000, and start manufacturing at Jacenko's Capitol Fashion factory in Sri Lanka. Jacenko had previously manufactured for the likes of Rockmans and Noni B.
Neither Ho nor Jacenko returned PS's calls.
No doubt those high-profile figures in the Australian fashion industry, who publicly expressed their sympathy for Ho this week, would welcome such a move, though it is unclear what the creditors, owed nearly $11 million, would make of it.
Famous divorcee: Ivana Trump. Photo: Reuters
The collapse of Ho's empire after 30 years has blown a multimillion-dollar hole in Sydney's already struggling ragtrade and follows the 2009 collapse of Smouha's fabric empire, which supplied to some of Australia's most acclaimed fashion houses including his former wife, but landed in administration owing St George Bank $26 million.
That collapse caused great pain for the couple, who retreated from the Sydney cocktail circuit and were forced to sell their sizeable property portfolio, including their Bellevue Hill home for $17 million.
Four Picassos and a Norman Lindsay watercolour owned by Smouha went under the hammer in Melbourne as administrators attempted to salvage what they could.
Four years later and it is now Ho staring down the long list of creditors, including 100 employees who now find themselves without jobs. They remain unsure of what entitlements, if any, they will walk away with as Ho's chain of boutiques shut shop.
St George Bank is believed to be owed about $3.8 million and Ho is also listed as a creditor, owed a ''significant sum''.
Then there are the landlords and a small army of suppliers who make up most of the unsecured creditors, owed $4.5 million, many of them small businesses.
Administrator HLB Mann Judd is at present trying to sell as much of Ho's existing stock in a last-ditch effort to realise the value of Ho's assets, including trying to sell the brand's intellectual property, though those in the business argue the brand is practically worthless without its namesake designer. The funds generated will determine exactly how much money, if any, will find its way back to creditors' pockets.
Lisa Ho Designs and Lisa Ho Retail went into voluntary administration with debts of nearly $11 million on May 8, less than a month after the company abandoned a listing on the Australian Stock Exchange.
Early forensic investigations had found that a combination of ''questionable operating decisions'', bad trading conditions and ''accounting irregularities'' had impacted heavily on the business's viability and cash flow.
Last act for casting pioneer
After 52 years representing some of the biggest names in Australian showbiz, Sydney talent agency International Casting Services is closing down. Established by the late Gloria Payten in 1961, ICS was considered the hottest talent agency in the country for decades.
Having represented the likes of John Waters, Jacki Weaver, Ruth Cracknell and Noel Ferrier, PS hears there is no one left to take the agency, located in Darlinghurst, into the future after the retirement of partner and senior agent Pauline Lee and her heir apparent Melina McKenna jumping ship to rival firm Lisa Mann Creative Management after 24 years with ICS. However Payten's legacy will live on. When she died in 1989, Payten bequeathed $1.5 million to the establishment of two foundations to provide fellowships for actors and directors to travel and broaden their professional expertise, which continue to this day.
Big guns hired for Murdoch divorce
It was in the mid-1990s when the world's most famous divorcee, Ivana Trump, made a cameo in The First Wives Club, telling Bette Midler: ''Darrrlink, don't ged mad, get EVERYTHINK!''
Perhaps Rupert Murdoch saw the film, though in his divorce from Wendi Deng it is more a case of Third Wives Club.
Murdoch has hired the same legal team that represented Ivana Trump in her sensational divorce to Donald Trump 20 years ago. Ivana walked away with $US10 million, a 45-room mansion, a Manhattan apartment at Trump Plaza, $US300,000 annually in child support, $US350,000 a year in alimony, and use of the Florida mansion, Mar-a-Lago, for one month a year.
Next to the billions involved in the Murdoch divorce, the Trump settlement was chump change.
Ira Garr, who will represent Murdoch, is a founding partner at New York law firm Garr Silpe, which bills its services on its website as ''divorce, child custody, child support, equitable distribution of property, paternity agreements, prenuptial and post-nuptial agreements, matters involving same sex marriage and litigation of all matrimonial and family law matters''.
Garr has been listed as one of New York's top attorneys by The New York Times Magazine and New York Magazine since 2006.
Donald Trump and daughter Ivanka are among the Murdochs' closest friends, with Ivanka joining the family when daughters Grace and Chloe were baptised in Jordan.
According to Garr's bio: ''Clientele are generally high-worth individuals and often celebrities''. Enter Ivana who claimed more than was stipulated in her pre-nup agreement, which is wildly considered a sign of things to come in the Murdoch divorce given that Deng had reportedly signed a prenup and two post-nup agreements with Murdoch.
Deng has engaged Pamela Sloan of Aronson Mayefsky & Sloan.
Feeding frenzy
Channel Ten's recently appointed head of morning television Adam Boland has been whipping up the Australian television industry from afar: namely the tropical delights of Chiang Mai. Boland's Facebook feed has been littered with updates on key staff appointments and tidbits on the hotly anticipated shows he is working on for Ten, uploaded among holiday snaps with his partner Julian Wong, featuring fluffy tigers and elephants. Rumours that Boland was in fact living in a sort of south-east Asian-style "harem" while he was conspiring to turn the TV industry on its head were quickly shot down by the television executive when PS enquired, explaining the group holiday shots which have caused much mirth across TV land featured "just good friends". Whatever you say, Adam.
From the vault
A diamond purported to have once sat in Queen Alexandra's coronation crown remains in Sydney, after Bonhams' jewellery sale this week, where it fetched a hefty $34,160. It was one of the extraordinary pieces under the hammer at Bonhams, which jewellery specialist Anellie Manolas said had done very well.Also up for sale was the intriguing Jacobson estate collection of diamonds, the huge stones having sat in a Sydney bank vault for the past 30 years. The sons of Georgette Jacobson, a South African woman who died last year, contacted Bonhams to sell the gems, mostly loose stones with some reportedly still in their original tissue paper. The Jacobson estate pieces made $915,000 in total. Manolas says such expensive baubles are increasingly coming onto the market as more Sydney banks shut down their safety deposit box services, prompting vendors to consider selling their treasures.
Cover blues
Yikes, something not terribly pretty went down in the offices of Vogue Australia after the magazine put Kate Moss on the cover. Buried on its website is an apology to Moss's London agency: "Vogue Australia apologises to Storm Model Management for any implication that Kate Moss is represented by IMG AUSTRALIA. She is not and never has been. Storm ... is Kate Moss's mother agency and looks after her internationally. Kate was originally booked by Storm for the June cover of UK Vogue shot by Patrick Demarchelier, that resulted in our July cover." Now you know
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