When Miranda Tapsell's friend and colleague Josh Tyler pitched to her the idea of writing a rom-com set in the Northern Territory, she thought he'd gone insane.
"What do you mean?" she recalls asking him. "Like a rom-com up in Darwin?"
The idea had come about when the pair were teaching a class of actors and writers, bouncing off each other with rom-com reference after rom-com reference.
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Tapsell explains that Tyler had "impressed" her as one of the only people she'd met in Sydney who'd visited the Northern Territory, and while she was hesistant at first, she quicky came to realise that his idea was nothing short of a stroke of genius.
The Sapphires star recalls working with Tyler on the script for Top End Wedding as her "baptism by fire".
"I'd never sort of dabbled in screenwriting before," she tells nine.com.au.
But, despite her lack of experience, Top End Wedding turned out to be a hit becoming the highest grossing Aussie film of 2019.
Not only did Tapsell co-create and co-write the project, she also starred in it as romantic lead Lauren, with Bohemian Rhapsody's Gwilym Lee taking on the role of her husband-to-be, Ned.
The film was such a success that fans begged for more. So, Tapsell and Tyler went back to the drawing board and came up with the spinoff series Top End Bub, premiering on Friday September 12.
But for Tapsell, creating Top End Wedding and Top End Bub was more than just a passion project.
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It was also a chance to flip the narrative on the way Indigenous families are depicted in the Australian media.
"For me, I don't know the kind of families that the media depicts," she explains.
"I know that a lot of social problems still exist within my community, but all I know are the families that are very caring, responsible, and hardworking."
Having grown up in Kakadu, Tapsell wanted create an honest representation of her home state for the screen.
"The Northern Territory has become almost unrecognisable in my eyes with the age of criminal responsibility being lowered from 12 to 10, just the strict laws that are in place, how quickly people go to jail, and how many Indigenous people are in that jail," she says.
"It's just staggering. So for me, I wanted to make this show to kind of bring it back to the parts of the territory that I love so much.
"I feel like I talk in circles all the time in the media about this, and I'm really lucky to be able to positively reinforce my community in this series."
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While the film and TV series were an opportunity for Tapsell to return to her roots, Lee signed on as an outsider looking in.
The Great actor had never been to the Northern Territory before filming Top End Wedding, but according to Tapsell, he's now a "local".
"I love it up there," Lee chimes in.
"The first time going up there, everything was new, and it was so overwhelming. It's an attack on the senses in the best possible way. It's just amazing."
While the film saw the duo travel all over the Northern Territory visiting locations such as Kakadu National Park, Katherine and Tiwi Islands, the series had their feet firmly planted in Darwin.
"I really felt like a Darwin local," he laughs.
"I had my cafe to go to, I had my favourite bar. You find out your little routine. And it was great going back to that part of the world after having made the film and after a lot of people who lived up there had seen it, particularly going to Tiwi, which is a really special place anyway."
Tapsell and Lee laugh, remembering that when they were welcomed back to Tiwi Island by the community, they were known to the locals as Lauren and Ned rather than Miranda and Gwilym.
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"It's really surreal," Lee continues.
"Being reunited with the same team, it's like a crazy, unexpected journey we've been on.
" It's a beautiful part of the world and a little part of me is still up there."
For fans of the film, it's Tapsell and Lee's faces that they'll recognise in the series. But after just one episode, it's obvious that first-time actor Gladys-May Kelly is the star.
Stepping into your first acting role at just nine years old would seem to most like a daunting task, but when asked if they shared any advice with Kelly, Tapsell and Lee share a knowing look and begin to laugh.
"No, we didn't give her any advice," Lee chuckles.
"She kind of knew what she was doing," affirms Tapsell.
"We just all looked at her and went, 'Okay, we should probably do the same'."
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Though they quickly came to realise that Kelly needed no help when it came to stepping into the role of Bub, both actors say that they made sure to look out for the young star on set.
"The biggest thing we could do, and try to do, was just protect her innocence in a way," Lee explains.
"She has a natural instinct and this kind of childlike innocence and playfulness, so it was just about protecting that and not overcomplicating things for her."
"We almost were her uncle and auntie in some way," Tapsell adds.
"There was obviously a lot of time pressure. We had to shoot things in a certain amount of time, and we couldn't allow for her to absorb any of that.
"It's kind of very similar to the way Lauren and Ned were dealing with their own stresses and not trying to put it on the kid, you know? Art reflecting life, really."
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