Rebecca Gibney had never called a family meeting to discuss her career before – that is, until she was offered the role of Abi Quinn in the hot-button new Aussie series Prosper.
“I was raised in a Christian family,” she explains to The Weekly.
The Gibneys belonged to a Baptist church, so Rebecca and her five older siblings were marched off to Sunday school each week, first in the little town of Levin and later in Wellington. Some members of her family are still involved with charismatic Christianity, so she felt that it was only right to ask how they would feel if she accepted this role as the wife of a deeply flawed evangelical preacher on a mission to plant megachurches around the world.
Prosper, in which Rebecca stars opposite Richard Roxburgh, is primarily a family drama that could have played out in any cutthroat dynasty. But it also directs a lens at some of the ethical inconsistencies that have come to light in the Pentecostal movement in recent years.
Thankfully, Rebecca’s family is a considered bunch and the meeting went well. “They understood that the show is not having a go at faith, Christianity or religion,” she says.
“It’s a family drama about how power and wealth can corrupt even the faithful. What I love about the series, particularly as it goes on, is that each character has redeemable features. There are no evil people. They’re just very flawed.
“So my family were fine with that …I think they’d like to see this kind of thing exposed. Yes, it’s about a family with secrets, but also, if you’re going to be heads of a megachurch, you’re expected to practise what you preach.”
When Rebecca left Wellington in 1984 to follow her acting museand more – she also left her formal involvement with Christianity behind. Yet there is a sense of faith or spirituality that has never left her.
