‘Every rom-com needs a little tragedy’: Miranda Tapsell on Top End Wedding follow-up Top End Bub

I’m in Darwin to interview Miranda Tapsell on the set of Top End Bub, the new TV series being filmed here that follows on from the 2019 box office hit Top End Wedding. Tapsell was born and raised in the Top End, whereas it’s my first time, so we trade notes on how great Darwin is, which gives a chance to discuss my favourite thing about the city so far: the laksa.

However, before I can move the conversation on from Asian cuisine, Tapsell turns the tables and posits a question to me: “Thomas, what do people really know about Darwin?”

I can’t tell if I should answer, or if it’s mostly rhetorical, though I do know Tapsell looks very Darwin, kicked back on a deck chair, relaxed between takes while seeking shade from the midday sun under a loping palm tree. I also know, having spent the last few days in the titular Top End, that it’s difficult to describe.

Sure, it’s beautiful, picturesque even, and famously tropical (often raining, always sticky). Plus, there are plenty of crocodiles (I’ve seen them with my own eyes) and natural swimming holes (I swam in them with my own limbs). Oh, and of course, it boasts the kind of heat that seems impossible not to discuss, and so I do: “Well, it’s very hot.”

“Yes, exactly,” says Tapsell, whose other on-screen credits include The Sapphires, Love Child and more recently The Surfer. “People know about the heat, and yes, the laksa too, plus the mosquitoes, the long drives, and that’s it, it’s far away from everything else.” That all seems to check out. “But what they don’t know about,” she continues. “Is the adventure, the mystique, the magic, it’s a place that lends itself to reinvention, and that’s what I wanted to show with Top End Bub.”

Reinvention is at the heart of Top End Bub, an eight-part series from Amazon Prime that picks up five years after the events of Top End Wedding. Released in 2019, Top End Wedding told the story of high-flying lawyer Lauren (Miranda Tapsell) and her British fiancé Ned (The Great’s Gwilym Lee), who are desperately in love and desperate to get married. The only problem? Lauren’s mother, Daffy (Ursula Yovich), goes missing before the big day.

The film was a surprise hit, debuting at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival, being nominated for Best Film at the 2019 AACTA Awards and taking more than $5 million at the box office. For Lee, who returned to the UK following the release of Top End Wedding, the success made sense, but he didn’t expect a sequel on the horizon.

“In my mind, the movie had lived its life and had this beautiful journey, we took it to Sundance, it captured people’s hearts, and that was that,” he says. “Sitting on my shelf as a happy memory.”

It may well have remained on the shelf if it weren’t for the pandemic. The upside to being trapped inside was that Tapsell, like most people, found herself grappling with the big questions. “I was at a point in my life where I was really at a crossroads, I’d entered my 30s, I’d done quite well in my career, and my husband [James] and I were talking about starting a family,” she says.

“So you’re forced to think about what that means for your life, your career and your whole identity.”

These ideas would all go into the scripts for Top End Bub, which Tapsell developed alongside Joshua Tyler, who co-wrote Top End Wedding. The sequel begins with Lauren and Ned returning to Darwin after Lauren’s sister Ronelle (Shari Sebbens) dies in a car accident. Suddenly, the newlyweds find themselves legal guardians of Lauren’s daughter, Taya (debutant Gladys-May Kelly), forced to navigate grief, parenthood, upheaval, and, of course, life in Darwin.

“For a romantic comedy series, it does sound heavy, but every rom-com needs a little tragedy, look at Four Weddings and a Funeral,” laughs Tapsell, 37.

As luck would have it, both Tapsell and Lee had the perfect preparation before production began, each becoming first-time parents. “Between making the film and making the TV series, I became a dad to a little boy and funnily enough, Miranda had a daughter at the same time; our kids are maybe a month apart,” explains Lee, 41. “Nothing prepares you for parenthood, but you learn a lot about sacrifice very quickly.”

Earlier this year, Tapsell welcomed a second child with husband James Colley, the expanding brood a reminder of the role community plays in a child’s life.

“I need that village right now, and there are so many benefits to it,” she explains. “The Aboriginal community that I grew up with in Darwin is very tight-knit, a mixture of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, the type of place where you borrow milk and bread from next door, it’s like a school of fish.”

For Tapsell, capturing that environment on screen was a crucial part of accurately representing her culture. “Aboriginal families are often on the wrong end of lazy stereotypes, and we didn’t want to do that,” she says. “In Top End Bub it’s not just Ned and Lauren, but aunties and uncles, everyone chipping in together - that is how I grew up, and I wanted to share the pride and joy I have in my community.”

Pride and joy in the community is probably the one thing people really should know about Darwin.

Every local I met was quick to share their recommendations, promising that Litchfield National Park, located on the traditional lands of the Limilngan-Wulna people, would take my breath away (true). Or that the laksa from the Mindil Beach markets was better than anything you’ll find around the country (agreed). And don’t forget a sundowner at the Darwin Ski Club, no better place to watch the world go by (they’re not wrong).

For a big city with a population of 150,000, Darwin has a distinctly small-town feel, willing to embrace anyone and everyone.

“As a British actor based in London, and born in Bristol, I would have had no inkling that I was going to become a Darwin local,” jokes Lee. “We filmed for seven weeks, and I had my own apartment. I’d pop down to the shops; the community embraced me, and I’ll forever have a soft spot for the area.”

As for Tapsell, with the long-awaited release of Top End Bub finally here, and her “delightfully busy” home life in full swing, the actress is looking to take a break from being in front of the camera to focus on writing.

“If acting work comes along and the script resonates with me, then I’ll try and make it work, but at the moment I am enjoying writing,” she says. “It gives me more autonomy, I can do daycare pickups and drop-offs, I can still be a mum and a creator – I’m excited to see where it might take me.”

No matter where she ends up, I suspect that given Tapsell’s connection to Darwin runs so deep, a part of her will always remain kicked back on that deck chair, seeking shade from the midday sun under a loping palm tree.

Top End Bub will stream via Prime Video from Friday, September 12, 2025. Thomas Mitchell travelled to Darwin courtesy of Prime Video.

Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at thomas.mitchell@smh.com.au or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.