Steph Tisdell: ‘This year’s for us. This year is about saying we’re still here’

‘It’s really hard to be a profiled Indigenous person speaking truths where you don’t have the space for nuance’ … Steph Tisdell. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins/The Guardian

When Steph Tisdell was filming the Amazon series Class of ’07, she used to drive every day to Malabar beach in Sydney’s south-east to decompress. It was the summer of 2021-22, and the show’s cast and crew were “bubbled” to mitigate Covid risk.

“I was here for 119 days, staying in a hotel room, and we weren’t really allowed to go to populated places,” Tisdell recalls. “But you’re interacting with at least 50 people a day on set. I’m a social person but I really need my own time, and so I’d always go for a drive – but I’d want to park somewhere and just sit and feel the energy of the place.”