Ruby Rees on Playing the "Character We Love to Hate" in "Picnic at Hanging Rock"

Ruby explains how it’s fun to play someone so "whiny", and why her next film will be "entirely female-made".

The mystery of Picnic at Hanging Rock has endured in Australian folklore for decades: What happened to those schoolgirls who disappeared on that doomed boarding school excursion?

But there’s another mystery tucked within that larger one: What is up with Edith Horton?

In Foxtel’s new miniseries—adapted from Joan Lindsay’s 1967 fictional novel rather than Peter Weir’s iconic 1975 film—Ruby Rees plays the "whiny" Edith, one of four girls to climb the enigmatic rock on 14 February 1900, and the only one to return, screaming, that fateful day.

"The thing about Edith in the novel is she’s very troubled, even before everything unfolds with the disappearances," Rees tells Student Edge.

"She’s troubled by the outdoors, and she’s troubled by the older girls. Life’s really hard for her. And someone who whines and whinges a lot, they’re not necessarily the most likeable person, and I think the idea of playing that was really fun."

It was one of many tantalising challenges for Rees, who, at age 22, is bringing to life a 13-year-old best known in Australian literature and cinema as, well, a pain in the neck.

"I definitely didn’t set out to make her more likeable," she says.

"The amazingness of [screenwriter Beatrix Christian’s] writing meant we could eventually sympathise and empathise with her in the series, because we saw more of why she’s that way; why she’s so troubled; why she finds the little everyday things so difficult. But I didn’t set out to rectify anything. I think she’s gotta be the character we love to hate otherwise it’s not the truth of the story."

Game of Thrones’ Natalie Dormer stars in the Australian production as headmistress Hester Appleyard, whose secretive past comes to haunt her when students Miranda (Lily Sullivan), Irma (Samara Weaving) and Marion (Madeleine Madden) go missing on Hanging Rock for reasons either criminal or supernatural.

Edith initially tags along with Miranda, Irma and Marion, and Rees remembers the physical difficulty of filming on the actual "sacred land" of Hanging Rock in central Victoria.

"It really made us rally as a massive team and it was really special because we were permitted to film on parts of the rock that the general public aren’t necessarily allowed to enter or even stand in, so there was a real need to be respectful," she says.

Rees, who starred in Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and moved to New York shortly after graduating from high school, was in America when the opportunity to audition for Picnic at Hanging Rock arose.

Having been told not to rewatch the movie, Rees instead referred to Lindsay’s book as her "bible".

"My copy is dog-eared and torn and highlighted and covered in scribbles," she now says.

However, to relate to Edith, she only had to think back to her own early teen days.

"You’re learning about your body and it’s changing at such a rapid pace, particularly for young girls; the onset of puberty can be really, really scary, and that’s depicted in the show," she says.

"I’m really, really grateful for our female ensemble, because while Lily and Maddie and Sam and I are older than our characters by quite a few years, the majority of the ensemble of schoolgirls are real teenagers, playing their own age, and they range from 13 all the way to 18.

"If I was ever stuck, in terms of finding female adolescence again, I could just look around the set, or have lunch with these beautiful young women and hear about what’s going on in their lives and what’s going on in school, and it just brought me straight back to my own high school years, so I was like, 'Oh, great, I found it, I’m back in.'"

Still, Ruby at 13 had a bit more personal clarity than Edith, realising at that early age she wanted to be an actor.

"Of course, that goes in and out over the next five years as you try different subjects at school, and for a while I really thought [about a career in] science and medicine, which is, to me, funny now," she laughs.

"But I never stopped doing theatre and I never stopped acting.

"I think I have to keep doing what I’ve always done, because that’s me; it’s in my blood."

Rees will prove it with Women by the Sea, a feature film script she has written, focusing on five female characters. And, inspired by Picnic at Hanging Rock’s creative crew, there will be even more women behind the scenes.

"It’s gonna be entirely female-made; Australia’s first all-female-identifying feature film," Ruby says.

"After Picnic, and being on a set with such incredible, inspiring, creative women, I took the match to the gasoline.

"It was like I always wanted to do it, but there was fuel there and drive there that hadn’t necessarily been there before."

Picnic at Hanging Rock airs new episodes on the showcase channel every Sunday. You can stream all six episodes immediately on Foxtel Now.

Photo: Supplied (Foxtel)