Claudia Karvan talks The Airport Chaplain and the power of human connection

Just a week out from the premiere of her new drama series, The Airport Chaplain, Claudia Karvan won the Silver Logie Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama for her performance in Homebodies.

The last time I spoke with Claudia, it was with her co-star in that project Luke Wiltshire, in that conversation we discussed identity and forgiveness. 

“Every journey is individual,” she told me during that interview. “Hopefully [Homebodies] will open up the conversation. We all need to talk to each other about how we’re feeling and our fears.”

If Homebodies was about going on a journey of individual growth and identity, The Airport Chaplain explores human nature in a setting where people can be their best and worst: the airport.

Maybe it’s because I travel a lot (as an immigrant, a sometime travel writer and just as a human who enjoys travelling), but the mechanics of an airport world fascinate me. I have sat through numerous docuseries and videos investigating airport food (thank you Business Insider) and how and where you luggage goes (thanks to my cousin who works at an airport doing just that). It’s a world beneath a world. Or as Claudia calls it, “a netherworld.”

“It’s sort of like a netherworld, isn’t it?” she says. “Where anything could happen.”

Like me, Claudia is equally intrigued by how an airport operates. 

“It’s like a country town,” she tells me. “They all know each other’s business and they’ve all got each other’s backs.”

“I interviewed a few people in that industry and once you’re in, they never leave. It’s a fantastic industry and they move from airline to airline and they intermarry and it’s…it’s like a country town.”

But more than that, it’s a place where human nature reveals itself.

“Like Brian Eno said when he wrote that album, Music for Airports, it’s a place where you contemplate your mortality,” she elaborates. “It’s often the beginnings of things or that’s the ends of things. It’s a confluence of human stories and intriguing stories.”

It is a place of beginnings and endings, she says. A place where people, often at some of the most emotionally charged moments of their lives, briefly collide before continuing on their separate ways.

That makes it the perfect setting for The Airport Chaplain, the new drama starring Shabana Azeez as the new airport manager, Hugo Weaving as Tobias, an airport chaplain, and Claudia as Cath, his longtime friend and colleague.

The two haven’t actually worked too much together – it’s their second screen project since Strange Planet (1999), but the two are good friends in real life.

“He’s so easy to act with and, there’s so much history there with him,” she tells me. “I feel very safe with Hugo.” The thought reminds her of a conversation they had.

“We chatted about how we had to do sex scenes back in the day together without intimacy coordinators and how awkward they were and how we had to reshoot them,” she laughs. “That was fun. But we know each other socially too.”

In the series their characters have a really fun dynamic, something that any longtime work friends can relate to.

“I think they’re not like sticklers for the the rules and they’ve got each other’s back,” Claudia tells me. “When Shabana’s character comes in there’s a certain ageist bias. I think when you get to a certain age you look after other people who aren’t whipper snappers,” she laughs. “So there’s a loyalty there and they’re historical confidants.”

Tobias’ job is wide ranging, from supporting a family dealing with grief to helping organise flights and find missing items. The vocation was new to Claudia, as it was to me, but now she knows more than most.

“I never didn’t know that it existed and even better than that, they have a conference! Wouldn’t that be fun to go to?”  she asks me.

Unlike the series, there isn’t just one chaplain at the Melbourne airport (where the series is shot).

“There’s the one paid chaplain, but the others are volunteers,” Claudia explains. “The woman that I hung out with, she’s been doing it for like 20 years unpaid. It’s all voluntary. The mind boggles. The careers that one can have.”

Of course, in the series, Claudia portrays an airline service manager, and out of everything else, her wardrode was a highlight.

“I got to wear a uniform,” she gushes. “So I didn’t have to go in and out of the costume bus and get changed all the time. I loved that. I loved my little scarf and badges and my walkie-talkie and my little cravat.”

Nailing the authentic look was important to Claudia.

“We tried on lots of different things, but I was like, ‘I really want a cravat'” she tells me “And I really wanted the opaque stockings and the block, comfortable heel, and the eyelashes and the hair and the French roll.”

It works, and then with the look down, she had to move on to the research. And who better to talk to than someone who does that exact job? 

“When I met with the airline service manager of Qantas, he said, ‘Oh, look, we’re like your industry. We work crazy hours. We never know when a big drama is going to happen.’”

Those dramas could include “a pile up on the highway, managing people getting on planes or delaying planes, people on layovers for 12 or 24 hours, real life police resuces and people with mental health issues.”

“Everything’s in flux all the time,” she adds. “It’s a big story engine with a whole lot of different facets that you wouldn’t appreciate or know about.”

It almost makes you wonder why it’s taken so long for someone to set a television series there! Similar stories to those real-life scenarios show up in this serie, including an episode which dives into domestic violence. 

“That was really disturbing,” Claudia says. “There’s a term they use in the airport: “excess baggage” it’s a code word. And it foes happen frequently, unfortunately where usually a woman escaping from a difficult situation will be at the airport and they’ll either be like holding their child really close or they’ll be looking around, they’ll have a lot of baggage and they’ll have cash, they won’t have a card.”

The airport staff is trained to spot these individuals and offer assistance if needed. 

“That was quite traumatic actually, that storyline,” she adds. “But Brenna Harding, who played by daughter’s best friend in Puberty Blues played the woman who was running. She did a beautiful job.”

Stories of human compassion and camaraderie are at the heart of The Airport Chaplain. Themes that are more important now than ever as the world reacts to the influx of AI on creative industries, including acting (and writing). It’s something that is at the forefront of everyone’s minds, in particular those in the creative industries. 

“There’s the right of the right, there’s volatility, the influx of AI, wars, and the breakdown of legacy media. We’re all watching,” Claudia says. “There’s a massive reshuffle happening and we don’t quite know where it’s all going to land.”

But whatever happens, Claudia remains positive about the future. 

“I’m backing humanity,” she says. “I’m backing compassion. We’re all really hungering for community and for making our lives meaningful hour by hour, moment to moment, rather than running with fear and running with sort of hasty plans based on fear and threats and worry. We don’t want to isolate ourselves. We’ve got to stick together.”

For Claudia, The Airport Chaplain is a reminder that we rarely know what someone else is carrying and perhaps, in a world that can feel like is tearing itself apart, we are actually a lot more similar than we are different. 

“The message I hope people take away is that human interaction is really important and we’re not alone,” she says. “People have got our back. Kindness still exists. Even though sometimes you might doubt it, it’s still there.”

It reminds her of a Zadie Smith quote, “every person is a world”.

“It’s really stuck with me,” she tells me as we finish up. “It’s beautiful to imagine everyone has their own world. And it’s complex and it’s… almost infinite. It’s beautiful.”

The Airport Chaplain premieres on SBS and SBS On Demand on 26 August. Stream all episodes on SBS On Demand or watch from 8:30pm Wednesdays on SBS.