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On a cold Sydney morning, clouds and seagulls fly low as imminent heavy rain once again menaces the filming schedule. Yet five key cast members of the NCIS: Sydney series are drinking beers on a pier from bottles labelled Dizzy Dingo by the show’s meticulous art department.
The drone camera pulls back across the harbour before actor Tuuli Narkle, her hair in a short blonde bob, steps into close-up in dressy heels, black pants and an off-the-shoulder top cinched with a gold buckle. Her self-assured character, Constable Evie Cooper, laughs and tells her joint US-Australian military task force comrades: “I’m going to love you and leave you.”
She’s just leaving the team for the day, of course, given that NCIS: Sydney, about to premiere its third series internationally on Paramount+, seems here to stay. It’s further evidence that Narkle’s screen and stage career is on firm ground: she’s also recently been playing Mary Allen, partner of Constable Jay Swan, in Mystery Road: Origin on the ABC, its latest season filmed amid the giant karri trees around Pemberton in Narkle’s home state of Western Australia.
Common Hours dress, Dinosaur Designs bangles.Credit: Jedd Cooney
The actor, whose ancestry is Noongar (Yued-Wiilman) from south-west WA, brings her cultural foundations to all her roles. This is apparent as young Indigenous woman Mary (now pregnant and grappling with new-found knowledge of her father’s identity) in the Origin series, but also as Australian Federal Police officer Evie, who as a teenager had to help her single mum raise her siblings, in NCIS.
“Evie’s [Indigeneity] is incredibly important to me as a person and as an artist,” says Narkle, now seated in a cafe as rain blankets the pier. “I never wanted that to be a central theme, but because it’s intrinsic to who Evie is, it does come up throughout the story.
“I’ve been working very closely with Morgan [O’Neill, the NCIS: Sydney showrunner] as to how to do that authentically and safely, so we will see more of that drip-fed in. I’m very passionate about having a First Nations storyline in such a huge show with such a huge reach.”
Narkle holds close her knowledge of some Noongar words, particularly “wirin” (spirit), which takes her mind back to Country – she grew up first in York, a wheatbelt town about a hundred kilometres east of Perth, before her family moved to the port city of Fremantle. “I grew up with my mum, mostly – my dad was kind of in and out – and I have a little sister, Jada,” she says.
Aje suede “Darcy” jacket, Dinosaur Designs bangles.Credit: Jedd Cooney
Narkle often returns to the familiarity of York to decompress between acting assignments, but it was in their small Fremantle weatherboard – she describes it as a “low socio-economic household” – that Narkle and her mother, Sanna, would watch the original NCIS, obsessed with the working relationship between protagonists DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) and Gibbs (Mark Harmon).
Way before that, the first performance Narkle ever saw was at the age of one, sitting on her mother’s lap while her Auntie played keyboards in a stage production of the musical Bran Nue Dae, an Indigenous story set in Broome (decades later, in 2020, Narkle would play Marijuana Annie on stage). Growing up, any storytelling and dance celebrating Indigenous cultures would spark Narkle’s ambition to perform.
At age nine, she won a role in a play written by her primary school teacher in which she portrayed the teacher himself. Around the same time, she began taking circus and dance classes run by Fremantle artists, a program “geared towards keeping kids from being naughty”.
Zara dress and sandals, Dinosaur Designs earrings.Credit: Jedd Cooney
Was Narkle in danger of being naughty? “I’m very much the eldest daughter, type-A personality,” she says, smacking her palms and laughing. “I’m like, ‘No, don’t do that!’ I remember when I was five, I said, ‘I’m going to be a police officer and stand by the law’.”
Narkle can also clearly recall the pivotal moment, still in primary school, when she decided to become an actor: seeing actor, director and writer Leah Purcell, a Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri woman, being interviewed on television. “I remember the way she unapologetically took up space for herself and spoke with such pride. She looked like me as well. I saw myself in her.”
Years later, Narkle’s first stage role would be as Ruby, a member of the stolen generations, in a community production of Jane Harrison’s play Stolen, directed by Purcell. The production, she says, was a small affair, but the theme was huge for Narkle on a personal level.
“Both of my grandparents on my dad’s side were part of the stolen generations,” she says. “One of my most visceral memories was during [the broadcast of] Kevin Rudd’s [2008] apology, holding my grandmother’s hand. She held her tears in the entire time, but she was squeezing my hand so hard.”
Bianca Spender “Plunge” gown, Zara sandals, Dinosaur Designs jewellery.Credit: Jedd Cooney
In Perth, having graduated from John Curtin College of the Arts, a selective secondary school, Narkle successfully auditioned to study at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Sydney. But she felt “extremely overwhelmed” when she arrived, with a sense of being “completely foreign”.
Nevertheless, NIDA proved fruitful when it came to finding herself, and she began to identify as queer. “I think I always knew, but like a lot of people, the idea solidified at drama school,” laughs Narkle, who is currently single.
Her personal and cultural identities have strongly influenced her professional choices ever since, with her stage credits including Roxanne in a gender-flipped retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac. The Melbourne Theatre Company production had been adapted by Virginia Gay, who also played the title character, “so Roxanne is a woman of colour who is queer. How many times in your life does a character align so clearly with who you are as a person and as an artist?”
Narkle has also appeared in two plays by Yorta Yorta/Gunaikurnai playwright Andrea James, playing Wiradjuri tennis champion Evonne Goolagong in Sunshine Super Girl for MTC, and acting alongside Boonwurrung/Bunurong woman Tasma Walton as part of an ensemble of six Indigenous female actors in Winyanboga Yurringa at Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre.
Walton has gone on to become a crucial figure in Narkle’s career. She was the first actor to play Mary, alongside Aaron Pedersen as Detective Jay Swan, in the 2013 feature film Mystery Road, reprising the role for the first TV series, which aired on the ABC over two seasons in 2018 and 2020.
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But when the series pivoted to Jay and Mary’s prequel, Mystery Road: Origin, set in 1999 and 2000, the roles were passed to a younger generation: Mark Coles Smith as Jay and Narkle as Mary. Narkle had auditioned for a smaller role, the troubled Lartesha, but was instead offered the female lead.
Narkle says she respected Walton so much as an actor she worried that she might “shit the bed” when handed the role. “I was incredibly lucky Bunya Productions brought Tasma out to set,” says Narkle. “She worked with me quite extensively on shaping Mary, describing the way she had played the role previously, and how we could link that to the story I was now telling.”
Narkle, for her part, studied the way Walton rolled the word “blackfella” in her mouth, how she crossed her arms whenever Jay approached. Recognition that Narkle had finally made the role her own came in the form of a 22-carat gold statuette: the 2022 Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts award for best lead actress in a television drama. For Narkle, it was solid proof that she’d arrived.
NCIS: Sydney season three premieres on Paramount+ and Ten on October 14.
Fashion director: Penny McCarthy. Hair: Travis Balcke using GHD. Make-up: Aimie Fiebig using Charlotte Tilbury. Fashion assistant: Abbey Stockwell.
Stockists: Aje; Bec & Bridge; Bianca Spender; Dinosaur Designs; Zara.
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