Australian actress Melissa George, who starred as Rosie in the critically acclaimed ABC drama The Slap, has revealed that she didn't hesitate when offered the chance to play the same role in the US adaptation.
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"I was watching the casting for a year when I heard that they got The Slap and I sat and watched and read," she told US media.
"I was like, who is going to play Rosie, who is going to play Rosie? This is my girl. This is my woman. I want her to come home."
George, with other members of the cast of the US remake, was speaking at a programming showcase in Los Angeles.
The 38-year-old Perth-born actress said she was close to signing another role when the show's US producer and writer, playwright Jon Robin Baitz, contacted her.
"Robbie called me and said, you've got to do it," she revealed. "I said, 'I am so happy you called because I want to dig deeper.'"
The series, based on the novel of the same name by Christos Tsiolkas, tells the story of how friendships and relationships are shattered at a backyard barbecue when a father slaps another family's child.
The original Australian version, produced in 2011, starred George, Jonathan LaPaglia, Essie Davis, Alex Dimitriades, Sophie Low and Sophie Okenedo.
The US adaptation will star George, Peter Sarsgaard, Uma Thurman, Thandie Newton and Zachary Quinto.
Since relocating to the US in 1999, George has amassed an enviable slate of US credits including Alias, the HBO drama In Treatment, guest roles in Grey's Anatomy and The Good Wife and the Cinemax drama Hunted.
George said working on the US version of The Slap represented a chance to re-explore the character.
"To be honest, it was so difficult the first time around because it is such a difficult subject matter, watching all these actors go through the same thing that we all went through before," she said.
"It's very confronting and I've never felt for a second that I'm repeating something or that the scene is the same ... it's completely the opposite.
"I've done the Commonwealth version, and now I'm doing the American version. So I feel it's a different journey for me."
US network NBC has commissioned eight one-hour episodes of The Slap.
George said it was commendable that a US network, which has to work within a tighter framework of permitted language and behaviour, commissioned such a bold piece of work.
"As actors, we get a cable script, and we're excited because we know producers are not ripping out pages, saying, you can't say this, you can't say that because the advertisers are going to not like you to say that," she said.
"And actors like that because, as an actor, you want freedom of speech.
"On the other side of that, [you] get less viewers if you're on cable. I think for the first time for myself, and I maybe can speak for everybody else, we have this luxurious poetic dialogue from Robbie Baitz and the direction of Lisa [Cholokenko] and Walter [Parkes] and all these great actors, and we're on network TV."
The Slap will air in the US in February.
