Growing up in Canberra, Samoan Australian actor Ioane Sa’ula thought he’d play sport professionally.
From the age of seven, the Bump and Heartbreak High star played rugby league every weekend.
But at 13, he broke his tibia and fibula, the bones in his lower leg. The injury led to a staph infection, eight surgeries and about three months in hospital, halting his league career for two years.
During his convalescence, Sa’ula was encouraged by his English teacher to try acting.
He soon landed the role of Gomez in his school’s production of The Addams Family.
“I fell in love with it,” he says. “I realised acting is where I want to take my future.“
Still in high school, Sa’ula began poring over casting Facebook pages, which eventually landed him an audition for Stan’s teen-mum comedy-drama Bump.
“Ever since, [I’ve pursued] the dream of becoming an actor,” he says.
Sa’ula sees that transition from budding sportsman to actor as a kind of second chance — the kind explored in his latest project, Stan’s new medical drama The F Ward.
It follows a group of interns at an underfunded Sydney hospital that seems to be teetering on the edge of the ocean. This hospital is a second — maybe even last — chance for a group of young wannabe doctor who all failed their first year as interns.
Sa’ula plays Jimmy, alongside his fellow interns: Lola Bond (Last Days of the Space Age) as Ellie, profoundly rattled by the death of a patient; Alex Fitzalan (Prosper) as Josh; Rishab Kern (Dear Life) as Yosef; comedian Annie Boyle (Colin from Accounts) as Ava; and Emily Barclay (ABC TV’s Please Like Me) as Lisa, a former nurse juggling her training with motherhood.
Sa’ula (pictured with the other F Ward interns, and Paula Arundell as the hospital’s administrator) was excited to learn medical jargon and how to realistically depict medical procedures on screen. (Supplied: Stan/John Platt)
The interns are guided through their new jobs by Dr Wall (British actor Anna Friel; Pushing Daisies) and Dr Parker (Dan Wyllie; Love My Way), obstetrician-gynaecologist Dr Matessi (Susie Porter; Wentworth) and “rockstar” surgeon Dr Friedman (Jeremy Sims; The Artful Dodger).
It’s a little bit Grey’s Anatomy with its insight into the messy personal lives of doctors, a little bit Scrubs with its good-natured warmth and sense of humour, and a little bit The Pitt as it shines a light on some of the difficulties faced by medical professionals.
At the same time, The F Ward is distinctly Australian, sharing the playful but sometimes serious tone of its predecessors Bump and Year Of.
For producer and co-creator Dan Edwards, it’s an example of what he heard an international distributor call “sunny television”.
“There’s darkness and humour,” he says. “But I think overall [Australians] are optimistic and warm.
“If you do something honestly and don’t take yourself too seriously, that comes through — that’s the Australianness [of the show].”
Finding the perfect lead
Edwards always knew he wanted Sa’ula to star in The F Ward.
In fact, he had wanted to find a project for Sa’ula to lead ever since he was first cast in Bump — a show Edwards also co-produced.
It didn’t matter Sa’ula might have been too young for the role when Edwards and co-creator Kelsey Munro (who also co-created Bump with actor Claudia Karvan) were first trying to find a home for their new medical drama, back in about 2019.
“We always imagined Ioane to be the romantic lead,” Edwards says. “When he was too young, we were like, he can play older.”
Edwards and his team had long wanted to do a hospital drama, starting development on about the same time as they started working on Bump.
The project bounced between networks and writing teams, with one writer attached to an earlier version pitching it as “Secret Life of Us in a hospital”.
Since then, the series has evolved into something more like Apple TV’s spy series Slow Horses — with a hospital full of down-on-their-luck interns replacing Slough House’s home for rejected spies.
“They’re flawed individuals who have failed their first year not because they’ve killed somebody — because that’s not a reason to fail, they’re all going to kill somebody inadvertently at some stage — but due to personal frailty,” Edwards explains.
While The F Ward does have “cases of the week” like a traditional medical drama, Edwards describes it as more of a “character study”.
“It’s like [HBO financial drama] Industry,” he says. “It’s really smart, flawed people and the generational rub of working in a hot-house environment.“
That “generational rub” also happened behind the scenes, with Sa’ula learning from the likes of Wyllie and Friel, just as he learned from Karvan on Bump.
Sa’ula (pictured with Wyllie) didn’t grow up watching medical shows, but started watching The Pitt and British docuseries 24 Hours in Emergency to prepare for The F Ward. (Supplied: Stan/John Platt)
“I learned how to hold myself on camera and off camera, and how being off camera can apply on camera,” Sa’ula says.
“Where you stand, how you end a scene, and how you talk to someone are very important.
“Listening is probably my best skill. My best acting is when I’m listening.”
A hospital falling into the ocean
Just as the interns at the start of the season are falling apart, so too is the hospital. It’s modelled on Mona Vale Hospital’s former main building, which has since been demolished.
“[It] was this really old, rickety hospital, above a golf course,” Edwards says.
“None of the machinery sat in the walls anymore because it didn’t fit — it was all too modern. And there were cables taped on the floor, and in the lift they had to hold the wall to make it stop rattling.”
He recalls his own grandmother deliberately, repeatedly, injuring herself while living in an assisted living facility so she could stay at the hospital.
“She hated [the facility] so much she would throw herself out of bed to get injured and get taken to Mona Vale Hospital,” he says.
“[At Mona Vale] she could see out the windows and see the view and see the whales, and we would go and visit her.”
Unable to shoot at the hospital, the production found the former Avon cosmetics factory, a Brutalist-style building also in Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
The rundown hospital adds another element to The F Ward — its depiction of the issues faced by healthcare workers in Australia today.
“The Australian health system is under strain, is underfunded, but it’s also a fantastic health system,” Edwards says.
“But we are losing those suburban hospitals and they’re where a lot of interns do their internships. In regional hospitals it’s a different story, but it’s even more strained.”
It’s a system he became intimately familiar with during shooting last year, when a surfing accident landed him in the emergency room.
Sa’ula enjoyed the challenge of playing the at-times arrogant Jimmy in The F Ward, after playing the sweet-natured Vince for five seasons of Bump. (Supplied: Stan/John Platt)
“What that mainly explains is Anna Friel did not need to have an Australian accent because everybody I saw was from the UK,” Edwards says, with a laugh.
“But I think what we’re trying to say about this hospital is that it’s miraculous.
“The care that’s available to Australians is something to be incredibly proud of, and it’s precious because it doesn’t exist in much of the world.
“The health system is one of the shining examples of what’s good about humanity: These people have dedicated their lives, and frankly sacrifice their lives for this calling.”
The F Ward is streaming on Stan.
