Noosa surf queen and blossoming TV star Lilliana Bowrey has been nominated for a Logie in the prestigious Graham Kennedy award for most popular new talent.
The 18-year-old former Sunshine Beach High student and winner of multiple junior titles in longboard and shortboard events, plus ambassador for the Noosa World Surfing Reserve, recently finished filming of the second season of the Netflix hit series Surviving Summer, due to go to air next summer. With no previous acting experience, Lil, the sweetheart of the Noosa surf festival in her longboarding years, was one of several Noosa surf girls talent-spotted to audition for the first season of the 10-part teen drama series, prior to production in 2021 by Werner Film Productions.
At the time she told Noosa Today from rehearsals in Melbourne: “The Werner team kind of knew after my first audition that this was what they were looking for personality wise – just kind of goofy and outgoing, which is my character anyway – and I had the right look for my Polynesian character, Poppy Tetuanua.”
While celebrated international teen stars Sky Katz, João Gabriel Marinho, Australia’s Kai Lewins and Savannah La Rain have the lead roles, first-time actor Lil’s character Poppy is an important and complex one that viewers have grown to love. As Lil explained: “Poppy is outgoing, loves to have fun, but she’s also really dedicated to her surfing. She’s not exactly an underdog, but her story is that her best friend gets sponsored and she doesn’t. At the same time her mother passes away from cancer, so she’s dealing with that too, so I’ve got to learn to put different emotions into the part. There’s really a lot to learn, but I’m loving it.”
When Noosa Today spoke to Lil this week, just hours after her return from surfing in a contest in Bali, the now-veteran confessed: “When we last talked about this I had no expectations whatsoever, so I went into it with an open mind and ended up loving it. Definitely didn’t expect to end up at the Logies though!
“We finished filming the second series in April and it’ll come out late this year. My character Poppy is in it throughout the second series and hopefully a third, although we don’t know about that yet, but the second season is bigger and better than the first. For the second series we shot for two months between Torquay and Anglesea on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria and then we moved up to the Kingscliff area in northern NSW. At some point in the second series I realised I was really enjoying being an actor, so I started to challenge myself in my performance and I think it paid off. I was certainly happy with how much I improved, so now I’ve got an agent and I’m going to see if I can make a career of it, alongside my surfing.”
The Logies are on in Sydney on 30 July and Lil and the Surviving Summer cast and crew will be there in force. Voting is open now at vote.tvweeklogies.com.au
