Celeste Barber looms large in Benjamin Law’s life. And when we say this, we mean it literally.
As we’re chatting over the phone from Sydney, the comedian, actor and Instagram star, who is about to star in Netflix’s new comedy, Wellmania — a series that Law co-created, along with author and journalist Brigid Delaney — is looming largely at Law . . . from two storeys up.
She’s giving him the hairy eyeball from a billboard across the road, a larger-than-life presence in his home. And Law absolutely loves it.
“I live in an apartment block where my view is of the billboard of Celeste for Wellmania,” he laughs. “She’s here, right now, looking down at me like the freaking BFG, however many metres tall that she is.
“‘Celeste Barber, Wellmania, only on Netflix March 29’ — I’m reading it right now!”
And the very fact it exists is making him smile.
Barber’s massive two-storey head is a visual reminder of a very personal labour of love for the author, journalist and TV creator, who worked for several years to bring the series, inspired by the book Wellmania: Misadventures in the Search for Wellness by his friend Delaney, to life.
In the series, Barber (who, along with Law, is an executive producer) stars as Aussie food writer Liv Healy, a woman who has found success living in the US and who is about to make it big as a judge on a TV cooking show.
Liv briefly returns to Australia for a friend’s birthday celebrations, only to get stranded back home after her green card is cancelled because she spectacularly fails her health assessment.
In order to get back into the US, Barber’s character embarks on a wellness journey, trying everything “from the benign to the bizarre in an attempt to get well quick and reclaim her old life”.
It’s stacks of fun and one of Netflix’s most hotly anticipated new series, marking as it does Barber’s first role as leading lady in her own show.
Though she’s enjoyed success as a stand-up star, online through her skewering of celebrities and ridiculous beauty standards (amassing an enormous nine million followers on Instagram in the process), and through smaller roles on shows like All Saints and the locally produced comedy The Letdown, Wellmania marks Barber’s first time as leading lady.
The series is the perfect fit, Barber’s global appeal sure to bring millions of sets of eyeballs to the show when it premieres this week.
“My agent sent me Brigid’s book to read with the idea that they were going to turn it into a TV show with me in it,” says Barber, who is chatting with STM from Sydney several days before we catch up with Law.
“I was a part of the pitch to Netflix and I’ve been onboard since the beginning. So this is like my little baby, too.”
Law says they had Barber in mind for the role of Liv right from the very beginning of the development process, and that he was thrilled when the stars aligned.
“I remember when we were developing Wellmania, me and Brigid started to think about who could possibly inhabit a role like Liv,” he explains.
“Celeste was Brigid’s brilliant idea . . . She was on everyone’s radar already — she has more followers than Gwyneth Paltrow after all — but especially after the bushfires and all her fundraising (Barber raised a whopping $51 million in the aftermath of 2019’s devastating bushfire season).
“I think we were all reminded that she has this massive heart. She’s so funny, as her Instagram constantly reminds us. But I think the other thing that really sparked my imagination was as soon as Brigid mentioned Celeste, I also knew she was this amazing actor.”
Barber hadn’t met Law before the pitch crossed her desk. But as soon as she read what he and Delaney had in store, and how they would like her to play an active part in the show’s evolution, she was wholeheartedly onboard.
Her love affair with Law began.
“First and foremost, Ben Law is the love of my life. He is the king,” says Barber, who has been married to her husband, Api Robin, for 10 years. They have two sons together, and Barber is step-mum to Robin’s two older daughters.
“Working with him, and his name being attached, was another reason why I went, ‘Yep, I’m in on this.’
“I had always loved Ben and knew I would love to work with him — and then we just fell desperately in love!”
The feeling was mutual, Law admitting he, too, found it hard to believe that Wellmania would mark Barber’s first time headlining a TV project.
“I feel like Celeste, until she had her Instagram, she was criminally overlooked,” he says, echoing the way we feel about the talented actor and comedian.
“Liv and Celeste, what I see both of them having in common is that for a long time, women of a certain age — and I am the same generation — but women in certain industries could be overlooked sometimes.
“Liv, in the show, has been pushing hard her entire life, but now she’s got this big break. In that first episode, when she comes back to Australia, it’s like she’s coming back to this country that kind of rejected her or didn’t take her seriously.”
Law says he feels that Liv and Barber are “similar creatures” in that respect.
“I feel like we all love Celeste because she’s a comedian, a hilarious clown, and she’s a great social commentator. But I also think this is a chance for everyone to take this incredible Australian global talent seriously,” he insists.
For her part, Barber says she sees the similarity between herself and her character in Wellmania, though she’s quick to point out they are not one and the same.
“This character runs pretty close to me,” she admits. “I think you learn at drama school that you have to have this complete departure from your character. But I was like ‘Do you, though?’
“I love playing her, but unlike me, Liv is 100 per cent fully immersed in every moment. She makes such big choices. She lives like tomorrow is her last day. She gets into everything and runs at it and she is the type of character that will just throw everything at the wall and whatever sticks, she will go with.
“I love that about her; that she is so big and loud and brave and smart.”
All traits that clearly exist within Barber in spades. And which are on show, watching over Law from that billboard in Sydney.
As well as being a pointer to all they’ve both achieved, that colossal piece of advertising is also a massive reminder of what can only be described as a truly bonkers period in Law’s life.
As well as preparing for his TV project to hit screens and enjoying becoming besties with the internet’s favourite Lady-in-Spanx, Law is enjoying a new kind of notoriety. Like Barber, he’s recently found a global fan base, thanks to his recent starring role in the latest series of Australian Survivor: Heroes V Villains.
Yep, in addition to working on a global series for Netflix, Law found time last year to film one of the most gruelling TV reality series imaginable, picking up a legion of global Survivor fans in the process.
Law joined the show on the Heroes tribe before being voted out on day 22 of the competition — an impressive feat.
“We shot Survivor across August and September last year, and I remember watching the final cuts of all the episodes (of Wellmania) red-eyed, with bags under my eyes, putting my last few notes in for it, closing my laptop and being like, ‘OK, I’m going to Samoa!” he laughs.
“My boyfriend said before I left, ‘My God Ben, how are you going to go into a domain where other people are making all the decisions for you, and you’ll be absolutely powerless?’”
And he had a point. Law, as both executive producer and creator of Wellmania, was involved in every aspect of the production. On Survivor he’d have to relinquish control.
Thankfully it wasn’t a problem.
“I said to him, ‘You know what? It sounds absolutely relaxing,’” Law laughs. “I’d been having all these complicated conversations about what needed to be done to make Wellmania and about how to make this story about Celeste’s character Liv sing.
“So by the time I was in a very different TV production, I was like, ‘Other people making decisions — love it.’”
Barber says she’s been cheering on her new bestie since and she’s thrilled the world is getting to see this very different side of him.
“I was in America when he was on, but now I am obsessed with Survivor since I’ve been back,” she says. “I was furious when I got back and saw that he wasn’t on it any more. I was like, ‘Who do I talk to?’”
It’s clear theirs is a friendship that will endure, even now the first series of Wellmania has wrapped. And if they’re lucky, they may even score a second opportunity to work together.
“Let’s just say that if given the opportunity, we have a fair idea of where we’d like to take Liv Healy next,” Law explains.
And wherever that might be, Barber says she will follow.
“It was really exciting to be able to work with Ben,” she says. “I think he is very, very clever.”
And in the meantime, she can always stalk him from two storeys up.
Wellmania is coming to Netflix on March 29.