Jett Tattersall is the kind of human being you want to have in your club. Her energy and appetite for live are infectious. To be around Jett is to have your creative fire stoked and loved into a blaze.

Working as a screen writer and personal trainer, alongside being a mum, skater and all-round legend, Jett is a person with a lot of projects on the go, who consistently brings the magic.

We caught up with her for a chat recently and fell even more in love with her than we already had. 2020 has already gotten off to a rocky start here in Australia. Fires, drought, Scomo’s handshakes. Everyone is thirsting for some replenishing good news and we’ve brought you just the convo to slake that thirst.

Amy: Hey mate, can you tell us a little about yourself and what you do?

Jett: Argh… a life bio— cringe—I am loud. I swear plenty but only for excitement and punctuation, never for offence.

Work-wise I write films, talk to pop-stars and teach people the execution of a perfect lunge. I also have a kick-ass family & friends who make me ugly laugh every day.

A: I once heard a comedian friend refer to you as the Dad of your family unit, can you explain what she meant?

J: Ha! Yes—Page Bartelt! She said I’d reached Dad-status. “All the perks of being a parent with a lot less of the day to day responsibility”.

I have a nine year old son Billy—he has the hair and legs on an ‘86 Tina Turner. It’s amazing. A couple of years ago my husband Mirko and I were both working our asses off and struggling to have time together as a family. We talked about it and realised we wanted the same thing—a trade. He had worked so hard (and loved it) in an industry he was incredibly passionate about for years but in doing so had missed out on day-to-day family things and I, having had Billy and travelling around the globe with Mirko’s work, hadn’t really had a chance to get back into exploring what it was I wanted to do career-wise.

In the end, Mirko took a sabbatical from work, which has turned into a kind of early retirement. It gave him time to do and explore all kinds of activities with Billy—they play soccer, surf, skate, fish, hand roll delicious pasta, as well as supporting me and my ventures. In a nut-shell; we swapped. It’s (hands-down) the best thing we’ve ever done, for all three of us.

A: Now your family has a really interesting history, can you tell us a little about your parents and how they met?

J: Right?! In the early 70’s my parents met, fell in love and then years later concocted a plan and escaped this supposedly all-loving astrological cult. Absolutely bonkers, when I was a kid my mum used to say they met "through friends" but the truth came later. Its mental, you couldn't write it. Both mum and dad are ridiculously wonderful people with one hell of an origins story.

A: Slight segue, if you’ll allow me. Last year your granddad passed away at eighty-nine? And by all accounts he was a bloody legend who lived an amazing life. Now, I’m cheating because I know this story but can you tell us the story of your grandad and the tiger?

J: Ah what a GUN! My Pop was born and raised in Burma (Myanmar). Just a boy at the time, Pop once hid high up in a tree, silent, still, while on the jungle floor beneath him a ginormous tiger drank from a stream.

He was supposed to be at school but he wasn’t such a fan. It wasn’t the learning that he hated so much as the teachers; the unholy preachers who ruled the halls with brutal superiority. My Pop preferred the jungle.

It’s said that a tiger will see you hundred times before you see it once… Not this one. Still, Pop thought it best to keep it that way so he stayed, he watched and waited in a conflicting state of awe and terror.
He waited for what felt like hours but could just have easily been minutes for that tiger to walk away allowing him safe passage to run home.
‘The tiger didn’t see me’— he would boast. This was my favourite story of his extraordinary youth and he always punctuated it with this mighty defiant brag.

Of my Pop’s eighty-nine years on the planet, he lived just eight of them in Burma, but those eight years had expanded, sponge-like, in his memory, overtaking much of the rest. Memories are like that I guess, we get to choose the ones we cling to.

A: When did you start to work full-time as a writer? What prompted and helped you to make that leap?

J: Full time? Passionately and fervently whenever I can but I guess that’s how it is with everyone doing what they love, no? Particularly freelance workers. But it just sort of happened naturally.

I used to be dubious of that notion ‘do what you love and success will follow’ – it felt like an anxiety band-aid. BUT… jokes on me, it was true.

I was acting at the time and getting hammered down by the lack of opportunity so I wrote a short scene and shopped around for a DP to shoot it. The DP I met (insanely talented Kent Marcus) dug the short and asked why it wasn’t a feature film. I quickly and defensively told him that I can’t write a feature film and he simply asked ‘why not?’ So I did —and it’s now doing its thing with producers. So I wrote another and that’s doing the same.

Creative outlet wise I’ve never been happier. Why Not?—Seriously the best question to self-doubt, ‘Why Not?’

A: What was the first thing you ever wrote about?

J: Film wise it was the climactic scene of my first feature – it’s changed so much from the original short but the characters and conflict are more or less the same. I also wrote some horrendous poetry in my adolescence- thank Christ there was no such thing as blogging in ’95 – the shame would be inescapable.

A: What’s the balance of your working day? How much time goes into client work and how much goes into your own projects?

J: I see PT clients in the mornings with a set cut off time of 11am making sure I’m able to dedicate the afternoon to writing projects.

I try to split according to priority, however that often falls apart due to lack of desire on one or another project. I also work as a journalist for Women in Pop and then as an editor/co-writer on other films, so they usually come before my solo projects.

Jett and Thandi Pheonix for Women in Pop

A: What are you working on at the moment, which you can tell us about? Also are there any other projects are you in involved in that you’d like to share with us?

J: I’m neck deep in a coming-of-age story which was inspired by the global immigration crisis and, oddly an old picture book of my son’s that always makes me cry.

A: What’s the picture book?

J: Oh! - The kids book... holy fucking shit how I love The Fox in the Dark. Remind me to read it to you next time you're over for a feed.

A: Yes please! Now to finish off, what is something grabbing your attention and keeping you curious right now?

J: So much— but always stories, true and fiction. I hoover books and conversation. Mirko says it’s like filling up a car—words go in, words come out. I’m working with a delicious writer at the moment and we’re collecting stories, opinions and snippets of conversation surrounding perceptions of women and that’s been fascinating.

The world is messy and we ballsed it up plenty, but for all our differences and eccentricities most of us are gold and beautiful things. It’s just that the handful of rotten ones get more attention.

A huge thanks to Jett for sharing all her scrumptious thoughts with us. If you’re curious to know more and keep up with what Jett is up to, you can follow her on instagram and listen to her chatting up pop stars on the Women in Pop podcast.

Like what you read? You should sign up for my e-newsletter to keep up to date with what’s coming next.