tv shows with nicole chamoun

With the clarity of hindsight, the signs that Nicole Chamoun, star of the new ABC series Troppo, was seriously unwell were in that location early on, simply and then easy to miss. The pain in her sternum? The doctor told her it was a trample and just to accept ibuprofen. The night sweats? "I thought my doona was too heavy," she recalls.

It wasn't until vi months after first having symptoms – and in the midst of Melbourne's marathon COVID-nineteen lockdowns in 2020 – that Nicole finally received the diagnosis she least expected. She had cancer.

"My whole life changed with one sentence," Nicole says, reflecting on the shattering news that she had phase four lymphoma and a nine-centimetre tumour in her chest. "As before long as they tell you that you've got cancer, your world gets very pocket-size. Nothing mattered just getting ameliorate. I held on to what was important: the people I dearest. I merely got to piece of work on getting improve and healing and taking care of myself."

For Nicole, this meant moving back home with her parents. "Mama took care of me," she says tenderly. As luck would accept information technology, Nicole's younger blood brother is a doctor who specialises in haematology. "He knew everything about everything; he was my guardian angel," she adds.

Nicole immediately started the gruelling process of chemotherapy handling. On the surface, doing so during a global pandemic was quite possibly the worst timing. Just Nicole explains that there was an upside to the colliding of crises. As everyone else was protecting themselves from a virus, this in turn helped keep her safe while severely immunocompromised.

"It was kind of a approval in many ways that people had to social distance and habiliment masks," she says. "I could get to a cafe if I was feeling well enough and knew that I was safety to do so."

Being in lockdown too shielded Nicole from the public eye as she began to show the concrete signs of her cancer treatment.

"I lost everything: eyebrows, eyelashes and hair within three weeks," she says. "I cut my hair off before I started treatment. It was long, thick and curly. It wasn't ideal but I was like 'have it, have information technology all, I don't intendance'."

Fast-forrard to today's Sunday Life photo shoot: Nicole is sporting a fabulous bleached-blonde pixie haircut. Her skin is bronzed, having spent time relaxing in Byron Bay subsequently shooting Troppo. Her pale greenish eyes sparkle and her grin is warm and welcoming. She is, quite simply, a moving-picture show of vitality.

This is why she finally feels stiff enough to talk about the roller-coaster of the past 2 years. Until this bespeak, simply her closest family and friends have known. "I didn't want eyes on it," she says. "I needed to shut out the world and focus on getting better. It was the correct motility for me. It's but now I feel stronger and healthier and ready to share it."

Husk "Kali" blazer, $499, waistcoat, $299, and trousers, $389. Credit: Hugh Stewart

In terms of her acting, Nicole idea it was all over when she was diagnosed. She had started her career directly after completing high school by going to university to study performance. In one of her first auditions, she booked a atomic number 82 part in SBS'due south 2007 TV series, Boot. "I was so naive," she says, laughing. "I thought, 'I'm an actor now' then basically nix happened for 10 years."

Her agent eventually dumped her, only Nicole saw this as an opportunity rather than a setback. "It was pivotal because it was the moment when I idea, 'Do I really want to practice this or is it fourth dimension to requite upward?' I was like, 'No, this is what I want to do, so at present I'thousand actually going to have to hustle.' "

Nicole reached out to anyone in the industry who'd "ever said a kind word" to her, and casting agents that she had a relationship with and told them she was "freelancing" for now. Within months she booked the role of Iraqi refugee Zahra Al-Bayati in SBS's critically acclaimed 2018 drama Safe Harbour, for which she was nominated both for a Logie for Well-nigh Outstanding Supporting Extra and an AACTA Accolade for Best Supporting Actress in a Television Drama.

She went on to play the lead part of Amirah Al-Amir in the SBS series On the Ropes in 2018, and was nominated for a Logie for Well-nigh Outstanding Actress. Also in 2018, Nicole landed the part of Muslim constabulary student Laila in Romper Stomper, which was broadcast on Stan.

Zimmermann "Tropicana Lantern" apparel, $895. Credit: Hugh Stewart

Information technology feels like a brutal twist of fate that simply as her career was striking its stride, Nicole would be hitting with the double blow of cancer and the COVID pandemic. Just it was during her handling and lockdown that the audition for Troppo came along and her life took another unexpected plough.

The viii-part series is based on the best-selling novel Red Lake by Candice Flim-flam. It follows disgraced ex-cop Ted Conkaffey (Thomas Jane), who is recruited by private investigator Amanda Pharrell (Nicole), as they look into the disappearance of a Korean tech pioneer and discover a string of suspicious deaths.

Amanda is not just a PI but also a tattoo artist with a agonizing criminal past. "I just knew how she would await – I knew she would rock a buzz cutting and she'd be tatted up," says Nicole.

While Nicole's bald head worked for the audition, she knew other aspects of her advent weren't quite right. "I drew on my eyebrows and I wasn't very good at that," she says, laughing. "I had to let the casting agent know [nearly her cancer handling]. She was the but 1 who knew, and I was similar, 'By the time we shoot, I won't look like this any more.' "

Michael Lo Sordo "Classic Artist" shirt, $350. Esse Studios trousers, $480. Credit: Hugh Stewart

With her Lebanese heritage, Nicole admits that she has been somewhat typecast in the past and her former long, night-haired self wouldn't take fifty-fifty got an audience.

"My career then far has been and so fruitful, and I'grand very grateful for the roles that I've been given, but most of them have been in ane very specific direction. I know they would not take fifty-fifty seen the old me. But equally they say, you brand lemonade out of lemons – and this was definitely it!"

Nicole'southward diagnosis not but gave her a new wait, but also a fresh resolve. "The minute yous don't need something, in that location is an energy, especially in your auditions; there's no desperation," she says. "Sometimes I've been, 'I can smell the desperation, Nic.' Simply with this one, I did it with my best friend in her sleeping accommodation every bit we had to tape it. I said to her, 'I think I'm going to get this.' And she said, 'I think you're going to become this, likewise.' I just knew. I think it was because I didn't demand it to fulfil me."

"I know they would not have fifty-fifty seen the old me. But every bit they say, you make lemonade out of lemons – and this was definitely information technology!"

After iv½ months of treatment, Nicole was in remission. But 2 months later, she was upwards in Queensland on the prepare of Troppo.

"I was and so nervous," she recalls.

"I was thinking that I'd signed a check that I couldn't cash. I didn't know if my free energy levels were high plenty. Nosotros were doing at least 12-hour days, 5 days a calendar week, so prepping on the weekends. I had never worked that hard before."

But despite the testing filming conditions, Nicole has arguably delivered her all-time work to date.

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"I took care of my body and made sure I was eating right and doing all the right things," she says. "I'm just and so proud of my body. I turned up every day and I gave everything. It was and so therapeutic. I would have done 20-hour days if they'd asked me to.

"It was such a souvenir to have a task come through direct away that immune me to build strength with my appearance, rather than experience cocky-conscious about how I look. I'g so grateful that Troppo came along."

Bianca Spender "Deviation" dress, $945. Credit: Hugh Stewart

The role also gave Nicole a adventure to disguise the cancer journeying she was leaving behind her. "I could post on Instagram and people causeless I had cutting my hair for the role."

But now she wants the truth to exist out there. "I want to share information technology because, before I was sick, I didn't have a human relationship with cancer," she says.

"I didn't know anyone who had it; it's what you lot see in the news and in films and what happens to older people. It was actually important for me to find people, and women my age as well [Nicole'south in her mid-30s], who had gone through it and had come through the other side."

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During treatment, Nicole plant inspiration through a at present-friend on Instagram who had survived her own cancer battle. "It was watching her ii years mail service-cancer that gave me promise and something to look forrard to. That was my terminate game. At present that I'm hither, I feel a responsibility to requite back the manner information technology gave to me."

Photography by Hugh Stewart. Styling by Nadene Duncan. Hair and make-upward by Aimie Fiebig.

Troppo airs on February 27 at eight.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview, with all episodes bachelor to stream.

To read more than from Dominicus Life magazine, click here .

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Source: https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/actor-nicole-chamoun-my-whole-life-changed-with-one-sentence-20220202-p59t4a.html

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