Exclusive: Leighton Meester on living in Australia while filming her new Stan series Good Cop/Bad Cop – and the ‘Aussieism’ she’s taken back to LA

EXCLUSIVE: Leighton Meester knows all too well the unpredictability of life as an actor – but she never expected an offhand comment about just that would manifest into her latest lead role.

The Gossip Girl stars alongside Australia’s own Luke Cook in the Stan Original Series Good Cop/Bad Cop, streaming now.

The Stan Original Series Good Cop/Bad Cop is streaming now, only on Stan.

The pair play reluctant sister-brother detectives Lou and Henry Hickman in a small town police force run by their father Big Hank, played by Clancy Brown.

Across eight episodes, the siblings navigate quirky locals, limited resources and plenty of complicated family dynamics.

Speaking to 9Entertainment on the Queensland set of the series, Meester recalled the off-the-cuff comment she made just before landing the role.

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“I’m not even sure if I believe in all this, but there was a day in February I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone and I said, ‘I could get a show tomorrow that takes me to Australia’,” Meester explained.

“I was just thinking like, ‘I think I want to do a comedy, I want to do a show, I want to read scripts’. The next day, I got the script for this and they’re like, ‘it’s in Australia, what do you think?”

Meester felt like she’d quite literally summoned this opportunity – this, along with the fact that she also loved the script and already knew producer Trent O’Donnell made it an opportunity she could not pass up.

“When I read it, I was just like so excited by each line, each joke, the characters were so grounded and so fully fleshed out,” Meester explained.

“I zoomed with [creator John Quaintance] and Trent, and he spent a lot of time talking about how he really cares that everyone he works with is kind and excited to be working on the project, and that’s the absolute most important thing to me, so it just sort of all felt right.”

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Good Cop/Bad Cop is set in the USA’s Pacific Northwest, but was filmed in the Gold Coast and on location in Canungra and Mount Tamborine.

Naturally, this means the series features a lot of local Aussie talent, including her co-star Cook.

“Luke is really funny. I mean, he’s an Aussie guy, so he brings all that quirk into the American role, and I just think he’s a perfect foil for my character… and in real life he’s just such a pleasure, so much fun to work with!”

As for the others on set, she was impressed by how such an Australian production could seamlessly simulate an American setting… and accents.

“I really feel for them because there’s so many lines and so much information. The detective aspect of the show is like, ‘OK, we’re looking for a white F-150 with an S10 camel stock’, you know, repeating information to each other.

“It’s all imaginary, but they have to do it with an American accent. I don’t know how they do it!”

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Meester and husband Adam Brody moved their family to Australia for four months for filming, during which the pair found themselves completely at home.

“I think that’s one of the nicest things about my job is that I get to travel and I get to almost live somewhere,” Meester shared.

“It’s not just like, I’ll go somewhere for vacation for a week or two. I move somewhere for six weeks, 12 weeks.

“I find my coffee shop, I meet people, I have my little circuit of stuff that I do… I feel very much at home here, I enjoy it very much.”

In fact, Meester had pocketed at least one ‘Aussieism’ to take back to life in Los Angeles.

“I love people very, very casually saying ‘chuck this, chuck that’. Chucking is so great. What a good thing to say!”

How would she use it in a sentence? Perhaps ‘chuck on Good Cop/Bad Cop‘, streaming now on Stan.

The Stan Original Series Good Cop/Bad Cop is streaming now, only on Stan.

Nine Entertainment Co (the publisher of this website) owns and operates the streaming service Stan.