This email was not the only thing Norvill did, wrote or said that was taken to diminish the credibility of her evidence.



She spent hours under cross-examination and was asked multiple times why she had acted in the way she did, in the face of all this alleged behaviour. Why hadn’t she complained to someone? Why hadn’t she said “stop it”? Why had she continued to praise and engage with Rush?

But many of the explanations she offered were taken by Wigney as either unpersuasive, or as an indication she was an unreliable witness.

One example was her praise of Rush in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald promoting King Lear in Nov. 2015. "I love Geoffrey's ebullience,” Norvill is quoted as saying.

“No-one put a gun to your head and made you say that, did they?” she was asked on the stand.

Norvill later asked a question in reply: “What was I supposed to say?”

She gave an example: “‘Oh, and by the way, I don’t know if Geoffrey has the right intentions towards me. I don’t find his jokes that funny, actually; they make me feel small as a human’,” she said. “What was I supposed to do?”

Again, Wigney was unpersuaded. Sure, it was unreasonable to expect Norvill to make allegations to the journalist, or to criticise Rush in a promotional interview, he wrote. But it didn’t follow that she was obliged to make positive statements about him — let alone “highly complimentary” ones.

It was in this same interview that Rush declared he had a “stage door Johnny crush” on Norvill.

Wigney accepted Rush’s evidence that he intended the comment to be funny, and a compliment.

“It may perhaps have been a poorly selected and regrettable expression to use to praise Ms Norvill,” Wigney wrote.

“However I reject the contention that Mr Rush was intending to depict Ms Norvill as a ‘sexual object rather than as a serious skilled actress’ or that he intended to make Ms Norvill feel uncomfortable, embarrassed and compromised.”

A third example was her statement that her fellow cast members were “complicit” in Rush’s behaviour towards her in the rehearsal room, either unable to see it as wrong or unwilling to step in.

This statement displayed “a propensity to exaggerate and embellish”, Wigney found.

He also rejected something else Norvill said in this vein, about Nevin: “We’re from different generations. Maybe we have different ideas about what is culturally appropriate in a workplace.”

Was it possible Nevin, Buday and Armfield did in fact witness Rush’s behaviour but just didn’t think it was wrong because of their age?

No, said Wigney. First of all, the suggestion was not put to them on the stand. Second, “even putting that to one side, each of them was a highly-qualified, experienced, accomplished and well-respected, if not revered, figure in theatre circles”.

Third, the notion that any of these people would not have known what to do, or would have been fearful to approach Rush, was “difficult to accept”, Wigney said.

“In the case of Ms Nevin and Ms Buday, even putting their impeccable character and integrity to one side, both of them gave every impression of being an independent, strong-willed woman who was not [to be] reckoned with,” Wigney said.

And yet it was difficult to ignore the generational themes that ran through this case.

Norvill was 34 at the time of trial, Winter was 35. Backing Rush was Armfield, 63, Nevin, 76, and Buday, 56.

Nevin testified on King Lear generally: “There was quite a marked division in that cast between the younger actors and the more experienced actors.”

She said Rush had never commented on her body or made lewd gestures towards her.

“I am sure, though, Mr Rush has told me in the past I looked attractive or pleasing or something, I am sure because he’s very generous in his enthusiasm towards people,” she said.

Asked if she found it offensive she said no, never.

Buday laughed when the Telegraph’s barrister, Tom Blackburn SC, suggested the text Rush had sent to Norvill was not an example of “responsible mentoring”.