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Harriet Dyer takes my call while on a brisk morning walk through Sydney’s Centennial Park. In the distance, her husband, fellow actor Patrick Brammall, walks with their four-year-old daughter, Joni, and dog, Walter, who has also made the trip from their LA base (their baby, Mabel,
is being cared for at their temporary Sydney home).
For the past nine weeks, Dyer, 37, has been head down in an editing suite wrapping up season three of the hit comedy series Colin from Accounts, in which Brammall, 50, also stars and which the couple created.
It’s been the maddest 18 months. Last year, while making workplace comedy DMV in minus-20 degrees in Montreal, Canada, she was also writing the new season of Colin during filming breaks. Then it was off to Sydney to shoot the Australian hit series, in which she plays medical student Ashley Mulden opposite her husband, who plays bar owner Gordon “Flash” Crapp.
The career Dyer has long wished for is happening in real time, but she admits the hectic schedule of raising a family, chasing work goals and being present is hard to keep a handle on when you can’t clone yourself. “I saw an interview once where someone said that you can have it all, you’ll just be really tired,” says Dyer. “And that’s something I deeply feel because it’s very true.”
With frequent trips between LA and Australia and two kids under five, Dyer suddenly felt she was navigating some very choppy waters. Add the fact that Brammall took off to film the TV series The Dispatcher in Melbourne just 12 days after Mabel’s arrival and it’s easy to see how diary notes, calendar syncs and time-management apps can’t relieve all the strain when life’s throwing multiple balls at once. For now, coffee is a great pick-me-up.
“There have been many tabs open in my head in the last 18 months, and all I’m craving is to just be a mum again,” says Dyer. “But when it comes to being an actor, it’s feast or famine; you just have to roll with it when it comes your way. Any time I felt like I was drowning with work, I’d say to myself, ‘This too shall pass.’ Everything is temporary, and I know what it’s like to be an actor who doesn’t have work.”
What neither Dyer nor her husband could have anticipated is the effect Brammall playing Anne Hathaway’s love interest in The Devil Wears Prada 2 has had, making them Australian TV’s “It” couple. Dyer says the attention on their personal lives makes her uneasy.
“We’ve definitely noticed a big shift in people pointing and whispering about us since Paddy did The Devil Wears Prada 2 – and it happens every time we go out,” says Dyer, who’s sporting a Hilary Duff merch hat with the initials “HD”, the same as her own. “There’s been an uptick in sloshy journalism about us, where anything we do is suddenly an article. That really stresses me because I am a very private person.”
She reflected on the strangeness of it all in one particularly amusing Instagram post in which she spliced footage of her husband walking arm-in-arm with Hathaway at a red-carpet premiere with a clip of herself at home, with a screaming baby, watching him on the TV.
Ever since Dyer and Brammall wrote Colin from Accounts in Los Angeles (she secured a green card in 2017), life has been full throttle. Little did she know that a show that features a nipple flash and a dog being hit by a car in its first episode would become the success story it has.
“We weren’t expecting anything from season one – we simply worked our butts off and people had such a strong response to it,” she says. “When it came to write season two, we did feel a little scared if we didn’t do it well – what would happen? We’ve approached the new season with a blind confidence, agreeing not to change the formula.”
The upcoming season will dive straight into the messy aftermath of Gordon’s disastrous drunken proposal. As in previous seasons, it will test whether Ashley and Gordon truly belong together, or if their beloved dog Colin is the only thread keeping them going. (Last week, the pair confirmed that season three will be the final instalment of the show.)
Colin isn’t the first time Dyer has worked with Brammall. In 2012, they appeared in the comedy A Moody Christmas, but didn’t begin dating until 2017. They became engaged and married in 2021, the year they adopted Joni. Then, in February 2025, they welcomed baby Mabel. Their path to adoption follows Brammall’s experience with infertility due to a childhood illness, a topic he has spoken openly about and one the couple chose to weave into Colin.
Born and raised in Townsville, Dyer is one of three children born to a lawyer father, Mark, and legal secretary mother, Diane, who loves to write poetry and plays the piano. Her elder sister, Madeleine, returns to direct four episodes of Colin while her younger brother John, a high-school teacher, has a cameo role.
This family affair goes back to childhood, when Dyer and her sister begged their father to be allowed to audition for a local production of Annie. “I remember Dad sitting us down and saying, ‘Girls, there are a lot of talented kids in Townsville. Don’t expect too much, or to even get the roles.’ My sister ended up getting the part of Annie, and I got Molly, which are like the two biggest kid roles.”
Growing up in tropical Queensland, Dyer preferred the theatre to the beach. “I burn in about five minutes in the sun up there; I am Celtic – blue as a human – and Mum is very tanned. My friends wanted to go and sunbake after school and I’d stay home to play on the computer. I am not for the ocean, it’s too sandy.”
Dyer’s close connection with family means she can count on them to help with the kids, even coming to LA when necessary. “Joni is 4½ and needs us more now than she did as a newborn,” says Dyer. “Leaving her when we are shooting puts a tear on my heart. [When we were making Colin] I’d leave in the dark and return in the dark – I had to do it because it’s our show. I kept telling myself it would soon be over.
“When we get back to LA, we’ll put her in a structured school. She’s had four schools, four bedrooms, four sets of friends in the last 16 months. It’s not something we want to keep doing to her because Melbourne, Montreal, Sydney, LA … That’s just been weighing on me as a mum.”
While in the middle of “having it all”, Dyer realised she needed to see a therapist to help her navigate the juggle, and all the feelings it brings with it. “Therapy has been hugely helpful because self-care has gone out the window – I put it all into the kids,” she says. “And when I catch my reflection, especially when I’m not shooting, I notice that my hair is oily. I try to shower at night because sometimes I forget to make time for me.
“All I know is that when I work so much, I go into survival mode,” she adds. “And my therapist has taught me that self-care is family care – then I can be the best mum, the best wife and the best ‘Harri’. There’s not some major trauma I’m trying to work through; I am trying to unstick a few sticky parts. No one grows up with no suffering – that’s what makes us human.”
While Colin from Accounts helped make Dyer a household name in Australia, she’s itching for the next adventure – writing a feature film with Brammall. “Colin is the only thing I’ve ever written, and it’s the only thing that’s made me a writer,” she says. “These wonderful producers have been very patient with us, so once we’re back in LA we’ve got to write that movie. We’d like to try something dramatic.”
Styling: Nadene Duncan. Hair: Brad Mullins. Make-up: Heidi Scarlett King. Fashion assistant: Tanishka Pothiwala. Stockists: Bianca Spender; Cushla Whiting; Esse Studios; Petite Grand; Zara.
Season three of Colin from Accounts premieres on Binge on July 27.
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