You never forget your first love, right? Even if you’re Teresa Palmer.
“We would cry when we had to be apart,” Palmer, now 39, tells WHO Magazine. “We were so enmeshed! It was like this really potent feeling.”
Palmer is in Sydney promoting her new mini series Mix Tape. The nostalgic romance follows Palmer’s character Alison, and her first love, Dan (Jim Sturgess) as they reconnect 20 years after dating as teens. “As I was reading the script, was like, ‘Oh my God, I remember this’,” Palmer continues.
Over Binge’s new four-part series, the two would-be lovers rekindle their old flame by sending each other songs, similar to how they exchanged mix tapes in their youth. Co-starring Florence Hunt (Bridgerton) and newcomer Rory Walton-Smith as the young Alison and Dan, Mix Tape jumps back and forth between 1989 and 2015, asking if we really get a second chance at first love.
For Sturgess, Mix Tape isn’t the first nostalgic romance in his repertoire. The 47-year-old London boy is perhaps best known for his turn as Dex in One Day, another film that spans time and distance to paint a decades-long love story. And just like One Day, Mix Tape will also pull on your heartstrings and tap into your sentimental streak. Speaking on why he was drawn to the project, Sturgess says he was drawn to its “complicated, tricky and messy” portrayal of relationships. “And because of that, I found it deeply heartbreaking and hugely romantic,” he added.
The joint Australian-Irish production takes its characters from Sheffield in the UK to Sydney, Australia and back. While Palmer and Lawson both hail from Adelaide and Brisbane respectively, Sturgess is a relative stranger to our shores.
“I came probably 20 years before [filming Mix Tape], with a friend of mine, and we just kind of bummed around Kings Cross,” he shares. “I don’t really remember it as a teenager, but it was really nice to come back as an adult and really understand and love the city. Any city with a beach is the greatest city on the earth to me.”
WHO sat down with Sturgess, Palmer and Lawson to chat their latest project, first loves, and their favourite romantic films of all time.
The cast of Mix Tape…
On First Loves
Theresa Palmer (TP): “I was reading [the Mix Tape script], and instantly started thinking about the first time that I really fell in love at a young, impressionable age with my boyfriend who was a bit older than me. I remember it was just, like, in every cell of my body. [I was] pulsating with this feeling. There’s just no greater thing in life than love. Wanting to be around each other all the time, and that real obsessiveness. [Mix Tape] took me back to that.”
Ben Lawson (BL): “Really, no other love you have subsequently touches the depth of those feelings. You can certainly have more mature and more meaningful loves, but the sharpness of that first love is special.”
On Their Favourite Romantic Movies And Series
BL: “One of my favourite love stories of all time is Bridges of Madison County, which is, interestingly, an older love story. It [stars] Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood. We don’t get a lot of stories where it’s an older couple falling in love. I remember watching that really feeling like it captured the feeling of falling in love more than any other film I’ve ever seen.
TP: “I’m a Nicholas Sparks sucker. This is the dorkiest part about me. When The Notebook came out, I went and got The Notebook stationery, I went and got the board game. I was so obsessed. And in fact, I did a movie with Ryan Gosling a couple of years ago, and to me, he’s just Noah from The Notebook. And I remember being in a scene with him, and I was meant to be stabbing him in the scene, and [I was] looking down at him like, ‘It’s Noah! It’s Noah!’”
Jim Sturgess (JS): “My mind’s gone blank! I guess Normal People was something that I was really moved by. I watched it, as a lot of people did, during lockdown, and was just really moved by the the realness and the rawness of that relationship, and the conflict, the complexities of it.”
I did a movie with Ryan Gosling… I was meant to be stabbing him in this scene, and I was looking down at him like, ‘It’s Noah! It’s Noah!’
On Making Mix Tapes
JS: I made my wife one recently. Well, I wanted to make a kind of mixtape, I wanted it to be a sort of tangible thing. So, I ended up doing a sort of playlist and putting it on a USB stick and sello-taping it into a card.
BL: I remember the girl I dated at uni made me a mixtape. It had Ben Harper’s ‘Gold To Me’, and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘As Long As I Can See The Light’ on it, and still, when I hear those songs, I think of that girl. Shout out to Hannah Hill. Hope you’re doing well. Thanks for the memories.
On Their Favourite Aussie Bands
JS: I was rocking a band T-shirt yesterday [to the Mix Tape premiere] in honour of the Australian music scene! It was Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, which is a ‘60s band from Sydney that I loved. You’ve also got Nick Cave. What more do you need?
TP: I was a huge Silverchair fan back in the day. Like, ‘Frogtstomp’ and ‘Freak’. There’s just so many good tracks from them.
BL: Where do you start? I’m gonna give a shout out to Hilltop Hoods. Good Aussie Hip Hop.
TP: Adelaide boys!
JS: I need an Australian mixtape…
Where to watch Mix Tape
You can watch Mix Tape in Australia on Binge. The first episode airs on June 12, 2025, with new eps dropping every Thursday at midday.
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