Morgana O’Reilly has worked steadily in film and TV both here in Australia and in her home country, New Zealand, for the better part of two decades.

But it wasn’t until The Neighbours star was cast in the third season of The White Lotus as resort worker Pam that people began to put two and two together.

Almost overnight, O’Reilly went from a “where do I know you from?” level of fame to “THAT’S how I know you!” fame — and her head is still spinning.

“For so long I have been an actor that people see in the street, and they say, ‘How do I know you? Did we go to school together?’” O’Reilly explains.

“I’d get that a lot, and I would say something stupidly cryptic like, ‘I am just deep in your subconscious.’

“But recently, it’s changed and people know exactly what it is.”

It’s been a big change to adjust to, but luckily for O’Reilly, her appearance on the Mike White juggernaut anthology series is just one of several projects that have kept her busy this past year, so she’s had no time to dwell on it.

Over a 12-month period, she’s filmed The White Lotus in Thailand — “that experience has ruined me for hotel travel forever,” she says of her deluxe stay at Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui — to appearing in a movie adaptation of her popular one-woman stage show, Stories About My Body, produced by her film-maker husband Peter Salmon.

“Then this came along, and I rolled along to Playing Gracie Darling,” she says of her latest project, which filmed earlier this year in New South Wales.

The series, which airs on Paramount Plus from August 14, is a premium six-hour scripted mystery drama produced by Curio Pictures (also behind The Narrow Road To The Deep North and The Artful Dodger) and it’s already getting plenty of buzz.

Created and written by acclaimed writer and author Miranda Nation, it’s directed by Jonathan Brough (Rosehaven), and brought to screens by Rachel Gardner and Jo Porter, who was behind the popular Aussie series, Wentworth.

It tells the story of Joni, played by O’Reilly. When she is 14, her best friend Gracie Darling disappears during a séance. Twenty-seven years later, local kids are in the midst of a game called Playing Gracie Darling when another young girl disappears in eerily similar circumstances. Joni, now a child psychologist, returns to the town to try to piece together what is happening and how it relates to the strange circumstances that played out all those years ago with her own friend.

“(Joni) can’t help herself and she goes back under the guise of helping,” O’Reilly explains. “But it brings the past back, and then she finds herself up against possibly losing her mind, possibly seeing apparitions, and she’s in conflict with herself about what is real and what is not.”

As O’Reilly explains, Joni is a practical, rational person, “so she is scrambling with using logic and reason to explain what is happening in her head”.

The series has dark undertones, a gripping mystery, and will feel wonderfully nostalgic for anyone who grew up in the 1990s playing with Ouija boards at sleepovers, or watching supernatural cult film The Craft on VHS.

“I was 12 or 13 when (that) finally made its way down this end to New Zealand,” O’Reilly says. “Me and my friends were all about the spirit world and following a cup on a board.”

Turns out she’s not the only one. Series writer and creator Nation says she was “obsessed” with séances when she was 14.

“My best friends and I did them every chance we could,” she explains.

“Each one of us was struggling with personal trauma, but we couldn’t talk about this stuff, we didn’t have the emotional tools.

“Instead, we disappeared into this thrilling game where, by testing the limits of the known, we could push the boundaries and say and do things that were otherwise taboo. These intense and sensual experiences, of connection with the otherworld or collective female hypnosis, have stayed with me forever.”

O’Reilly knew she wanted to be involved with the show after devouring early scripts.

“I am a really slow reader — I’m a bit dyslexic, though I love to read — and it takes me a while to get through things, but I inhaled (the scripts) because they were so compelling, and broody, and visual,” she says.

“Miranda Nation is amazing, and has actually just written an incredible novel, which I have just read. It’s called New Skin and it’s really f…ing brilliant.

“She knows how to write a really beautiful yarn, and how to create these female characters that are really antithetical and interesting; layered, fallible and glorious.”

At the heart of Playing Gracie Darling is the relationships between women, especially between mothers and daughters. O’Reilly, mother to primary school-aged Ziggy and Luna, was thrilled when producers procured acclaimed Succession actor Dame Harriet Walter to play Joni’s mother.

“She wasn’t attached from the start and they said, ‘Do you have any thoughts on who could play your mum?’” she explains. “I offered some ideas, and I remember when I found out, thinking she was next level.”

O’Reilly loved the storylines she shared with the award-winning performer and the underlying story of her character’s relationship with the women in her life.

“I feel like that is a big ‘why’ for me,” she says. “For me, I always need to walk away from a series or a show, going ‘What are you trying to say about the world?’

“It’s not good enough to take me on a crazy ride; it needs to have, for want of a better word, a moral, or a comment, something.”

O’Reilly is currently filming a new TV project in New Zealand, and her film will make its way to screens soon.

“It’s the dream; just so, so wonderful,” she says of her recent purple patch.

“I’m just so glad to be doing all this.”

Playing Gracie Darling premieres on Paramount Plus on August 14