Aaron Pedersen is an Arrernte/Arabana man from Alice Springs. When growing up, Aaron believed images of Indigenous Australians on television were stereotypical and negative.

After training as a journalist at the ABC in Melbourne, he made a natural transition into acting. Through his television work on Wildside, Water Rats, MDA, Territorians, Grassroots, Queen of Hearts, Black Jack and The Secret Life of Us, Aaron has championed the changing representation of Indigenous people in Australia.

His film work includes Dead Heart, Saturday Night, Dark Love Story, Grange, Unfinished Business, Mimi, and Mirror Images.

Character:  Drew Ellis - ALS Lawyer

Drew Ellis is a well-educated, middle-class lawyer in his early thirties. Inside, Drew senses something is missing. He suspects that as a blackfella well… he’s just too white but joining the Aboriginal Legal Service for a ‘tour of duty’ in the outback seems the right thing to do. He quickly discovers that his University bred arrogance means ‘stuff all’ in his new job in the Kimberley. Drew has to deal with a whole new world of justice, a world where he seems to forever be on the outer as both black and white see him as ‘not one of us… one of them’.

Thrown in at the deep end, he begins swimming like mad, but any success he has at work is in direct proportion to his spiraling private life. Desperate for his wife to join him in Broome (she says she’s coming) there is a part of him that is growing away from her a little every day. Yet through all this, he’s regaining some humanity, learning some humility, and for Drew, the place he saw as a stepping-stone, is fast becoming a destination.
Drew Ellis is played by Aaron Pedersen.