Mini-series brings Rose back into the open
Rose Hancock Porteous says she has been forced out of years of self-imposed seclusion by a looming mini-series that portrays her battle with stepdaughter Gina Rinehart.
The former socialite said she feared the show would wrongly depict her as foolish and conniving and that she had stayed out of the spotlight in recent years to distance herself from her public persona.
Her lawyers recently wrote to the producers of House of Hancock warning of legal action if the show was defamatory.
Ms Hancock Porteous said she did not care how she was perceived but her husband, real estate agent William Porteous, had insisted on taking a stand.
"I don't care any more," she said. "I don't give a damn (about what they say about me).
"But William said no, if it does not do you justice, why should you just sit down?
"Because in the past that's what I used to do."
Speaking from her Nedlands home this week, Ms Hancock Porteous complained no one was interested in knowing the "real Rose", who loved Shakespeare and poetry.
A friend had warned her that advertising for the show was provocative.
"She said there was an image of a lady lifting her leg on a chair and taking off a stocking, like a striptease show," she said.
"I don't know how to do that."
Although the show is set to reignite controversy over the former maid turned socialite, she is putting on a brave - and cosmetically pampered - face.
"You won't believe it when you see me," she said before the interview. "You will think: how come Rose has not aged?"
She credits her smooth complexion to her own private skin-care clinic at her Nedlands home that she started after her year-long study in New York to qualify as a clinician. She treats only friends and personal referrals, saying she is now very cautious about whom she lets into her life.
Among her close friends is daughter Joanna Lacson-Fox.
She said the pair had forgotten her daughter's 1992 TV interview in which she called her mother a "mail-order bride", a "Filipina floozy" and a "gold digger".
Her dogs were also close companions. She said she nearly had a nervous breakdown recently when her dog Lulu died, though she takes comfort from a diamond encrusted necklace containing a locket of Lulu's hair.
