About

The creative forces behind the global smash hit Netflix drama, Secret City.

About Secret City Media

Secret City Media is an Australian production company, established by Steve Lewis and Chris Uhlmann who were the creative forces behind acclaimed global TV drama Secret City. Steve and Chris are determined to create compelling drama for a world audience; drama that tells the story of Australia’s place in the most contested region on the planet, the Indopacific. With their background as political journalists, they are uniquely placed to create, write and produce high-octane political and spy dramas and have multiple publishing and television projects under development. Critically, through their Secret City novel series, they foretold how the rise of China as a strategic rival to the United States would leave Australia with an impossible choice. In Secret City Media fact informs fiction in a fearless pursuit of original stories.

MEET THE CREATORS

It’s often said that art imitates life, but in the case of the successful Australian political thrillers written by journalists Steve Lewis and Chris Uhlmann, it’s more like life imitating art.

Chris Uhlmann

Chris Uhlmann is one of Australia’s most experienced political reporters; a veteran of the Canberra Press Gallery with contacts across politics, intelligence and the diplomatic community.

Since October 2017, Chris has been political editor for Nine News, bringing his political insights to a large national audience on a nightly basis.

He also spent nearly two decades with the ABC, including several years as political editor where he and Mark Simkin broke the biggest scoop of their careers – the challenge to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd by Julia Gillard in the dead of night in June 2010.

Chris has anchored flagship programs for ABC TV including 7.30 and Insiders as well as hosting its premier radio current affairs show AM. He also spent the first years of the millennium co-hosting a top-rating breakfast show on the ABC’s local Canberra station.

Chris won a Walkley Award for broadcast interviewing in 2008 and was part of the 4 Corners team that won the Golden Quill in 2017 for an investigation into China’s power and influence in Australia.

He won international attention in July 2017 when his blistering critique of President Donald Trump at the G20 – who he said had “no desire and no capacity to lead the world” – went viral on social media with more than 10 million views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6_ckWZCHW4

Along with co-writing the three Secret City novels with Steve Lewis, Chris is the author of the upcoming children’s book, The Useless Tune, to be illustrated by his artist-brother Paul, and published by Walker Books in 2022.

Steve Lewis

Steve Lewis is an award-winning journalist, novelist, creator and producer and one of the key driving forces behind the acclaimed Netflix drama, Secret City.

For more than two decades, Steve was a senior reporter in the Canberra Press Gallery where he tormented the nation’s political elite. He worked for the Australian, the Australian Financial Review and the News Corp tabloids and earned a reputation for shining a light into darkened spaces.

He is the author of the upcoming spy thriller, the God Chip, which is the first in the Eve Fontana Series. Steve also has a number of TV dramas in development, including the Master File and a series based around the events of June 4 1989 in Beijing, titled Tiananmen.

Steve is on the Board of the National Press Club of Australia and the Canberra Writers Festival. He was also the driving force behind the annual Press Gallery Midwinter Ball, which has raised nearly $5 million for charity since its inception in 2000.

He works as a senior adviser with strategic communications firm, SECNewgate.