Mark Saturno traded an apple for grapes – returning to Adelaide and joining his family at Longview vineyard after spending 11 years in New York as an actor.

Mark and wife Jodie’s tasteful home in the East End reflects their global outlook, while functioning perfectly as they pivot between busy professional and social lives.

“For the first nine years of my life I lived upstairs at a pub,” says Mark, co-owner and director of marketing and publicity for Longview Vineyard. 

“My Dad was an engineer and he worked at the power station in Port Augusta,” says Jodie Saturno, “I grew up in Port Augusta.” 

Jodie, now a lawyer, admits that she couldn’t wait to escape the country town. “I was a fairly intellectual child and that wasn’t necessarily a thing there,” she says. Both are now perfectly at home in the city.

Jodie and Mark Saturno in their light-filled living area

Mark works in Macclesfield at Longview and Jodie meets us in their home after a seven-minute walk from her city-based office. They’ve both taken time out of their day to let CityMag into their stunning ground floor apartment, on the East End of town, and into their lives.

Jodie disappears briefly, which gives us time to spy, in the corner of the room, a baby grand piano – perfectly wrapped around one of the main support columns for the apartment block, as if it was custom built for that awkward spot. 

“Dad had it at one of his hotels and it was starting to get trashed,” says Mark, who then quickly relates to us the years of piano he took as a child and the traumatic memory of an overly strict teacher. 

A courtyard that is at once private and connected to the area around it

Jodie returns and we sit down and run through the amazing benefits of city life. Of course it’s preaching to the converted but CityMag is happy to hear how these two have borne witness to, and participated in, the evolution of the East End.

“So much has happened in the last 12 months,” says Jodie. “It really started with EST (the wood oven pizzeria on East Terrace) but The Tasting Room and Mothervine too – it’s really exciting to see new things opening all the time.”  

“Yeah, and we really try to support the new things too,” says Mark.

The lounge is colour co-ordinated without being too co-ordinated

“My entire life, really, is based within a 3km radius,” says Jodie. “I work at a law firm nearby and walk to work, we eat and drink and shop where we live.”

For Mark too, the new vitality in the city is important. 

“I feel like I get the most out of Adelaide – working in the beautiful Adelaide Hills and then coming home to a city with more and more fantastic places to eat and drink,” he says.

For him, living in the city eases the culture shock after life in New York. 

Danish modern furniture meets Indigenous Australian artwork

Mark moved to New York and studied at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute – a prestigious name but ultimately not a wonderful experience.

“There were a lot of foreign students there who didn’t know any better,” says Mark, raising his hand and eyebrows to convey his culpability. But, for a full decade, Mark persisted in taking chances and making his own luck. He appeared in several off-Broadway productions. He did a couple of guest spots on Law and Order.

“If you work in New York long enough, everyone gets a gig on Law and Order,” he says dismissively. And throughout our conversation about amazing adversity in the face of an excruciatingly superficial industry CityMag sees how Mark has obviously moved on from those times.

“Jodie bought me a ticket to New York for my 40th birthday,” he says and in the next breath admits he wasn’t sure he was ready to go back. However he knew it was important to share such a significant part of his former life with his wife.

“But it’s really, well, it’s overdeveloped now… overproduced,” says Mark. And while he talks about visiting friends in Queens and how that borough is still a true version of New York, ultimately he feels assured in his choice to leave and is really, genuinely happy to be back in Adelaide. 

The Louis Poulsen AJ Royal pendant light

Finishing the interview, and ever the host, Mark sees us to the door. 

We pause, momentarily, on the way past the dining table. “My parents gave this to me,” he mentions, gesturing towards the large pendant lampshade hovering over the fruit bowl. “It’s a Louis Poulsen. My parents love Danish design and that’s really something they passed onto me,” says Mark.

Designed by Arne Jacobsen for Louis Poulsen, the AJ Royal pendant light was produced exclusively for the SAS Royal Hotel in Copenhagen and is credited for leading the overall design of the hotel in the 1960s.

The light hangs here, in Adelaide now, with a fond familiarity that belies its international pedigree. A lot like Mark.