July 7, 2024 • 57 mins
ACTOR: DAMON HERRIMAN
Talk about a pinch me moment! What an actor! Damon has a brilliant career here in America as well as back home in Australia. His body of work is so large that we couldn't cover everything. You may know him as playing Charles Manson not once but twice; in David Fincher’s Mindhunter and again in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
We got to sit down and chat in Los Angeles ahead of the release of his new movie The Bikreriders written and directed by Jeff Nichols. This story is based on a book Jeff found one day at his brother's house which was a collection of images taken by Danny Lyon. These images spanned over a decade documenting a midwestern motorcycle club. The cast is stella; Damon is acting alongside Tom Hardy, Austin Butler, Michael Shanon and Jody Comer! I've seen the film and it's beautiful, all shot on film, you're in for a treat. It's officially out now in both Australia and America. In this chat we go back to where it all began for Damon; starting out as a child actor in Adelaide, he's never been technically trained, learning his skills on the job. In 2004 he booked his first Hollywood movie that was shot in Australia; it was a horror film with Paris Hilton called House of Wax and that was his window into Hollywood, off the back of that we was able to get meetings and auditions. Damon's big American break came when he was cast in the US neo-western crime series Justified as the lovable villain Dewey Crowe. He was only meant to be in the pilot episode but then became a recurring character for 6 seasons. This show gained a huge cult-like following and really cemented Damon as brilliant acting stock here in America. Back home in Australia he played Feddy in Mr Inbweeten; this character was another loveable crim who you end up rooting for even though his character is a bit of a villan. It's a wonderful Aussie series! He's won an AACTA award for Judy and Punch, and more recently he was in The Artful Dodger as another complicated baddie!So as you can see we just scratched the surface of all of the work gigs Damons had! We also talk about rejection and actor tips. So if you're a creative soul, in any field, then this episode is for you! I hope you love it, reach out and let me know what you think.
Here's the trailer to Damon's newest movie; The Bikriders (out now)!
Mega love,
Lola
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Get a.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I'm Lola Berry, nutritionist, author, actor, TV presenter and professional
overshare us. This podcast is all about celebrating failure because
I believe it's a chance for us to learn, grow
and face our blind spots. Each week I'll interview a
different guest about their highs as well as their lows,
(00:26):
all in a bid to inspire us to fearlessly fail.
Holy Mac, we have a ripper guest for you on
the pod today. It is Aussie actor Damon Harryman. He's unreal,
so lovely, so kind, so humble, and might I say,
an incredible body of work as an actor, both here
(00:49):
in America and in Australia. There are so many shows
you would have seen him on missed in between The
Artful Dodger. He is on the new Bikes movie with
Austin Butler and Tom Hardy. In fact, we held this
episode so that it could time in with the movie,
so if you're in Australia or America, the movie is
(01:10):
officially out now. It's called The Bike Riders, Go and
see it. We talk about the behind the scenes of
it a lot in this chat. Like it's set in
the sixties around a bike gang, like a bike Rider's Gang.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, I want to say bike Rider's gang. That's the
right thing to say, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
And they actually had to ride legit bikes from this
time and as a result, like the throttle is different,
the clutches are different, the breaks are different, and you'll
hear David say, like, you know, all the stuff we
did our training on was different to how it was
actually on set.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
So very lovely chat. I learned so much from him.
He was so giving of his time and such a sweetie.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Damon. I cannot wait to see what is next for you,
And thank you so much for just share during your
time so honestly, and you're so generous with your time
as well, your wonderful friend. Thank you so much for
jumping on the pod and to you the listener, go
out and see the bike riders. Damon's incredible God, Damon Harriman,
(02:16):
I'm so pumped to have you here.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I just told you before we hit record, I get
so nerdy and I nerd out over not just the
guest but the process. And you have had such a
wonderful career to deep dive. So when a friend of
mine connected me to to jump on the pod. I
was living in my little apartment in Byron Bay and
(02:44):
we have a frame poster on the wall of Once
Upon a Time in Hollywood, and I was like, this
has got to be a good sign, right, And then
when you said yes to this podcast, I looked out
my apartment window here where I live in LA and
they just change ed the movie poster to the Bike Rider.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So I feel like this all feels quite set to be.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
So You've had such an incredible career both here in
America and in Australia.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
But is it true you started like eight I did?
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yeah, Yeah, I was living.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
I was born in Adelaide in Australia, lived in Alice
Springs for about five years. And while we were in
Alice Springs, I did these radio commercials with my dad.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Just threw someone he knew at the radio station.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
And my dad sort of got this idea based on
those commercials and just the kind of play acting I
used to do in front of the family, pretending to
be characters and things, that maybe I could be an actor.
And so he decided to take it upon himself to
write a letter to the only film director he could
think of which was Peter Weir, and Peter Weir at
(03:53):
the time was not as famous as he is now,
but he was still famous for him picnicing hanging rock
in the Last Wave and it was a sort of
a pretty bold thing to do.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
But he wrote to him.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Peter we amazingly wrote back, I still have the letter
and said, yeah, if you're going back to Adelaide, which
we were, go and see this agent. And I did
and she signed me. And look, I don't think that
was because I blew her socks off. I think I
was one of, you know, one of the few eight
year olds that was coming in to see it, you know,
and it was and I could I could string two
words together. And she took me on and yeah, did
(04:23):
a bunch of ads and then and then got into
some TV after that.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Is it true that you're not technically not technically but
like you haven't.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Done much traditional like drama training.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Yeah, I don't really know if I've done any that
I can think of. Really, it's amazing, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
But I mean it's you know, every every time you
do a job, it's it's kind of totally train you know,
there's no there's no.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Question that you pick up.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
You get better by working with good people, And that's happened,
you know, That's that's that's been like you know, a
mixing bowl that's had like new ingredients added to it
for years and years and years and stirred in and
and I think, you know, you take on all the
bits that feel like they're good and discard the ones
that don't, and hopefully end up with a form of
(05:09):
training that's just on the job training.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Really, yeah, by doing I feel like and I also
feel like we were talking about drama school before this,
Like what you do in a drama class often.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Isn't what you're going to be doing in a on.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
A TV set or on a film set, And like
that preparation time can be different, especially in the moment
as well, like you get to like love it, which
I feel like would be quite different to being we're
going to do script analysis on this one piece for the.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Next six weeks.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Yeah, no, totally, yeah, I mean, who knows. Look, I
never I never went. I never auditioned for any of
those schools. And it was never because I thought I
didn't need to. It was really just because the main
reason was I was sort of already acting at that.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yeah, in my.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
I gave up for like five years over high school.
But then I took it up again and I started
sort of getting enough work that I my reasoning was, well,
I don't want to have three years where I can't
get a job. And at the moment, I'm working enough
that and doing jobs that I wouldn't want to miss
out of. Yeah, that I figured, well, I don't want
(06:14):
to have three years where I can't do that, And
so I just kind of kept going.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
I love I love it.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So we talk about or you look at an actor's
career and you're like, Okay, well that could have been
a break that you've had all these moments, like was
the big Steel like a did it feel like a
big break through you?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
It definitely did. I mean that was so The Big
Steal for people that don't know, was a film released
in nineteen.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Nineteeny Mester, you would have been nineteen.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
It was nineteen when we shot it, and yeah, I
guess I was nineteen or twenty when it came out.
Ben Mendelssohn was in it, Claudia Carvion was in it
was it was, it was, it was you know, it
was a sort of a hit, but not like a
big It wasn't a big Murals wedding kind of Priscilla
type hit, but it was a semi hit, and it
certainly had a lot of love in the following years
(07:02):
as a kind of a VHSDVD rental.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
But that definitely felt like a break.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
I think partly partly because I just had never done
a feature film before, I'd done a bunch of TV.
But also, you know, Ben Mendilsson was sort of known
from the year My Voice broke, Claudia Carvin had done
High Tide. I was excited to be working with these
film actors, you know, and Malcolm had been such a
big film for Nadia Tas and David Parker, and I
couldn't believe I was going to work with them. So
(07:29):
it definitely felt like a big break. I mean, ultimately,
it didn't change a lot in my career. It's not
like I suddenly became I didn't suddenly have a film career,
for example, I don't. I think it was years before
I did another film. But you know, looking back, that's
one of the highlights for me.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
How because I feel like I've heard you say throughout
like that kind of like maybe around up to mid twenties,
you had another job as well, like that had nothing
to do with like an insurance.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
For me, yeah, yeah, from eighteen to twenty seven, I
was basically that I finished high school on a Friday
from the Monday after I was working at the insurance
company my dad worked at.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
And then we moved to Sydney.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Dad transferred with his job at that insurance company, and
I kept working at that insurance company as well. And
so in the same way that actors often will drive
taxis or work behind the bar or white tables, this
was that job for me. It was my in between job,
but it was it was my I was working there
way more than I was acting.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
You know.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
I would work there for months without an acting job,
and then maybe I would do a play for three months,
or you know, maybe I would do a guest role
on a TV show or you know, but I never
I didn't leave that job until I was twenty seven,
and that was only because it sort of it was
just I think it was a week after I turned
twenty seven I went, you know, what if I don't
choose to leave this office job, I reckon, I'm going
(08:52):
to be fifty and still here going. This is my
in between job when I'm not acting. But like I
sort of thought, I have to force myself to take
this a bit more seriously, even if financially it'll be
a bit harder.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
And that's what I did.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
It's so interesting not to get too hip in wo
wu on you, but that's your sat in return, and
so that's true. Yeah, when you start, you know, those
big life changes and life lessons kickins. I was like,
you were already in tune on like a spiritual esoteric level, right,
But I want to ask about house or wax because
I feel like that was a turning point view with
(09:27):
a with American careers.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so in a similar way to the
Big Steel.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Actually, that was, you know, probably the next thing that
felt like it was a change, and it ultimately was
a huge change because it's what got me to come
over here properly. I had done a trip over here
a few years earlier, which was a naive attempt to
get work in America, not knowing anything about anything and
(09:55):
not having an agent and not having any auditions and
getting very depressed and leaving with my tail firmly between.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
A city I agree with a tough city.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
But it was.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Tough, even tougher then because there were just weren't the
number of Aussies that had been here kind of traveling
that road before us that allows you to then know
what to expect. And there had been big Aussie movie stars,
but I didn't know any of those people. There hadn't
really been just the working actors that are here now
and have been here in the last sort of fifteen
twenty years. But anyway, so yeah, House of Wax was
(10:27):
was a big change because it was an American What
I didn't realize when I came over that first time
was you sort of if you really want it to be,
you know, to make things a lot easier, you either
need an American credit, they know, or an Australian film
or something that's broken through here, and those two things,
you know, we can. I mean, there are a million
examples of those things that have happened, you know. I
(10:49):
didn't have either of those things on that first trip.
But on the second trip, which was about two thousand
and four or five, I had just done House of
Wax which was an American film shooting in Australia Paris, Hilton,
and I played you know what became a reasonably long
list of Southern rednecks from that point onwards, which was
the kind which was the other thing that changed a lot,
(11:10):
because I was really only playing lots of nerds with
glasses and nice guys and best friends in Australia. I
never got to play those sort of people on the fringes,
the bad guys that do the dirtier characters.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I didn't just I just couldn't get an audition for those.
And I got this audition, I got this.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Role, and then I came over here, got an agent,
and then then it was it really opened a door,
which was I mean, I am a little bit half
glass empty on this stuff.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
I never kind of think.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
I didn't sort of go, okay, great, I've got my
American credit. I'm going to go take America by storm.
I thought, there's no way I'm going to get cast
in America. I barely get cast in Australia. But I
also I had this term I needed to get some
regret insurance and I and then what I mean by
that is I didn't want to be in my rocking
(12:01):
chair at eighty five going why didn't I take advantage
of that opportunity just to see if something were to happen,
and if I if I'd done House of Wax and
then stayed in Australia, I think I always would have
been wondering, well, it's too late now, but why didn't
I try something then? When I had an American credit
and it did, it was worth doing because I did
get an agent. It was a very slow process to
(12:24):
then start getting work and start getting decent jobs, but
then when it happened, it sort of changed everything.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
It's funny that you meant well, first of all, I
feel you on there no regrets thing. That's my whole
driving force because Australia is awesome and it's so easy
Australia in comparison to here on many different levels. But
like being here and just knowing that you're giving it
a red hot crack. There's just there are so many
(12:52):
opportunities here if you want it, if you have the
someone told me acting as here is.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
A resilience game.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
It kind of feels like that.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
But I love that you brought up the Southern because
I was like, as I said, research and I was like,
hang on, there's a lot of Southern dialect, like Dewey. Yes,
Justified was that because that became like what you cast
in the pilot, and that was kind of like you
might just be in the pilot.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Yes, yeah, yeah, it was. It was a character that
was in the pilot. So yeah, I did it.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
I did a bunch of guest roles here and there,
which I was blown away by just getting any job
at all. I couldn't believe I was working in America really,
And then this audition came along for Justified, which was
a character in a pilot. Yeah, and I did that
and it was super fun, and then the show got
picked up, and then yeah, the character just sort of
ended up getting They would call up every few months
(13:42):
or years or whatever it was, and I think I
did twenty five episodes or something over six years. But
they would say, hey, we're thinking of putting Dewey back
in it. Do you do You're available? I was always
I always made sure I was available.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Why I loved that role.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
So much, and that was, if you know, if the
Big Steel and House of Wax were too kind of
moments that change things. I think Justified was the next
one because it was a cool enough show and a
cool enough role, and I was in it enough to
actually then open a few more doors, because it was
something to hold on to and say, look, this is
(14:16):
a thing he's done, you know, and that did that
That did open some doors to things like doing the
Clinice would film j Edgar, or to doing a guest
role in Breaking Bad. These are things that I think
were helped by the fact that I'd already done Justified and.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Such a fun like character like sit.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
In like I mean, so much fun. Like you know,
whenever a new script would come, I.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
Would just be like like rushing to the pages that
do he was under, see what absurd situation he'd get
into and what funny lines I got to site so
good and they would they really wrote it, The writers
were so good. But it was that thing too of like,
you know, the version of him in the pilot is
a lot more of a bland you know, he's not
sort of fully for not really fully fleshed out, either by.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
The writers or by me. At that point. It's a
character we don't really know much about.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
And then there's a nice back and forth that happens
between the actor and the writer writers when something's ongoing,
where they see what you're doing and then you see
what they're writing and you kind of work together to
form something that really becomes this guy. And then I
think by probably season three or something, you kind of.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Have the character.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Oh I love this and ps, I want to apologize
because my brain is like a pinball machine and so
you'll see me ask questions you might, but that's not
in the same timeline, Laura. But I have to ask
you about because as soon as you said yes to
this pod, I started watching Mister in Between, right, and
I like, and you know, it's.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
A great show.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Ah, but there's like montages on YouTube of the relationship
of Freddy. You play Freddie right, Freddy and Ray Oh
really and like to like romance music in the backgrounds
very very sweet on YouTube. But it was such fun
but also like heartwarming at moment, Like it was a
really incredible show to watch. But the character once again
(16:04):
that you got to play like Freddy was like you know,
late and complex, but also like there was a love
and kind of like a bit messed up as well,
but there was like a lovableness.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Do you know what You've actually I've never thought about this,
but there's a weird similarity between Dewey and and Freddy
that you've just made me realize, which is sort of
like the hapless kind of friend enemy whatever love hate
relationship with the main guy, which is like Raylan and
Dewey and Justified and ray and Freddy in Mystery Between
(16:39):
who is kind of a pathetic version of a bad guy.
You know, they sort of want to be more of
a bad guy, but they're a bit hapless.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Yeah. I never really thought about.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
That because I wrote down here that you were a
lovable baddie, like as the like the audience were kind
of like, oh no, what's what's going to Like, what's.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Freddy going to get up to this episode?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
You kind of like as the audience were kind of
like rooting for you, you know what I mean, because
like nothing ever kind.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Of went your way.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
There's a funny line where like I think Race is
to Freddy like you've been miserule for twenty years.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
You got to change something, you.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Know, because his character was always like having winge about something.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Essentially Yeah, yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
It looked like such a fun character that was so
much fun.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
Oh, I mean very similar as well in the sense
that you know, excited to read any new script. You
know that show was extraordinary, you know, because you know
Scott Ryan, who plays Ray, not only brilliant in the role,
but wrote every single episode. The Edgerton brilliantly directed every
single episode.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Those two were.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
The ingredients that made that show so special. And I
don't think any of us when we started it had
any idea how good it was going to be.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And yeah, that's that's massive highlight for me totally.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
I have to ask, because you've also played some really
darker like The nighting like heavier characters, did they feel
a little bit when you first see like you get
sent the sides and you're like, whoa like, does that
feel at all confronting that first moment when you see
something that's quite sits in a bit more darkness, or certainly.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
With something like The Nightingale, like it doesn't really get
much darker. Yeah, you know, people often bring up the
Charles Manson things, so how that must have been full
on to play him.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
But the scenes weren't full of the scenes weren't dark.
The scenes in The.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Nightingale are about as dark as they get, you know,
So yeah, yeah, it's a it's a that's a full
on thing, and you know it, it's sort of a
testament to the the cast and crew of that film
that there was some sort of love on set around
all these horrible scenes that we had to shoot that
kind of made us get you know, helped us get
(18:48):
through that.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
But it was it wasn't. Yeah, that wasn't a fun
film to shoot. A lot of the time. It was grueling.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I've heard people say when it's a heavier set, like
the tented is heavier, there's often lightness off, like when
you're not filming and you're not rolling.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
And you know, like ashling friend Josie and Sam Klaflin
are the leads in that we were. They are just
the loveliest people, and we had the most so many
laughs off set, you know, and but yeah, you sort
of had to yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Like neutral, yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
I obviously can't interview without asking about Charles Manson. I
love that there's so many moments I've heard you share
about it.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
I love that you'd already been.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Cast in mind Hunter and then the audition for Once
upon a Time in Hollywood came through and you're like, well,
I'm already cast in mind As if they're going to
want me to play the same character. Sides get fedexed
over to you, right for that audition, right.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
Yeah, I forgot about that, that's right. They wouldn't even
email them, that's.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Right, because it was leaked from Hateful Light or something.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
I think Quentin Tarantina was very understandably guarded about his
script getting out because Hate for Late had been leaked,
so there was no digital version of the of the script,
and they were FedEx from the audition pages were FedEx
from America.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Were you in Australia.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
I was in Australia, really, yeah, I was in Australia.
And I remember thinking, and the character wasn't even called
Charles or Charlie or anything. It was called I think
it was called shaggy guy or something. A shaggy guy
appears on the and you knew exactly who it was.
And yeah, I remember thinking, look, there's no way I'm
not going to put down an audition for that in Tarantino.
(20:34):
But there's also no way I'm going to get this
because I'm already playing him in mind Hunter. And at
that point, I think it was about five months into
the the you know, very long makeup sort of sessions
with the makeup artist Kazu, who did.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
An extraordinary Yeah, so there was there was no Yeah,
there was no question about but I thought, but it was.
It was.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
It was bizarre because I'd spent, without question, the most
time I've ever researched any character was on watching and
listening to and reading about Charles Manson for mind Hunter.
By the time I got the audition for Charles Manson
in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, it.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Was like I couldn't have been more ready.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
And the only difference really was that he was He
was like eleven years younger in the movie, and you know,
he did sound a bit different. His voice was a
little lighter, and he was also just in general more
sort of like a playful court jester y, kind of
like little impish. Like in prison, he's very dark, gruff
and furious, you know, before he went to prison, he's
(21:38):
kind of had a lightness to him. So that was
one little thing that I could inject into it. But
other than that, it was like it was sort of
what I'd already been doing. It was extraordinary. And then
I flew to America to shoot mind Hunter, and the
day after the first day I got here was like
a final makeup fitting for mind Hunter.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
The next day I found.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
And that I got Once upon a time in Hollywood,
how I was just like, this is this is too bizarre.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I've been able to see the deleted scenes that you've done,
because you did like a lot more filming than what
we actually see.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Well, yeah, I mean whatever the scene, it's the scenes
in the movie, and then the couple that you've seen. Yeah,
there's one particular one which is a lot more substantial
than what's in the film, which is on the deleted scene.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Yeah, and also seeing that court Jester kind of like
playing with Brad Pitt's character as well when he's on
the roof and.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
You're like, it must have been so much and it's
so interesting.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
The way in interviews you talk about the difference between
the two is I'm a big mind Hunter fan, like
from the score to the way it's written to like,
and also like as one of my textbooks for one
of one of the drama schools I went to, they
made us read mind Hunter to understand human behavior through
a different lens. But it was so fascinating watching both
(22:51):
of your because to me, they feel like you can
feel like there's a lightness to that first one, that
youth and also like he was an aspiring rocks, like
he want to be a rock star.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
I mean I feel a lot of people feel that
had he had the success that he wanted, then those
murders never would have happened, because I think a big
part of why he did that and shows that house
is because Terry Melcher, the producer, used to live there.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
The music producer used to.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Live there and had promised him an audition that sort
of never happened. I can't remember it happened, and then
he turned him down or whatever, but he didn't get
a recording contact, and he was kind of he lost
face amongst his group, and he was embarrassed. I think
that was kind of a form of revenge.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
So there's a I got sent a little meme about
the cast that they had for the ranch. All the
casts from that ranch was like Austin Butler, Sydney Sweeney,
like all people.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Yeah, all people that have like popped since true.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Actually, yeah, it's fascinating to Yeah, look, I just love
the fact, like I love the fact that you wanted
to play both in it with two incredible directors that
are kind of like always going to go down in
the history books. Like what a pinch yourself kind of moment.
And I've heard you say been on a Quintin set
is like it's almost like going back to just like
(24:13):
people having fun and doing a little short together kind.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Of feels like that.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
It didn't feel other than looking around and seeing you know,
Brad Pitt and Margot, Robbie and whatever walking around and
Quentin Tarantino, which were like, oh no, this is a
big Hollywood movie.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
It didn't.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
It felt like time was of no issue. Everyone was
very casual, everyone was very relaxed, and.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
It did feel a bit like being on a short
film with Hacko. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Yeah, that's like pretty special.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Oh you know, I still can't believe we've got to
do it. You know, I would never in a million
years have imagined.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
When I first came over here, you know, I just thought,
could I ever get at one episode of Guest TV
over here?
Speaker 3 (24:56):
That was like is that even possible?
Speaker 2 (24:58):
You know?
Speaker 4 (24:59):
And then so all the all the stuff, the other
stuff has been kind of cream on top, and that's
just like the cherry on top of the cream.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, that's so interesting. I have to ask you, because
I think I told you before we started this that
I watched you speak to a room of actors and
you so beautifully describe because I think a lot of
Aussie's come over here in one of from one of
two ways. One is like, yeah, they've got that Aussie
project or credit behind them that they know has got
(25:26):
like the beautiful like Chopper Eric Banner story or you know.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
Like there's something, Yeah there's Russell Crowe, but this just
goes on and on.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
But like even for me, I've got a lot of
mates that just come over on an esther or like
a tourist fees and they're like, oh, I'm gonna make it,
and they're gone within six weeks, like just burnt through cash,
lived a large life for six weeks and then they're
gone and that doesn't happen again. And then you've got
the people that kind of like lock in, give it
a red hot crack for like years at a time,
(25:58):
end up doing a lot of sigh'd hustle kind of
jobs to survive because Ala is a very expensive city.
And then there's you that kind of does this half
half kind of like split you kind of like do
it do Australian time, do American time, And it sounds
like you.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Just follow the work. That's how it looks from the outside.
Is that true?
Speaker 4 (26:17):
Certainly now that's pretty much how it goes. At the start,
it was just, oh, I better go and put in
some time in America like I would do. Basically, Initially,
I just thought, well, I'm not going to move there
to live because A I like my life in Australia.
B I work in Australia enough to not want to
disappear from their minds, I guess, be out of the loop.
(26:39):
So I would sort of choose these three months trips,
and I tended to do the first number a few years.
I tended to do like two three month trips a year.
So I just sort of pick a three month period
like I do, like January, February, March, and then September, October,
November or something like that, and then sometimes work would
happen outside those in either place and that would govern
(27:00):
what I did. But that tended to be what I
did just to start, Yeah, I guess, because I also
didn't want to be I did see those people who'd
moved here and were starting to get a bit disheartened
because it had been two years now and nothing had happened,
and they were just working at a bar, and they
just sort of weren't really an actor anymore. They're just
an Australian working at a bar in America. And I'm like,
(27:22):
I don't want to do that, and I don't want
to just bleed cash, whereas I could save cash back
home and then go even if I come here and
spend three months and spend it all, spend all my
money and you know, spend a chunk of money and
nothing happens at least it's only been three months. And
as it was getting to the end of the three months,
I'd be like, oh, I'm excited, I'm going home soon.
(27:42):
And then as it was approaching my next trip over here,
I'd be like, I'm excited, I'm going back to a lesson.
You know, nothing ever felt too overwhelming or depressing, and
it's very easy for things to get overwhelming and depressing here.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Yeah, so, yeah, you're right. Not many people do it
that way.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Maybe I was just sort of fortunate enough to be
able to do it that way, but I think it's
definitly I'm glad I did. I'm really glad I did.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
And now it tends to be more around where the
work is.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
You know, yeah, I like that. I like that mentality.
Whenever I land here. We were talking about beautiful Anthey
Lapalia before this. He always goes buckle in, Lula buckle in.
He's like that QF flight every night, is there waiting
for you if you need to go home, and he's
like and just don't.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
He's like, he's like, stuff it out.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
But that is also like he came at seventeen one
hundred bucks in his back pocket, you know, like did
that was a very different time And.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah, well he's one of the exceptions.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
He's one of the people who didn't come with an
Australian big movie or an American credit. They knew he
just started and was awesome and they loved him and
he's you know, and that and that does happen. Then again,
he was seventeen. If he was thirty seven would have
been a lot harder.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
So in it's just so I'm so fascinating in everyone's journey.
I loved when you did this chat to the acting school.
So you talked about having heat on you round so just.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
To just to clarify not having heat on me, because
heat on people in general, I don't know if I've
ever quite had a heat You talked about how much
heat there was and how you're.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Just smoking smoking with heat.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
No, I think talk about you the general you having
a heat on you. To have heat on you as
an actor here makes a massive difference.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
I mean, like that's never happened to me here, but
I've had you know, there are degrees of it, you know,
like you know, if like using one of those examples
like Tony Coleetda Murel's wedding would have had a huge
amount of heat on her the second that America discovered
that foudition for.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
That didn't I did, actually, yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
Yeah, I auditioned for a role that Gould made of
mind Matt Day ended up getting and yeah, and he
was brilliant. I mean, lots of lots of things I've
auditioned for that I didn't get over the years.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
There was something as Lemon. I feel like as well, my.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Auditioned for Yeah, audition for Gatsby. Yeah, I think Jason
the Royal Jason Clark also brilliantly. I mean, it's it's
good when you audition for something and then see the
person do and go oh, no, they were really good
that they should have got that role. It sucks when
you audition and watch and go, I know.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
But so what I mean around the heat thing is,
and the only reason why I'm asking about it is
because I've heard actors talk about if you work hard enough,
eventually you're probably going to.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Get an opportunity.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
But then you have to choose to be ready for
that opportunity and be find the momentum off the back
of it, which is the same idea about having like, say,
for example, doing Justified and then cut to you at
a premiere of Hateful Eight in Sydney, and then Quinton
was a fan of your and you had no idea.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
Well, well basically what happened, Well, he's a fan of Justified.
He's a big fan of Justified. And I was at
the premiere of Hateful Eight. Quentin bizarrely, with Samuel L. Jackson,
sat in and watched the whole movie with the audience,
which was so quite rare.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Is that rare for them to say, yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
I feel like it is when they've seen it so
many times, especially when it's the Sydney premiere. It's not
the premiere, you know. I thought that was really cool. Anyway,
I knew that. I mean Walton Goggins from Justified. I'd
worked with a lot on Justified and he was in
the Hape forl Eate and I emailed him and said, hey,
I'm going to go see your film tomorrow, and he said,
say hi to Quentin from me if you see him there.
(31:32):
I wish I could be there, and I was like, well,
that's not going to happen. I'm not going to run
into Quentin. The movie ends, I'm walking up the steps
of the cinema and I look to my left and
there's a giant man and it's Quentin Tarantino. I'm like,
oh my god, I'm walking up the steps Tarantino and
I thought, okay, well, Walton said to say hi, I
better say hi. I was like, hey, that the congrats.
The movie was awesome. He's like, oh, thank you so much,
(31:53):
thank you so much. I was like, by the way
Walton Goggin said to say hi, I'm a friend a
friend of his, and he went on, well, thank you,
thank you. And then I suddenly saw that he recognized
me from Justifying, and he.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Went, oh my god, oh my god, you're Dewey Crow.
I can't believe you're doing And now I was just
like stunned that he knew the name of my character.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
He grabbed my hand and pulled me back down the
cinema back to where Samuel L.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Jackson was sitting and.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Said Sam Sam Sam, look, look it's do we crow
Because Samuel Jackson apparently also who loves Justified and so
he's like, oh my god, do he croach?
Speaker 3 (32:29):
I was like so weird, like this is this is surreal.
And then then Samuel Jackson pulls at his Camera's like,
we got to get a photo for Walton. I'm like, yeah, yeah,
we do, go to get a for Walton. I'll be
making sure I get that photo off Walton. And then yeah,
and then the.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
Next day in my email, I get a photograph from
Walton of me with Quentin Tarantino when Samuel L.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Jackson was pretty funny.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
How good? How good? That's an incredible story. I have
to ask about the Bike Riders because it's by the
time it's about to be released here in America as
we record this, but by the time this comes out,
it will be out in America and will have just
been released in Australia. And first of all. It looks incredible.
(33:17):
I've seen the trailer. I've said, there's all this behind
the scenes stuff and great interviews with Jeff have come
out now, and so it's so much fun. There's some
fun behind the scenes stuff of you in fight scenes,
getting your makeup retouched and all this, like all these
stuff's slowly coming out on YouTube. But so it's basically
Midwest bike It became a biker's gang, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
It's it's based on a real biker gang. It was
really like a biker club. Yeah, you know, it's sort
of like when people got together because they appreciated motorbikes
and riding together. It was before they had long hair,
and it was before that was sort of necessarily crime involved,
which doesn't happen in every biker club, but that's sort
(34:02):
of kind of what biker clubs, some biker clubs became
renowned for. So it's kind of starts in the mid sixties.
It's based on this book of photographs by a guy
called Danny Lyon who went and spent you know, a
lot of months living with this biker gang and taking
photographs of them, and then this book came out of
(34:23):
these beautiful black and white photographs of the Gang. Jeff Nichols,
the writer director, found that book years ago and saw
something in it that he thought would make a great movie.
So he kind of took the actual characters that we
see and read about in this photo book and wrote
a script about them. And yeah, and it's incredible cast
(34:44):
another sort of pinch me moment to be working with
these people.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
So there's a beautiful moment in an interview he's done
recently where he mentions you, which is so sweet. He says,
I could point the camera in any direction and there
was always somebody doing something interesting, and he brings your
name up, and he brings a few other actors up,
and I was like, how sweet is that to hear?
Speaker 4 (35:08):
That's so nice to hear. Yeah, that's that makes me
feel very nice. Like Jeff Nichols is the quintessential actors
director there is. You know, there is no one you
would rather work with on a film set than him
in terms of how he deals with the actors. He's
just such a beautiful gentleman, so so intelligent, so kind,
(35:31):
and you know, one of the really the last sort
of filmmakers of that kind is almost like a filmmaker
from the seventies, you know, making these smaller quality dramas,
which is sort of not so much of a genre
anymore in the way it used to be.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
He shoots on film, too, doesn't He does.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
Shoot on film, which is again very very rare these days.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
And you know, I think that's why I think, you know,
his reputation is why he's able to pull together casts
like you know, Austin Butler and Tom Hardy, Gody Kmer
and Michael Shannon and Norman Readers and all these incredible people,
and then and then people like me get to get
to somehow squeeze in there as well, and and just
(36:15):
look around trying to pretend that you're you're part of
the cool gang.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
It looks like in the trailer you're like Tom Hardy's
right hand man.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah, that's pretty much.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
That's how fun I mean to be around. Great.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
It's like, did you because Jeff also talks about Tom.
He says, it's like there's something vibrating, like a millimeter
under his skin, like there's never nothing going on there,
whether he's having a drag of a city or you know,
he said, it's just there's always something to capture with him.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Could you feel that.
Speaker 5 (36:46):
Yeah, he he he does have that thing, that next factor,
that screen presence thing that you can't quite put your
finger on, and you do, you do feel it like
you do feel it.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
You feel it around him as a person. And by
the way, he was lovely to be around, really friendly,
chatty guy, walked on set every day and hugged everybody
and talked about his family and I really really liked him.
But yeah, no, I mean, he just he does have
a certain electricity. And then you know, as soon as
the camera's rolling, you're looking at a face that is
(37:23):
both doing nothing and doing everything all at once, you know,
which I think is true. Have a lot of great actors,
and he's certainly one of them.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
I have to ask, this is how nerdy I get
when I do like research and people. Apparently all the
bikes were literally from the fifties and sixties, but that
meant they're quite a lot harder to ride, like from
a brakes perspective and a throttle perspective. Was that was,
did you have to learn how to ride this style
of a bike?
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (37:49):
Yeah, and mine mine was particularly unusual because apparently back
then they hadn't decided as an industry which side the
the foot brake should go on versus the foot clutch
if i'm remember, or the gears. I've even't ridden a
bike for a while now, but something to do with
(38:10):
the clutch, the brake, the gears. They hadn't kind of
all come to a consensus on where they should be
and which side they should be. On modern bikes, they're
all the same, and we were, we were learning on
modern bikes. So I do remember them saying, look, just
so you know whatever your foot your feet are doing,
well you're learning, it's going to be the exact opposite
(38:32):
when you get on the bike you're riding.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
And I was just like, oh, this is going to
be a disaster. But it was. It was fine. I
could say it's just like riding a bike. No, it was.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
It was it was you know, there was a second
there where you're like, okay, you know, it's like that
thing of tapping your head and what is that thing
when you tap ahead and you're starting at the same
tread coming at the same time, You're like, okay, I
really have to concentrate to make sure I can do this.
But yeah, and you know I had to get my bike,
my motorbike license for the It was kind of call.
(39:04):
So my license now has a motorbike permission thing on it.
I haven't ridden a bike since then, and yeah, I
probably want to go into an isolated car park before
I do that again, because it's been a while now.
But it was a lot of fun, exciting.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
How exciting I imagine like a biker movie set in
the sixties, Like everyone in Hollywood that's a guy is
going to be like knocking on the door to be
cast in a movie like this, Like it already screams
like yes, like amazing to be working with this team,
but also like this is a cool kind of movie,
(39:38):
like this is a kind of like Sons of Anarchy
was massive, Like I feel like this is what was
the process, like auditioning and like did you get a
call or.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
I have to totally give a shout out to Joel Edgerton,
amazing Australian actor and friend who had worked with Jeff
Nichols a couple of times. And I think an audition
had come through for a role in this through my
American agent and because Joel had worked with him, I
(40:11):
mentioned that to John, you know, this is.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
What actors do.
Speaker 4 (40:13):
They Hey, I'm about to audition for your buddy, feel
free to, you know, put in a word. And Joel's
done that for me a couple of times. He did
that with Barry Jenkins on the Underground Railroad as well,
and in both times Joel put in a word, I
ended up getting the role. So I'm incredibly thankful to
him because legend. Yeah, I mean, you know, it just
sort of it does count for something to have somebody
(40:37):
that you know. These directors get thousands of people in
front of them and they have to somehow differentiate between them,
and I imagine it's quite overwhelming at some point where
you where you're trying to decide, even if you narrow
it down to one hundred, how do you so?
Speaker 3 (40:54):
So having the point of difference.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
Of having someone say, hey, I know this person and
I can vouch for this person really really makes the difference.
And I have I have no idea if I ever
would have got either of those roles if Shoe hadn't
made that call. So I'm super appreciative to him for that.
But yeah, yeah, he is a legend. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
So I have to ask, I've heard you say you
don't mark up your script that much?
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Is that true?
Speaker 4 (41:16):
Not at all, really, not at all, not at all
unless the only time I would mark it up would
be if we do a rehearsal and there are notes
to take on based on what happened in that rehearsal,
so I remember them when we shoot it that this
is what we talked about on that line or this
is where I'm moving. But I don't, yeah, because I
think I and of course you know what, Yeah, I
(41:39):
work with actors who've gone through acting school, and they
nearly all have scripts that are covered in INC because
I guess you learn to But if you don't learn
to do that, I wouldn't know what to write, you know, No,
my scripts are completely blank.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
I mean, it makes sense in a way why it
kind of works for you, because there's a sense like
as awesome as training can be, like it as someone
that's been in it for a while, like you get
taught to like hold on so tight to the work
and the training, and then as a result, you lose
freedom sometimes and you lose presence, and you lose just
like honoring the writing and being.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
In the moment with another person.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
And so I can see how it's been such a
gift for you to be like, well, I'm just going
to go in like obviously line ready, but like also
just like open to the scene and connecting with your
scene partner.
Speaker 4 (42:31):
Yeah, I guess I guess that's if you haven't study acting.
I guess I guess it ultimately becomes an instinctial thing.
And so you know, a lot of the things that
I'm sure people write down on their script are things
I've thought about anyway, but I I, yeah, I'm thinking
about them as I'm going through the script in my
head or going through it on the page, rather than putting.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
In, isn't it Anthony Hopkins, that's just like read read,
like go over the script a certain amount of times
and then it's with you.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
That's right, I think, Key, Yeah, doesn't he read the
script an insane amount of times.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
As opposed to there's a beat here, I'm going to
do this action on this line at this time.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Right, It's just like, but be so yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
I think his thing is be so familiar with it
that you can do absolutely anything.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
It's you're so free.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Which it feels like that feels like more you're more
that school than say Daniel day Lewis.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
One might say, well, I don't know what's Daniel d
Lewis's meant. I mean, I know he gets into character
complete men. Yeah, he stays in character.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, But I mean I feel like,
you like the beauty of you playing like a Charles
Manson and having the technique that you will call it
the Damon technique sans.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
That you can no but it means that you can
go home and not be like I'm in the mindset
of a cult lead a serial killer.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
Yeah, I definitely don't have that thing of taking characters home,
which I think would be, you know, potentially awful depending
on who you were playing.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
Yeah, I tend to feel, you know, certainly if things
are going well, I feel like I am in the
character to a degree between action and cut, but after
that I'm just back to me.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
And same with dialect.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Like a lot of Australians will stay like they'll rock
up on, They'll wake up at like five I've heard
actors be like, Okay, I wake up at five am,
I go to the gym. I stay in dialect. If
I'm doing you know, I'm an American show. I'm in
dialect all day long. I don't break when we're at Crafty.
You know like, and I've heard you say yeah, and
I've heard you be like, well no, when they call action,
(44:33):
I'm on dialect and when they call cut, I'm back
to my But that's also a beautiful attribute to you.
And my dialect coach in Australia is like, that's where
you want to be. He's like, you want to be
able to like flick into it and then let.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
It go right. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
Look, I think it's one of those whatever works for
you things, So I think I would. I think it's
partly because i'd feel a bit weird just staying in
an accent between because between takes, I am me, and
I guess I would feel weird. But that's not to
say if for some reason I felt that was the
only way I could keep an accent, I guess I
would do it. But I've never felt like I had
to stay in it in order to keep it, you
(45:11):
know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
You have so much fun with Southern dialects, by the way,
like every I'm like suther and again, yeah, I've.
Speaker 4 (45:18):
Done quite a few of those and they are a
lot of fun. I just had to do a Boston
one actually, which was a new one that I've never done.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Boston's heart feel like it's trickier.
Speaker 4 (45:27):
It is tricky, and it's also got that weird thing
where there are some sounds that are almost Australian that
you know, park your car and half the yard kind
of thing where they they the ar is almost the
same as Australian.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Do you do?
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Did you work with a dialect coach?
Speaker 4 (45:41):
What do you all?
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (45:42):
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean pretty much always unless it's
something just like I don't know this miniseries I did
back home called The Artful Dodger.
Speaker 3 (45:52):
Recently, that was like I love watching that, you know,
that was.
Speaker 4 (45:58):
Just like, well, he's he's breadis, but he's been living
in Australia for years and we don't really even know
what the accent was in Australia in eighteen fifty, so
that I didn't have a dialect coach because it was
just sort of you know, that didn't.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Feel British is easy for Aussie's too, yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
It wasn't like a strict British anyway.
Speaker 4 (46:15):
And if I'm playing an American, I don't have a
dialect coach, you know, unless it's a new accent that
I haven't done, Like Boston, I wouldn't try and do
a Boston on my own because it's too new and
too different and there are too many sounds that I'm
not familiar.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yeah, oh so interesting.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Okay, So actors do listen to this, like young aspiring actors,
A lot of Aussie's do. For an Aussie that might
be have, you know, big stars in their eyes and
really want to make it here in America. Obviously, we've
talked about like how everybody has a different trajectory, and
I think it seems like one shoe doesn't fit all.
(46:52):
But is it a resilience game or is it a
like come over with the white reps, come over with
the right credits again of like it could be any
all or a bit of each.
Speaker 4 (47:04):
Yeah, there's definitely no one size fits all, unfortunately, and
I think at the top of the list is again
unfortunately timing and luck. You know, I think that there's
no recipe for how to do this. Look if you
there are some things that are close to a certainty,
and that is if you are a good looking twenty
(47:25):
year old who just played the lead brilliantly in an
Australian film that was a hit at sun Dance. Yeah,
you're going to be fine. Here, you're going to get
several agents and managers want to sign you, and you're
probably going to get an instant career. But that's a
very specific set of circumstances that you can't plan. You
can't even plan to have got that Australian film. You
have to have had that happen for you too, So again,
(47:48):
you know, so yeah, it's that there is an element
of resilience. I guess looking at my own situation, I
you know, when I came I came over for two
three month trips where absolutely nothing happened after House of Wax,
and I gave myself one more trip two. Yeah, but
(48:11):
you know, there's just as much chance that it would
have also not happened. It hadn't happened twice, so that
could have easily not happened again, and I wasn't coming back.
So you know, there's an argument therefore sticking it out
because you just don't know what's around the corner. At
the same time, I also am a realist and I
would say, yeah, but I wouldn't have stuck it out
for ten trips with nothing happening, because I would be like, Okay, damon,
(48:34):
take the hint like they do not like you, like
you're not going to work here. I think, yeah, having
a healthy sense of you know, drive, but also a
healthy sense of being realistic. You know, you don't want
to come here and get broke and depressed.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Yeah, don't you know.
Speaker 4 (48:59):
At the same time, if you come here and and
and spend two weeks here and go, oh, nothing happened
stuff that I'm never coming back, that's probably underselling yourself
a little bit. I think, you know, I was pretty
I came here with just enough self doubt, like I
was lot of one of those actors who oscillates between
thinking I can do anything and thinking I can't do anything, and.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
Which I'm sure is familiar to a lot of actors.
Speaker 4 (49:27):
And I think, you know, but but most of the time,
I'm sort of somewhere in the middle of those two things.
And I think that gives you the ability to go Okay.
I know, I know I can do this job enough
because I've I've done it enough so far.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
And and and and and and.
Speaker 4 (49:46):
Been hir at enough times that I can't be truly awful.
I can't be as awful as I think I am sometimes,
so I guess it's worth sticking out to a degree
and seeing what happens. But also yeah, not not not
driving yourself in at the ground and thinking, come on,
come on, I'm you know, why isn't anyone hiring me.
I was realistic when I came here after House of Wax,
(50:08):
partly because I was thirty five years old. I didn't
look like Chris Hemsworth. I didn't have I had, you know,
an American credit, but I didn't have a huge credit
behind me. So I knew that there was a small
door had opened, a small crack in the door had opened,
but it wasn't wide open, and I didn't ever expect
it was. I thought it could have easily just slam shut,
(50:29):
and I would have been fine with that too. You know,
everything that happened to me over here was a surprise.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
You know. It never felt like.
Speaker 4 (50:37):
Okay, yeah, this is what I'm due and this is
what I expect. What happened for me, it was always
like sorry, what Like I really couldn't believe it.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
And I'm glad that.
Speaker 4 (50:47):
I just think from a psychological perspective that that was helpful,
because everything good that happened was a pleasant surprise. Everything
that didn't happen was Yeah, I didn't think what anyway,
you know, so I think that helped.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
Yeah, it's so funny.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
I've been acting schools where they say this is your Olympics,
nothing else matters. And because like I'm a bit more,
I've got a real business ye kind of brain, I'm like, no,
I think it's effing great to yet chase this dream,
but I'm all for like having things that are going
to facilitate and fuel that dream so that you've got
like enough time to like sit in it long enough
(51:24):
that you can give yourself chances for those lucky breaks.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
That's kind of my theory on it.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
But I love that you say, like take the plunge,
but also be realistic, Like it's it's one thing to
kind of like give it a crack and then run
home and go, oh no that was my one and downe,
you know, like, but it's another thing to be like, Okay,
well it sounds like you're a good combo, is what
I'm trying to say. Of, like, let's chase this dream.
(51:50):
I'm going to give it a red hot crack, like
I'm gonna give it a shake. Yeah, but also if it
doesn't work, out, I'm going to be okay, knowing I
gave it a red. I stuck at it long enough
to give it that.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (52:01):
As I said earlier, I didn't want to be in
later life going, did I? I don't think I tried.
I don't think I gave that enough of a crack.
And by that third trip, where nothing had happened and
I didn't expect it was going to happen, I felt like, No,
you made three three month trips there, you didn't even
get a call back. That's enough proof that nothing was
going to happen. That's not to say that you weren't
(52:22):
good enough. It might be you weren't good enough, or
it just just like luck didn't go your way that day.
But like you know, at least you gave it a shot.
And yeah, I think that, you know, just having a
healthy sense of what is how you know, what are
you capable of? Are you genuinely do you have the
(52:43):
goods to actually work there for a start? That's one thing,
but then that doesn't just just be aware that that
doesn't necessarily mean you're going to work there. You know,
it is a lottery to some degree, you know there
are you know I offered to have this thought that
you know, the best actor in the world is probably
working behind the bar in some distant pub in Ireland
(53:07):
and we're never going to know about them, like they
were just were never never go because they you know,
they just didn't do the things and have the things
fall into place that we're required for anyone to take notice.
You know, being a good actor is only halfway there.
Having people care and take notice that you are a
good actor is the hard part.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Yeah, Well, I always say to people there's a whole
business side to it as well. It's not just the art,
and it's like having the right agent and if you've
got like a show coming out, is their publicity link
to that? Like there is like a business side to
it as well that a lot of people like, No,
I just want to honor the craft and the art,
which is awesome, But I always think if you almost
need in if you are going to go to Axel,
(53:47):
I'm like, someone needs to teach the business of it,
because there is a like business e side, especially over
here because you've got managers, agents, lawyers or taking little
cuts as well, Like very different to back in Australia,
like it feels like a whole different skill set to
understand yourself as well.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Like I find it fascinate.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
I don't know, I could talk about this, I could
nerd out over this stuff all day long. I have
to you've met, You've already kind of like touched on this.
But like, so you do go for something like I know,
the Murial's wedding and the Baslom and Gatsby moments. How
do you handle that rejection when you're like, I did
want that one.
Speaker 4 (54:24):
I think it depends on how emotionally you invested you
are and how much you really want something. I remember,
I think still to this day. The most pain I
felt from not getting a role was in an Australian
series called The Henderson Kids Too. When I was a kid,
I was a big fan of The Henderson Kids, a
(54:45):
huge crush on the Dean Ghana, and I got an
audition for The Henderson Kids Too. I think I was
fifteen or something and I wanted it so bad and
I remember when I got the call that I didn't
get it, I actually cried. I don't think I've ever
cried not getting a roll before, but I was so devastated.
And look, there have been a few of those over
the years.
Speaker 3 (55:04):
I think.
Speaker 4 (55:07):
That, Yeah, the Mirror's Wedding one, I would have been
pretty upset about. The Gatsby one. I was pretty down
about because I think that had got down to only
a handful of people. Thankfully, I think the oldie you get,
the less it hurts. But other than that, I don't
think there's a way to cope with it. It is a
(55:27):
it's bad news, you know, it's like getting a call
that's you know you've built, especially if you really felt
like you were. Sometimes that's why it's best not to
get too close to something, you know. When I mean
a lot of actors I think feel this way, which is,
you know, I'd rather have not even had a shot
than hear it was between me and someone else, even
though obviously it's way better.
Speaker 3 (55:47):
To be down to the final too.
Speaker 4 (55:48):
That's a really cool thing, but it feels so much
worse because you because then you beat yourself up with
what could I have done differently? What could have been
the little thing that got me over the line?
Speaker 2 (55:59):
Yes, so fal On, that's saying that, like bronze middlists
are happier than silver medal totally.
Speaker 3 (56:05):
You know, Yes, it's exactly that.
Speaker 2 (56:07):
Yeah, you have been such a joy to interview. I
cannot wait.
Speaker 1 (56:13):
To see the bike riders.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
I think it's going to be amazing and I can't
wait to see what's next for you. And I hope
that Boston tape went really well and I hope that's
I know actors can't talk about the next projects, but
thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
You're wonderful.
Speaker 3 (56:28):
Oh, thanks a lot. I've had a bore. It's been really, really,
really fun.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
Thank you, my friend.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
That's a wrap on another episode of Fearlessly Failing. As always,
thank you to our guests, and let's continue the conversation
on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
I'm at Yumo Rollerberry.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
This potty my word for podcast is available.
Speaker 1 (56:52):
On all streaming platforms.
Speaker 2 (56:54):
I'd love it if you could subscribe, rape and comment,
and of course spread the loves.
Get a.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
I'm Lola Berry, nutritionist, author, actor, TV presenter and professional
overshare us. This podcast is all about celebrating failure because
I believe it's a chance for us to learn, grow
and face our blind spots. Each week I'll interview a
different guest about their highs as well as their lows,
(00:26):
all in a bid to inspire us to fearlessly fail.
Holy Mac, we have a ripper guest for you on
the pod today. It is Aussie actor Damon Harryman. He's unreal,
so lovely, so kind, so humble, and might I say,
an incredible body of work as an actor, both here
(00:49):
in America and in Australia. There are so many shows
you would have seen him on missed in between The
Artful Dodger. He is on the new Bikes movie with
Austin Butler and Tom Hardy. In fact, we held this
episode so that it could time in with the movie,
so if you're in Australia or America, the movie is
(01:10):
officially out now. It's called The Bike Riders, Go and
see it. We talk about the behind the scenes of
it a lot in this chat. Like it's set in
the sixties around a bike gang, like a bike Rider's Gang.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, I want to say bike Rider's gang. That's the
right thing to say, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
And they actually had to ride legit bikes from this
time and as a result, like the throttle is different,
the clutches are different, the breaks are different, and you'll
hear David say, like, you know, all the stuff we
did our training on was different to how it was
actually on set.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
So very lovely chat. I learned so much from him.
He was so giving of his time and such a sweetie.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Damon. I cannot wait to see what is next for you,
And thank you so much for just share during your
time so honestly, and you're so generous with your time
as well, your wonderful friend. Thank you so much for
jumping on the pod and to you the listener, go
out and see the bike riders. Damon's incredible God, Damon Harriman,
(02:16):
I'm so pumped to have you here.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
I just told you before we hit record, I get
so nerdy and I nerd out over not just the
guest but the process. And you have had such a
wonderful career to deep dive. So when a friend of
mine connected me to to jump on the pod. I
was living in my little apartment in Byron Bay and
(02:44):
we have a frame poster on the wall of Once
Upon a Time in Hollywood, and I was like, this
has got to be a good sign, right, And then
when you said yes to this podcast, I looked out
my apartment window here where I live in LA and
they just change ed the movie poster to the Bike Rider.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So I feel like this all feels quite set to be.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
So You've had such an incredible career both here in
America and in Australia.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
But is it true you started like eight I did?
Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yeah, Yeah, I was living.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
I was born in Adelaide in Australia, lived in Alice
Springs for about five years. And while we were in
Alice Springs, I did these radio commercials with my dad.
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Just threw someone he knew at the radio station.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
And my dad sort of got this idea based on
those commercials and just the kind of play acting I
used to do in front of the family, pretending to
be characters and things, that maybe I could be an actor.
And so he decided to take it upon himself to
write a letter to the only film director he could
think of which was Peter Weir, and Peter Weir at
(03:53):
the time was not as famous as he is now,
but he was still famous for him picnicing hanging rock
in the Last Wave and it was a sort of
a pretty bold thing to do.
Speaker 3 (04:01):
But he wrote to him.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Peter we amazingly wrote back, I still have the letter
and said, yeah, if you're going back to Adelaide, which
we were, go and see this agent. And I did
and she signed me. And look, I don't think that
was because I blew her socks off. I think I
was one of, you know, one of the few eight
year olds that was coming in to see it, you know,
and it was and I could I could string two
words together. And she took me on and yeah, did
(04:23):
a bunch of ads and then and then got into
some TV after that.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Is it true that you're not technically not technically but
like you haven't.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Done much traditional like drama training.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Yeah, I don't really know if I've done any that
I can think of. Really, it's amazing, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
But I mean it's you know, every every time you
do a job, it's it's kind of totally train you know,
there's no there's no.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Question that you pick up.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
You get better by working with good people, And that's happened,
you know, That's that's that's been like you know, a
mixing bowl that's had like new ingredients added to it
for years and years and years and stirred in and
and I think, you know, you take on all the
bits that feel like they're good and discard the ones
that don't, and hopefully end up with a form of
(05:09):
training that's just on the job training.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Really, yeah, by doing I feel like and I also
feel like we were talking about drama school before this,
Like what you do in a drama class often.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Isn't what you're going to be doing in a on.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
A TV set or on a film set, And like
that preparation time can be different, especially in the moment
as well, like you get to like love it, which
I feel like would be quite different to being we're
going to do script analysis on this one piece for the.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Next six weeks.
Speaker 4 (05:38):
Yeah, no, totally, yeah, I mean, who knows. Look, I
never I never went. I never auditioned for any of
those schools. And it was never because I thought I
didn't need to. It was really just because the main
reason was I was sort of already acting at that.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yeah, in my.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
I gave up for like five years over high school.
But then I took it up again and I started
sort of getting enough work that I my reasoning was, well,
I don't want to have three years where I can't
get a job. And at the moment, I'm working enough
that and doing jobs that I wouldn't want to miss
out of. Yeah, that I figured, well, I don't want
(06:14):
to have three years where I can't do that, And
so I just kind of kept going.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
I love I love it.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
So we talk about or you look at an actor's
career and you're like, Okay, well that could have been
a break that you've had all these moments, like was
the big Steel like a did it feel like a
big break through you?
Speaker 3 (06:33):
It definitely did. I mean that was so The Big
Steal for people that don't know, was a film released
in nineteen.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Nineteeny Mester, you would have been nineteen.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
It was nineteen when we shot it, and yeah, I
guess I was nineteen or twenty when it came out.
Ben Mendelssohn was in it, Claudia Carvion was in it
was it was, it was, it was you know, it
was a sort of a hit, but not like a
big It wasn't a big Murals wedding kind of Priscilla
type hit, but it was a semi hit, and it
certainly had a lot of love in the following years
(07:02):
as a kind of a VHSDVD rental.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
But that definitely felt like a break.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
I think partly partly because I just had never done
a feature film before, I'd done a bunch of TV.
But also, you know, Ben Mendilsson was sort of known
from the year My Voice broke, Claudia Carvin had done
High Tide. I was excited to be working with these
film actors, you know, and Malcolm had been such a
big film for Nadia Tas and David Parker, and I
couldn't believe I was going to work with them. So
(07:29):
it definitely felt like a big break. I mean, ultimately,
it didn't change a lot in my career. It's not
like I suddenly became I didn't suddenly have a film career,
for example, I don't. I think it was years before
I did another film. But you know, looking back, that's
one of the highlights for me.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
How because I feel like I've heard you say throughout
like that kind of like maybe around up to mid twenties,
you had another job as well, like that had nothing
to do with like an insurance.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
For me, yeah, yeah, from eighteen to twenty seven, I
was basically that I finished high school on a Friday
from the Monday after I was working at the insurance
company my dad worked at.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
And then we moved to Sydney.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Dad transferred with his job at that insurance company, and
I kept working at that insurance company as well. And
so in the same way that actors often will drive
taxis or work behind the bar or white tables, this
was that job for me. It was my in between job,
but it was it was my I was working there
way more than I was acting.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
You know.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
I would work there for months without an acting job,
and then maybe I would do a play for three months,
or you know, maybe I would do a guest role
on a TV show or you know, but I never
I didn't leave that job until I was twenty seven,
and that was only because it sort of it was
just I think it was a week after I turned
twenty seven I went, you know, what if I don't
choose to leave this office job, I reckon, I'm going
(08:52):
to be fifty and still here going. This is my
in between job when I'm not acting. But like I
sort of thought, I have to force myself to take
this a bit more seriously, even if financially it'll be
a bit harder.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
And that's what I did.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
It's so interesting not to get too hip in wo
wu on you, but that's your sat in return, and
so that's true. Yeah, when you start, you know, those
big life changes and life lessons kickins. I was like,
you were already in tune on like a spiritual esoteric level, right,
But I want to ask about house or wax because
I feel like that was a turning point view with
(09:27):
a with American careers.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so in a similar way to the
Big Steel.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
Actually, that was, you know, probably the next thing that
felt like it was a change, and it ultimately was
a huge change because it's what got me to come
over here properly. I had done a trip over here
a few years earlier, which was a naive attempt to
get work in America, not knowing anything about anything and
(09:55):
not having an agent and not having any auditions and
getting very depressed and leaving with my tail firmly between.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
A city I agree with a tough city.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
But it was.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Tough, even tougher then because there were just weren't the
number of Aussies that had been here kind of traveling
that road before us that allows you to then know
what to expect. And there had been big Aussie movie stars,
but I didn't know any of those people. There hadn't
really been just the working actors that are here now
and have been here in the last sort of fifteen
twenty years. But anyway, so yeah, House of Wax was
(10:27):
was a big change because it was an American What
I didn't realize when I came over that first time
was you sort of if you really want it to be,
you know, to make things a lot easier, you either
need an American credit, they know, or an Australian film
or something that's broken through here, and those two things,
you know, we can. I mean, there are a million
examples of those things that have happened, you know. I
(10:49):
didn't have either of those things on that first trip.
But on the second trip, which was about two thousand
and four or five, I had just done House of
Wax which was an American film shooting in Australia Paris, Hilton,
and I played you know what became a reasonably long
list of Southern rednecks from that point onwards, which was
the kind which was the other thing that changed a lot,
(11:10):
because I was really only playing lots of nerds with
glasses and nice guys and best friends in Australia. I
never got to play those sort of people on the fringes,
the bad guys that do the dirtier characters.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I didn't just I just couldn't get an audition for those.
And I got this audition, I got this.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Role, and then I came over here, got an agent,
and then then it was it really opened a door,
which was I mean, I am a little bit half
glass empty on this stuff.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
I never kind of think.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
I didn't sort of go, okay, great, I've got my
American credit. I'm going to go take America by storm.
I thought, there's no way I'm going to get cast
in America. I barely get cast in Australia. But I
also I had this term I needed to get some
regret insurance and I and then what I mean by
that is I didn't want to be in my rocking
(12:01):
chair at eighty five going why didn't I take advantage
of that opportunity just to see if something were to happen,
and if I if I'd done House of Wax and
then stayed in Australia, I think I always would have
been wondering, well, it's too late now, but why didn't
I try something then? When I had an American credit
and it did, it was worth doing because I did
get an agent. It was a very slow process to
(12:24):
then start getting work and start getting decent jobs, but
then when it happened, it sort of changed everything.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
It's funny that you meant well, first of all, I
feel you on there no regrets thing. That's my whole
driving force because Australia is awesome and it's so easy
Australia in comparison to here on many different levels. But
like being here and just knowing that you're giving it
a red hot crack. There's just there are so many
(12:52):
opportunities here if you want it, if you have the
someone told me acting as here is.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
A resilience game.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, it's true.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
It kind of feels like that.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
But I love that you brought up the Southern because
I was like, as I said, research and I was like,
hang on, there's a lot of Southern dialect, like Dewey. Yes,
Justified was that because that became like what you cast
in the pilot, and that was kind of like you
might just be in the pilot.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Yes, yeah, yeah, it was. It was a character that
was in the pilot. So yeah, I did it.
Speaker 4 (13:21):
I did a bunch of guest roles here and there,
which I was blown away by just getting any job
at all. I couldn't believe I was working in America really,
And then this audition came along for Justified, which was
a character in a pilot. Yeah, and I did that
and it was super fun, and then the show got
picked up, and then yeah, the character just sort of
ended up getting They would call up every few months
(13:42):
or years or whatever it was, and I think I
did twenty five episodes or something over six years. But
they would say, hey, we're thinking of putting Dewey back
in it. Do you do You're available? I was always
I always made sure I was available.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
Why I loved that role.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
So much, and that was, if you know, if the
Big Steel and House of Wax were too kind of
moments that change things. I think Justified was the next
one because it was a cool enough show and a
cool enough role, and I was in it enough to
actually then open a few more doors, because it was
something to hold on to and say, look, this is
(14:16):
a thing he's done, you know, and that did that
That did open some doors to things like doing the
Clinice would film j Edgar, or to doing a guest
role in Breaking Bad. These are things that I think
were helped by the fact that I'd already done Justified and.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Such a fun like character like sit.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
In like I mean, so much fun. Like you know,
whenever a new script would come, I.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
Would just be like like rushing to the pages that
do he was under, see what absurd situation he'd get
into and what funny lines I got to site so
good and they would they really wrote it, The writers
were so good. But it was that thing too of like,
you know, the version of him in the pilot is
a lot more of a bland you know, he's not
sort of fully for not really fully fleshed out, either by.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
The writers or by me. At that point. It's a
character we don't really know much about.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
And then there's a nice back and forth that happens
between the actor and the writer writers when something's ongoing,
where they see what you're doing and then you see
what they're writing and you kind of work together to
form something that really becomes this guy. And then I
think by probably season three or something, you kind of.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Have the character.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Oh I love this and ps, I want to apologize
because my brain is like a pinball machine and so
you'll see me ask questions you might, but that's not
in the same timeline, Laura. But I have to ask
you about because as soon as you said yes to
this pod, I started watching Mister in Between, right, and
I like, and you know, it's.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
A great show.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Ah, but there's like montages on YouTube of the relationship
of Freddy. You play Freddie right, Freddy and Ray Oh
really and like to like romance music in the backgrounds
very very sweet on YouTube. But it was such fun
but also like heartwarming at moment, Like it was a
really incredible show to watch. But the character once again
(16:04):
that you got to play like Freddy was like you know,
late and complex, but also like there was a love
and kind of like a bit messed up as well,
but there was like a lovableness.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
Do you know what You've actually I've never thought about this,
but there's a weird similarity between Dewey and and Freddy
that you've just made me realize, which is sort of
like the hapless kind of friend enemy whatever love hate
relationship with the main guy, which is like Raylan and
Dewey and Justified and ray and Freddy in Mystery Between
(16:39):
who is kind of a pathetic version of a bad guy.
You know, they sort of want to be more of
a bad guy, but they're a bit hapless.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Yeah. I never really thought about.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
That because I wrote down here that you were a
lovable baddie, like as the like the audience were kind
of like, oh no, what's what's going to Like, what's.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
Freddy going to get up to this episode?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
You kind of like as the audience were kind of
like rooting for you, you know what I mean, because
like nothing ever kind.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Of went your way.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
There's a funny line where like I think Race is
to Freddy like you've been miserule for twenty years.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
You got to change something, you.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Know, because his character was always like having winge about something.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Essentially Yeah, yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
It looked like such a fun character that was so
much fun.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
Oh, I mean very similar as well in the sense
that you know, excited to read any new script. You
know that show was extraordinary, you know, because you know
Scott Ryan, who plays Ray, not only brilliant in the role,
but wrote every single episode. The Edgerton brilliantly directed every
single episode.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Those two were.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
The ingredients that made that show so special. And I
don't think any of us when we started it had
any idea how good it was going to be.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And yeah, that's that's massive highlight for me totally.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
I have to ask, because you've also played some really
darker like The nighting like heavier characters, did they feel
a little bit when you first see like you get
sent the sides and you're like, whoa like, does that
feel at all confronting that first moment when you see
something that's quite sits in a bit more darkness, or certainly.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
With something like The Nightingale, like it doesn't really get
much darker. Yeah, you know, people often bring up the
Charles Manson things, so how that must have been full
on to play him.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
But the scenes weren't full of the scenes weren't dark.
The scenes in The.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Nightingale are about as dark as they get, you know,
So yeah, yeah, it's a it's a that's a full
on thing, and you know it, it's sort of a
testament to the the cast and crew of that film
that there was some sort of love on set around
all these horrible scenes that we had to shoot that
kind of made us get you know, helped us get
(18:48):
through that.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
But it was it wasn't. Yeah, that wasn't a fun
film to shoot. A lot of the time. It was grueling.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I've heard people say when it's a heavier set, like
the tented is heavier, there's often lightness off, like when
you're not filming and you're not rolling.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
And you know, like ashling friend Josie and Sam Klaflin
are the leads in that we were. They are just
the loveliest people, and we had the most so many
laughs off set, you know, and but yeah, you sort
of had to yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Like neutral, yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
I obviously can't interview without asking about Charles Manson. I
love that there's so many moments I've heard you share
about it.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
I love that you'd already been.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Cast in mind Hunter and then the audition for Once
upon a Time in Hollywood came through and you're like, well,
I'm already cast in mind As if they're going to
want me to play the same character. Sides get fedexed
over to you, right for that audition, right.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
Yeah, I forgot about that, that's right. They wouldn't even
email them, that's.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Right, because it was leaked from Hateful Light or something.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
I think Quentin Tarantina was very understandably guarded about his
script getting out because Hate for Late had been leaked,
so there was no digital version of the of the script,
and they were FedEx from the audition pages were FedEx
from America.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Were you in Australia.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
I was in Australia, really, yeah, I was in Australia.
And I remember thinking, and the character wasn't even called
Charles or Charlie or anything. It was called I think
it was called shaggy guy or something. A shaggy guy
appears on the and you knew exactly who it was.
And yeah, I remember thinking, look, there's no way I'm
not going to put down an audition for that in Tarantino.
(20:34):
But there's also no way I'm going to get this
because I'm already playing him in mind Hunter. And at
that point, I think it was about five months into
the the you know, very long makeup sort of sessions
with the makeup artist Kazu, who did.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
An extraordinary Yeah, so there was there was no Yeah,
there was no question about but I thought, but it was.
It was.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
It was bizarre because I'd spent, without question, the most
time I've ever researched any character was on watching and
listening to and reading about Charles Manson for mind Hunter.
By the time I got the audition for Charles Manson
in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, it.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Was like I couldn't have been more ready.
Speaker 4 (21:14):
And the only difference really was that he was He
was like eleven years younger in the movie, and you know,
he did sound a bit different. His voice was a
little lighter, and he was also just in general more
sort of like a playful court jester y, kind of
like little impish. Like in prison, he's very dark, gruff
and furious, you know, before he went to prison, he's
(21:38):
kind of had a lightness to him. So that was
one little thing that I could inject into it. But
other than that, it was like it was sort of
what I'd already been doing. It was extraordinary. And then
I flew to America to shoot mind Hunter, and the
day after the first day I got here was like
a final makeup fitting for mind Hunter.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
The next day I found.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
And that I got Once upon a time in Hollywood,
how I was just like, this is this is too bizarre.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I've been able to see the deleted scenes that you've done,
because you did like a lot more filming than what
we actually see.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Well, yeah, I mean whatever the scene, it's the scenes
in the movie, and then the couple that you've seen. Yeah,
there's one particular one which is a lot more substantial
than what's in the film, which is on the deleted scene.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
Yeah, and also seeing that court Jester kind of like
playing with Brad Pitt's character as well when he's on
the roof and.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
You're like, it must have been so much and it's
so interesting.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
The way in interviews you talk about the difference between
the two is I'm a big mind Hunter fan, like
from the score to the way it's written to like,
and also like as one of my textbooks for one
of one of the drama schools I went to, they
made us read mind Hunter to understand human behavior through
a different lens. But it was so fascinating watching both
(22:51):
of your because to me, they feel like you can
feel like there's a lightness to that first one, that
youth and also like he was an aspiring rocks, like
he want to be a rock star.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
I mean I feel a lot of people feel that
had he had the success that he wanted, then those
murders never would have happened, because I think a big
part of why he did that and shows that house
is because Terry Melcher, the producer, used to live there.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
The music producer used to.
Speaker 4 (23:19):
Live there and had promised him an audition that sort
of never happened. I can't remember it happened, and then
he turned him down or whatever, but he didn't get
a recording contact, and he was kind of he lost
face amongst his group, and he was embarrassed. I think
that was kind of a form of revenge.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
So there's a I got sent a little meme about
the cast that they had for the ranch. All the
casts from that ranch was like Austin Butler, Sydney Sweeney,
like all people.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Yeah, all people that have like popped since true.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
Actually, yeah, it's fascinating to Yeah, look, I just love
the fact, like I love the fact that you wanted
to play both in it with two incredible directors that
are kind of like always going to go down in
the history books. Like what a pinch yourself kind of moment.
And I've heard you say been on a Quintin set
is like it's almost like going back to just like
(24:13):
people having fun and doing a little short together kind.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Of feels like that.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
It didn't feel other than looking around and seeing you know,
Brad Pitt and Margot, Robbie and whatever walking around and
Quentin Tarantino, which were like, oh no, this is a
big Hollywood movie.
Speaker 3 (24:29):
It didn't.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
It felt like time was of no issue. Everyone was
very casual, everyone was very relaxed, and.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
It did feel a bit like being on a short
film with Hacko. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Yeah, that's like pretty special.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Oh you know, I still can't believe we've got to
do it. You know, I would never in a million
years have imagined.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
When I first came over here, you know, I just thought,
could I ever get at one episode of Guest TV
over here?
Speaker 3 (24:56):
That was like is that even possible?
Speaker 2 (24:58):
You know?
Speaker 4 (24:59):
And then so all the all the stuff, the other
stuff has been kind of cream on top, and that's
just like the cherry on top of the cream.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Yeah, that's so interesting. I have to ask you, because
I think I told you before we started this that
I watched you speak to a room of actors and
you so beautifully describe because I think a lot of
Aussie's come over here in one of from one of
two ways. One is like, yeah, they've got that Aussie
project or credit behind them that they know has got
(25:26):
like the beautiful like Chopper Eric Banner story or you know.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
Like there's something, Yeah there's Russell Crowe, but this just
goes on and on.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
But like even for me, I've got a lot of
mates that just come over on an esther or like
a tourist fees and they're like, oh, I'm gonna make it,
and they're gone within six weeks, like just burnt through cash,
lived a large life for six weeks and then they're
gone and that doesn't happen again. And then you've got
the people that kind of like lock in, give it
a red hot crack for like years at a time,
(25:58):
end up doing a lot of sigh'd hustle kind of
jobs to survive because Ala is a very expensive city.
And then there's you that kind of does this half
half kind of like split you kind of like do
it do Australian time, do American time, And it sounds
like you.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Just follow the work. That's how it looks from the outside.
Is that true?
Speaker 4 (26:17):
Certainly now that's pretty much how it goes. At the start,
it was just, oh, I better go and put in
some time in America like I would do. Basically, Initially,
I just thought, well, I'm not going to move there
to live because A I like my life in Australia.
B I work in Australia enough to not want to
disappear from their minds, I guess, be out of the loop.
(26:39):
So I would sort of choose these three months trips,
and I tended to do the first number a few years.
I tended to do like two three month trips a year.
So I just sort of pick a three month period
like I do, like January, February, March, and then September, October,
November or something like that, and then sometimes work would
happen outside those in either place and that would govern
(27:00):
what I did. But that tended to be what I
did just to start, Yeah, I guess, because I also
didn't want to be I did see those people who'd
moved here and were starting to get a bit disheartened
because it had been two years now and nothing had happened,
and they were just working at a bar, and they
just sort of weren't really an actor anymore. They're just
an Australian working at a bar in America. And I'm like,
(27:22):
I don't want to do that, and I don't want
to just bleed cash, whereas I could save cash back
home and then go even if I come here and
spend three months and spend it all, spend all my
money and you know, spend a chunk of money and
nothing happens at least it's only been three months. And
as it was getting to the end of the three months,
I'd be like, oh, I'm excited, I'm going home soon.
(27:42):
And then as it was approaching my next trip over here,
I'd be like, I'm excited, I'm going back to a lesson.
You know, nothing ever felt too overwhelming or depressing, and
it's very easy for things to get overwhelming and depressing here.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Yeah, so, yeah, you're right. Not many people do it
that way.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Maybe I was just sort of fortunate enough to be
able to do it that way, but I think it's
definitly I'm glad I did. I'm really glad I did.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
And now it tends to be more around where the
work is.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
You know, yeah, I like that. I like that mentality.
Whenever I land here. We were talking about beautiful Anthey
Lapalia before this. He always goes buckle in, Lula buckle in.
He's like that QF flight every night, is there waiting
for you if you need to go home, and he's
like and just don't.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
He's like, he's like, stuff it out.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
But that is also like he came at seventeen one
hundred bucks in his back pocket, you know, like did
that was a very different time And.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah, well he's one of the exceptions.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
He's one of the people who didn't come with an
Australian big movie or an American credit. They knew he
just started and was awesome and they loved him and
he's you know, and that and that does happen. Then again,
he was seventeen. If he was thirty seven would have
been a lot harder.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
So in it's just so I'm so fascinating in everyone's journey.
I loved when you did this chat to the acting school.
So you talked about having heat on you round so just.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
To just to clarify not having heat on me, because
heat on people in general, I don't know if I've
ever quite had a heat You talked about how much
heat there was and how you're.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
Just smoking smoking with heat.
Speaker 4 (29:18):
No, I think talk about you the general you having
a heat on you. To have heat on you as
an actor here makes a massive difference.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
I mean, like that's never happened to me here, but
I've had you know, there are degrees of it, you know,
like you know, if like using one of those examples
like Tony Coleetda Murel's wedding would have had a huge
amount of heat on her the second that America discovered
that foudition for.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
That didn't I did, actually, yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
Yeah, I auditioned for a role that Gould made of
mind Matt Day ended up getting and yeah, and he
was brilliant. I mean, lots of lots of things I've
auditioned for that I didn't get over the years.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
There was something as Lemon. I feel like as well, my.
Speaker 4 (30:02):
Auditioned for Yeah, audition for Gatsby. Yeah, I think Jason
the Royal Jason Clark also brilliantly. I mean, it's it's
good when you audition for something and then see the
person do and go oh, no, they were really good
that they should have got that role. It sucks when
you audition and watch and go, I know.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
But so what I mean around the heat thing is,
and the only reason why I'm asking about it is
because I've heard actors talk about if you work hard enough,
eventually you're probably going to.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Get an opportunity.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
But then you have to choose to be ready for
that opportunity and be find the momentum off the back
of it, which is the same idea about having like, say,
for example, doing Justified and then cut to you at
a premiere of Hateful Eight in Sydney, and then Quinton
was a fan of your and you had no idea.
Speaker 4 (30:54):
Well, well basically what happened, Well, he's a fan of Justified.
He's a big fan of Justified. And I was at
the premiere of Hateful Eight. Quentin bizarrely, with Samuel L. Jackson,
sat in and watched the whole movie with the audience,
which was so quite rare.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
Is that rare for them to say, yeah.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
I feel like it is when they've seen it so
many times, especially when it's the Sydney premiere. It's not
the premiere, you know. I thought that was really cool. Anyway,
I knew that. I mean Walton Goggins from Justified. I'd
worked with a lot on Justified and he was in
the Hape forl Eate and I emailed him and said, hey,
I'm going to go see your film tomorrow, and he said,
say hi to Quentin from me if you see him there.
(31:32):
I wish I could be there, and I was like, well,
that's not going to happen. I'm not going to run
into Quentin. The movie ends, I'm walking up the steps
of the cinema and I look to my left and
there's a giant man and it's Quentin Tarantino. I'm like,
oh my god, I'm walking up the steps Tarantino and
I thought, okay, well, Walton said to say hi, I
better say hi. I was like, hey, that the congrats.
The movie was awesome. He's like, oh, thank you so much,
(31:53):
thank you so much. I was like, by the way
Walton Goggin said to say hi, I'm a friend a
friend of his, and he went on, well, thank you,
thank you. And then I suddenly saw that he recognized
me from Justifying, and he.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Went, oh my god, oh my god, you're Dewey Crow.
I can't believe you're doing And now I was just
like stunned that he knew the name of my character.
Speaker 4 (32:13):
He grabbed my hand and pulled me back down the
cinema back to where Samuel L.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Jackson was sitting and.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Said Sam Sam Sam, look, look it's do we crow
Because Samuel Jackson apparently also who loves Justified and so
he's like, oh my god, do he croach?
Speaker 3 (32:29):
I was like so weird, like this is this is surreal.
And then then Samuel Jackson pulls at his Camera's like,
we got to get a photo for Walton. I'm like, yeah, yeah,
we do, go to get a for Walton. I'll be
making sure I get that photo off Walton. And then yeah,
and then the.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
Next day in my email, I get a photograph from
Walton of me with Quentin Tarantino when Samuel L.
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Jackson was pretty funny.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
How good? How good? That's an incredible story. I have
to ask about the Bike Riders because it's by the
time it's about to be released here in America as
we record this, but by the time this comes out,
it will be out in America and will have just
been released in Australia. And first of all. It looks incredible.
(33:17):
I've seen the trailer. I've said, there's all this behind
the scenes stuff and great interviews with Jeff have come
out now, and so it's so much fun. There's some
fun behind the scenes stuff of you in fight scenes,
getting your makeup retouched and all this, like all these
stuff's slowly coming out on YouTube. But so it's basically
Midwest bike It became a biker's gang, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
It's it's based on a real biker gang. It was
really like a biker club. Yeah, you know, it's sort
of like when people got together because they appreciated motorbikes
and riding together. It was before they had long hair,
and it was before that was sort of necessarily crime involved,
which doesn't happen in every biker club, but that's sort
(34:02):
of kind of what biker clubs, some biker clubs became
renowned for. So it's kind of starts in the mid sixties.
It's based on this book of photographs by a guy
called Danny Lyon who went and spent you know, a
lot of months living with this biker gang and taking
photographs of them, and then this book came out of
(34:23):
these beautiful black and white photographs of the Gang. Jeff Nichols,
the writer director, found that book years ago and saw
something in it that he thought would make a great movie.
So he kind of took the actual characters that we
see and read about in this photo book and wrote
a script about them. And yeah, and it's incredible cast
(34:44):
another sort of pinch me moment to be working with
these people.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
So there's a beautiful moment in an interview he's done
recently where he mentions you, which is so sweet. He says,
I could point the camera in any direction and there
was always somebody doing something interesting, and he brings your
name up, and he brings a few other actors up,
and I was like, how sweet is that to hear?
Speaker 4 (35:08):
That's so nice to hear. Yeah, that's that makes me
feel very nice. Like Jeff Nichols is the quintessential actors
director there is. You know, there is no one you
would rather work with on a film set than him
in terms of how he deals with the actors. He's
just such a beautiful gentleman, so so intelligent, so kind,
(35:31):
and you know, one of the really the last sort
of filmmakers of that kind is almost like a filmmaker
from the seventies, you know, making these smaller quality dramas,
which is sort of not so much of a genre
anymore in the way it used to be.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
He shoots on film, too, doesn't He does.
Speaker 3 (35:48):
Shoot on film, which is again very very rare these days.
Speaker 4 (35:54):
And you know, I think that's why I think, you know,
his reputation is why he's able to pull together casts
like you know, Austin Butler and Tom Hardy, Gody Kmer
and Michael Shannon and Norman Readers and all these incredible people,
and then and then people like me get to get
to somehow squeeze in there as well, and and just
(36:15):
look around trying to pretend that you're you're part of
the cool gang.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
It looks like in the trailer you're like Tom Hardy's
right hand man.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah, that's pretty much.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
That's how fun I mean to be around. Great.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
It's like, did you because Jeff also talks about Tom.
He says, it's like there's something vibrating, like a millimeter
under his skin, like there's never nothing going on there,
whether he's having a drag of a city or you know,
he said, it's just there's always something to capture with him.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Could you feel that.
Speaker 5 (36:46):
Yeah, he he he does have that thing, that next factor,
that screen presence thing that you can't quite put your
finger on, and you do, you do feel it like
you do feel it.
Speaker 4 (37:00):
You feel it around him as a person. And by
the way, he was lovely to be around, really friendly,
chatty guy, walked on set every day and hugged everybody
and talked about his family and I really really liked him.
But yeah, no, I mean, he just he does have
a certain electricity. And then you know, as soon as
the camera's rolling, you're looking at a face that is
(37:23):
both doing nothing and doing everything all at once, you know,
which I think is true. Have a lot of great actors,
and he's certainly one of them.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
I have to ask, this is how nerdy I get
when I do like research and people. Apparently all the
bikes were literally from the fifties and sixties, but that
meant they're quite a lot harder to ride, like from
a brakes perspective and a throttle perspective. Was that was,
did you have to learn how to ride this style
of a bike?
Speaker 3 (37:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (37:49):
Yeah, and mine mine was particularly unusual because apparently back
then they hadn't decided as an industry which side the
the foot brake should go on versus the foot clutch
if i'm remember, or the gears. I've even't ridden a
bike for a while now, but something to do with
(38:10):
the clutch, the brake, the gears. They hadn't kind of
all come to a consensus on where they should be
and which side they should be. On modern bikes, they're
all the same, and we were, we were learning on
modern bikes. So I do remember them saying, look, just
so you know whatever your foot your feet are doing,
well you're learning, it's going to be the exact opposite
(38:32):
when you get on the bike you're riding.
Speaker 3 (38:34):
And I was just like, oh, this is going to
be a disaster. But it was. It was fine. I
could say it's just like riding a bike. No, it was.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
It was it was you know, there was a second
there where you're like, okay, you know, it's like that
thing of tapping your head and what is that thing
when you tap ahead and you're starting at the same
tread coming at the same time, You're like, okay, I
really have to concentrate to make sure I can do this.
But yeah, and you know I had to get my bike,
my motorbike license for the It was kind of call.
(39:04):
So my license now has a motorbike permission thing on it.
I haven't ridden a bike since then, and yeah, I
probably want to go into an isolated car park before
I do that again, because it's been a while now.
But it was a lot of fun, exciting.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
How exciting I imagine like a biker movie set in
the sixties, Like everyone in Hollywood that's a guy is
going to be like knocking on the door to be
cast in a movie like this, Like it already screams
like yes, like amazing to be working with this team,
but also like this is a cool kind of movie,
(39:38):
like this is a kind of like Sons of Anarchy
was massive, Like I feel like this is what was
the process, like auditioning and like did you get a
call or.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
I have to totally give a shout out to Joel Edgerton,
amazing Australian actor and friend who had worked with Jeff
Nichols a couple of times. And I think an audition
had come through for a role in this through my
American agent and because Joel had worked with him, I
(40:11):
mentioned that to John, you know, this is.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
What actors do.
Speaker 4 (40:13):
They Hey, I'm about to audition for your buddy, feel
free to, you know, put in a word. And Joel's
done that for me a couple of times. He did
that with Barry Jenkins on the Underground Railroad as well,
and in both times Joel put in a word, I
ended up getting the role. So I'm incredibly thankful to
him because legend. Yeah, I mean, you know, it just
sort of it does count for something to have somebody
(40:37):
that you know. These directors get thousands of people in
front of them and they have to somehow differentiate between them,
and I imagine it's quite overwhelming at some point where
you where you're trying to decide, even if you narrow
it down to one hundred, how do you so?
Speaker 3 (40:54):
So having the point of difference.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
Of having someone say, hey, I know this person and
I can vouch for this person really really makes the difference.
And I have I have no idea if I ever
would have got either of those roles if Shoe hadn't
made that call. So I'm super appreciative to him for that.
But yeah, yeah, he is a legend. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
So I have to ask, I've heard you say you
don't mark up your script that much?
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Is that true?
Speaker 4 (41:16):
Not at all, really, not at all, not at all
unless the only time I would mark it up would
be if we do a rehearsal and there are notes
to take on based on what happened in that rehearsal,
so I remember them when we shoot it that this
is what we talked about on that line or this
is where I'm moving. But I don't, yeah, because I
think I and of course you know what, Yeah, I
(41:39):
work with actors who've gone through acting school, and they
nearly all have scripts that are covered in INC because
I guess you learn to But if you don't learn
to do that, I wouldn't know what to write, you know, No,
my scripts are completely blank.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
I mean, it makes sense in a way why it
kind of works for you, because there's a sense like
as awesome as training can be, like it as someone
that's been in it for a while, like you get
taught to like hold on so tight to the work
and the training, and then as a result, you lose
freedom sometimes and you lose presence, and you lose just
like honoring the writing and being.
Speaker 1 (42:16):
In the moment with another person.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
And so I can see how it's been such a
gift for you to be like, well, I'm just going
to go in like obviously line ready, but like also
just like open to the scene and connecting with your
scene partner.
Speaker 4 (42:31):
Yeah, I guess I guess that's if you haven't study acting.
I guess I guess it ultimately becomes an instinctial thing.
And so you know, a lot of the things that
I'm sure people write down on their script are things
I've thought about anyway, but I I, yeah, I'm thinking
about them as I'm going through the script in my
head or going through it on the page, rather than putting.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
In, isn't it Anthony Hopkins, that's just like read read,
like go over the script a certain amount of times
and then it's with you.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
That's right, I think, Key, Yeah, doesn't he read the
script an insane amount of times.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
As opposed to there's a beat here, I'm going to
do this action on this line at this time.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Right, It's just like, but be so yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:11):
I think his thing is be so familiar with it
that you can do absolutely anything.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
It's you're so free.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Which it feels like that feels like more you're more
that school than say Daniel day Lewis.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
One might say, well, I don't know what's Daniel d
Lewis's meant. I mean, I know he gets into character
complete men. Yeah, he stays in character.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, But I mean I feel like,
you like the beauty of you playing like a Charles
Manson and having the technique that you will call it
the Damon technique sans.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
That you can no but it means that you can
go home and not be like I'm in the mindset
of a cult lead a serial killer.
Speaker 4 (43:49):
Yeah, I definitely don't have that thing of taking characters home,
which I think would be, you know, potentially awful depending
on who you were playing.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
Yeah, I tend to feel, you know, certainly if things
are going well, I feel like I am in the
character to a degree between action and cut, but after
that I'm just back to me.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
And same with dialect.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Like a lot of Australians will stay like they'll rock
up on, They'll wake up at like five I've heard
actors be like, Okay, I wake up at five am,
I go to the gym. I stay in dialect. If
I'm doing you know, I'm an American show. I'm in
dialect all day long. I don't break when we're at Crafty.
You know like, and I've heard you say yeah, and
I've heard you be like, well no, when they call action,
(44:33):
I'm on dialect and when they call cut, I'm back
to my But that's also a beautiful attribute to you.
And my dialect coach in Australia is like, that's where
you want to be. He's like, you want to be
able to like flick into it and then let.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
It go right. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (44:48):
Look, I think it's one of those whatever works for
you things, So I think I would. I think it's
partly because i'd feel a bit weird just staying in
an accent between because between takes, I am me, and
I guess I would feel weird. But that's not to
say if for some reason I felt that was the
only way I could keep an accent, I guess I
would do it. But I've never felt like I had
to stay in it in order to keep it, you
(45:11):
know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
You have so much fun with Southern dialects, by the way,
like every I'm like suther and again, yeah, I've.
Speaker 4 (45:18):
Done quite a few of those and they are a
lot of fun. I just had to do a Boston
one actually, which was a new one that I've never done.
Speaker 1 (45:24):
Boston's heart feel like it's trickier.
Speaker 4 (45:27):
It is tricky, and it's also got that weird thing
where there are some sounds that are almost Australian that
you know, park your car and half the yard kind
of thing where they they the ar is almost the
same as Australian.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
Do you do?
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Did you work with a dialect coach?
Speaker 4 (45:41):
What do you all?
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (45:42):
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean pretty much always unless it's
something just like I don't know this miniseries I did
back home called The Artful Dodger.
Speaker 3 (45:52):
Recently, that was like I love watching that, you know,
that was.
Speaker 4 (45:58):
Just like, well, he's he's breadis, but he's been living
in Australia for years and we don't really even know
what the accent was in Australia in eighteen fifty, so
that I didn't have a dialect coach because it was
just sort of you know, that didn't.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
Feel British is easy for Aussie's too, yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
It wasn't like a strict British anyway.
Speaker 4 (46:15):
And if I'm playing an American, I don't have a
dialect coach, you know, unless it's a new accent that
I haven't done, Like Boston, I wouldn't try and do
a Boston on my own because it's too new and
too different and there are too many sounds that I'm
not familiar.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yeah, oh so interesting.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Okay, So actors do listen to this, like young aspiring actors,
A lot of Aussie's do. For an Aussie that might
be have, you know, big stars in their eyes and
really want to make it here in America. Obviously, we've
talked about like how everybody has a different trajectory, and
I think it seems like one shoe doesn't fit all.
(46:52):
But is it a resilience game or is it a
like come over with the white reps, come over with
the right credits again of like it could be any
all or a bit of each.
Speaker 4 (47:04):
Yeah, there's definitely no one size fits all, unfortunately, and
I think at the top of the list is again
unfortunately timing and luck. You know, I think that there's
no recipe for how to do this. Look if you
there are some things that are close to a certainty,
and that is if you are a good looking twenty
(47:25):
year old who just played the lead brilliantly in an
Australian film that was a hit at sun Dance. Yeah,
you're going to be fine. Here, you're going to get
several agents and managers want to sign you, and you're
probably going to get an instant career. But that's a
very specific set of circumstances that you can't plan. You
can't even plan to have got that Australian film. You
have to have had that happen for you too, So again,
(47:48):
you know, so yeah, it's that there is an element
of resilience. I guess looking at my own situation, I
you know, when I came I came over for two
three month trips where absolutely nothing happened after House of Wax,
and I gave myself one more trip two. Yeah, but
(48:11):
you know, there's just as much chance that it would
have also not happened. It hadn't happened twice, so that
could have easily not happened again, and I wasn't coming back.
So you know, there's an argument therefore sticking it out
because you just don't know what's around the corner. At
the same time, I also am a realist and I
would say, yeah, but I wouldn't have stuck it out
for ten trips with nothing happening, because I would be like, Okay, damon,
(48:34):
take the hint like they do not like you, like
you're not going to work here. I think, yeah, having
a healthy sense of you know, drive, but also a
healthy sense of being realistic. You know, you don't want
to come here and get broke and depressed.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Yeah, don't you know.
Speaker 4 (48:59):
At the same time, if you come here and and
and spend two weeks here and go, oh, nothing happened
stuff that I'm never coming back, that's probably underselling yourself
a little bit. I think, you know, I was pretty
I came here with just enough self doubt, like I
was lot of one of those actors who oscillates between
thinking I can do anything and thinking I can't do anything, and.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
Which I'm sure is familiar to a lot of actors.
Speaker 4 (49:27):
And I think, you know, but but most of the time,
I'm sort of somewhere in the middle of those two things.
And I think that gives you the ability to go Okay.
I know, I know I can do this job enough
because I've I've done it enough so far.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
And and and and and and.
Speaker 4 (49:46):
Been hir at enough times that I can't be truly awful.
I can't be as awful as I think I am sometimes,
so I guess it's worth sticking out to a degree
and seeing what happens. But also yeah, not not not
driving yourself in at the ground and thinking, come on,
come on, I'm you know, why isn't anyone hiring me.
I was realistic when I came here after House of Wax,
(50:08):
partly because I was thirty five years old. I didn't
look like Chris Hemsworth. I didn't have I had, you know,
an American credit, but I didn't have a huge credit
behind me. So I knew that there was a small
door had opened, a small crack in the door had opened,
but it wasn't wide open, and I didn't ever expect
it was. I thought it could have easily just slam shut,
(50:29):
and I would have been fine with that too. You know,
everything that happened to me over here was a surprise.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
You know. It never felt like.
Speaker 4 (50:37):
Okay, yeah, this is what I'm due and this is
what I expect. What happened for me, it was always
like sorry, what Like I really couldn't believe it.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
And I'm glad that.
Speaker 4 (50:47):
I just think from a psychological perspective that that was helpful,
because everything good that happened was a pleasant surprise. Everything
that didn't happen was Yeah, I didn't think what anyway,
you know, so I think that helped.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
Yeah, it's so funny.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
I've been acting schools where they say this is your Olympics,
nothing else matters. And because like I'm a bit more,
I've got a real business ye kind of brain, I'm like, no,
I think it's effing great to yet chase this dream,
but I'm all for like having things that are going
to facilitate and fuel that dream so that you've got
like enough time to like sit in it long enough
(51:24):
that you can give yourself chances for those lucky breaks.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
That's kind of my theory on it.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
But I love that you say, like take the plunge,
but also be realistic, Like it's it's one thing to
kind of like give it a crack and then run
home and go, oh no that was my one and downe,
you know, like, but it's another thing to be like, Okay,
well it sounds like you're a good combo, is what
I'm trying to say. Of, like, let's chase this dream.
(51:50):
I'm going to give it a red hot crack, like
I'm gonna give it a shake. Yeah, but also if it
doesn't work, out, I'm going to be okay, knowing I
gave it a red. I stuck at it long enough
to give it that.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
That's right.
Speaker 4 (52:01):
As I said earlier, I didn't want to be in
later life going, did I? I don't think I tried.
I don't think I gave that enough of a crack.
And by that third trip, where nothing had happened and
I didn't expect it was going to happen, I felt like, No,
you made three three month trips there, you didn't even
get a call back. That's enough proof that nothing was
going to happen. That's not to say that you weren't
(52:22):
good enough. It might be you weren't good enough, or
it just just like luck didn't go your way that day.
But like you know, at least you gave it a shot.
And yeah, I think that, you know, just having a
healthy sense of what is how you know, what are
you capable of? Are you genuinely do you have the
(52:43):
goods to actually work there for a start? That's one thing,
but then that doesn't just just be aware that that
doesn't necessarily mean you're going to work there. You know,
it is a lottery to some degree, you know there
are you know I offered to have this thought that
you know, the best actor in the world is probably
working behind the bar in some distant pub in Ireland
(53:07):
and we're never going to know about them, like they
were just were never never go because they you know,
they just didn't do the things and have the things
fall into place that we're required for anyone to take notice.
You know, being a good actor is only halfway there.
Having people care and take notice that you are a
good actor is the hard part.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
Yeah, Well, I always say to people there's a whole
business side to it as well. It's not just the art,
and it's like having the right agent and if you've
got like a show coming out, is their publicity link
to that? Like there is like a business side to
it as well that a lot of people like, No,
I just want to honor the craft and the art,
which is awesome, But I always think if you almost
need in if you are going to go to Axel,
(53:47):
I'm like, someone needs to teach the business of it,
because there is a like business e side, especially over
here because you've got managers, agents, lawyers or taking little
cuts as well, Like very different to back in Australia,
like it feels like a whole different skill set to
understand yourself as well.
Speaker 1 (54:04):
Like I find it fascinate.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
I don't know, I could talk about this, I could
nerd out over this stuff all day long. I have
to you've met, You've already kind of like touched on this.
But like, so you do go for something like I know,
the Murial's wedding and the Baslom and Gatsby moments. How
do you handle that rejection when you're like, I did
want that one.
Speaker 4 (54:24):
I think it depends on how emotionally you invested you
are and how much you really want something. I remember,
I think still to this day. The most pain I
felt from not getting a role was in an Australian
series called The Henderson Kids Too. When I was a kid,
I was a big fan of The Henderson Kids, a
(54:45):
huge crush on the Dean Ghana, and I got an
audition for The Henderson Kids Too. I think I was
fifteen or something and I wanted it so bad and
I remember when I got the call that I didn't
get it, I actually cried. I don't think I've ever
cried not getting a roll before, but I was so devastated.
And look, there have been a few of those over
the years.
Speaker 3 (55:04):
I think.
Speaker 4 (55:07):
That, Yeah, the Mirror's Wedding one, I would have been
pretty upset about. The Gatsby one. I was pretty down
about because I think that had got down to only
a handful of people. Thankfully, I think the oldie you get,
the less it hurts. But other than that, I don't
think there's a way to cope with it. It is a
(55:27):
it's bad news, you know, it's like getting a call
that's you know you've built, especially if you really felt
like you were. Sometimes that's why it's best not to
get too close to something, you know. When I mean
a lot of actors I think feel this way, which is,
you know, I'd rather have not even had a shot
than hear it was between me and someone else, even
though obviously it's way better.
Speaker 3 (55:47):
To be down to the final too.
Speaker 4 (55:48):
That's a really cool thing, but it feels so much
worse because you because then you beat yourself up with
what could I have done differently? What could have been
the little thing that got me over the line?
Speaker 2 (55:59):
Yes, so fal On, that's saying that, like bronze middlists
are happier than silver medal totally.
Speaker 3 (56:05):
You know, Yes, it's exactly that.
Speaker 2 (56:07):
Yeah, you have been such a joy to interview. I
cannot wait.
Speaker 1 (56:13):
To see the bike riders.
Speaker 2 (56:14):
I think it's going to be amazing and I can't
wait to see what's next for you. And I hope
that Boston tape went really well and I hope that's
I know actors can't talk about the next projects, but
thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
You're wonderful.
Speaker 3 (56:28):
Oh, thanks a lot. I've had a bore. It's been really, really,
really fun.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
Thank you, my friend.
Speaker 2 (56:35):
That's a wrap on another episode of Fearlessly Failing. As always,
thank you to our guests, and let's continue the conversation
on Instagram.
Speaker 1 (56:46):
I'm at Yumo Rollerberry.
Speaker 2 (56:49):
This potty my word for podcast is available.
Speaker 1 (56:52):
On all streaming platforms.
Speaker 2 (56:54):
I'd love it if you could subscribe, rape and comment,
and of course spread the loves.
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