Anthem Magazine

Our enduring potential. Our relentless thirst in pursuit of mastery. Why do we push beyond our limits? Of course, humans are hardwired for growth and self-improvement. And, of course, the road to success is seldom a straight line. The road to lasting legacies—to transcending mortality and reverberating long after one’s time—is fraught with roadblocks, setbacks, and untold failures.

Sitting down for a conversation with 28-year-old Sam Corlett, potential and legacy are inescapable subjects where his latest acting projects also intersect. Excavating the Aussie’s life, no stone is left unturned. Soon, heartfelt accounts of familial tragedy and unbreakable optimism coalesce to give shape to, not only a man who’s continually evolving, but to the kind of man he has already become.

First on the docket is Territory, which marks Corlett’s return to Netflix after his successful run on Vikings: Valhalla. The Neo-western follows the Lawson family in the remote Outback. The proprietors of the world’s largest cattle station, their dynasty is in quick decline and left without a clear successor. Corlett portrays Marshall, the son and potential heir the clan must reel back in. 

Meanwhile, David Vincent Smith’s He Ain’t Heavy is a deeply affecting drama inspired by true events pulled from the filmmaker’s life. The story follows Jade (Leila George) whose life has been continually upended by her little brother Max’s (Corlett) descent into drug addiction. In a last-ditch effort, and unbeknownst to their mother, she takes Max hostage to force him into a state of sobriety.

He Ain’t Heavy opens in Australian cinemas on October 17. Territory hits Netflix on October 24.

How are you, Sam?

I’m really well, thanks. How are you?

I’m doing very well. It’s lovely to connect with you. This is what I’m waking up to today.

Whereabouts are you, by the way?

I’m in South Korea until the weekend. And you’re in Sydney right now?

I am, my friend. I’m just north of Sydney.

Is that permanent? Well, you’re an actor—you’ll always be semi-nomadic, I suppose.

A suitcase really is my home. I don’t really know where “home” is. The place I’m at right now, I bought it with my mum, for my mum. Whenever I’m home, I stay here. I’m in a small coastal town about an hour and a half north of Sydney. It’s a place called Terrigal. I’m looking out at the ocean right now. At the start of this year, I was in L.A. for three months for meetings and such. It was a beautiful time, but returning home, I could feel my peripheral vision coming back. I’m sure you can relate to that. You feel more at ease, I guess, and with that comes a little bit more creativity.

I feel most focused and at ease at home, for sure. Even doing this right now via a digital intermediary, I’m as present with you as I’ll ever be. There’s also a reason why I’m asking you about “home,” right? In your Esquire profile last year, you’d spoken about keeping a lot of your earthly possessions in a storage container on your dad’s property. It’s like you were blowing in the wind, going where work—or life, rather—takes you. That’s the way to live.

Yeah, a lot of it has been for work the last five years. But last year, I also wanted to travel for my own heart’s sake. I went to Indonesia and spent a fair bit of time there. That really filled the well. In L.A., I roadtripped to Austin. I went to New York. So I was doing things that excited my soul.

You travel for work and for your own heart’s sake, and you also stay true to your roots. Nowhere is this more apparent than in your involvement with Territory and He Ain’t Heavy—two very Australian projects. Were you actively searching for homeward-bound roles?

I was. There’s a rite of passage for Australian actors where you first set up your home base. Often, you work here before you cross the seas to, you know, wherever. I did a film called The Dry, which was a brief moment for me. Then I went straight into doing ten months in Vancouver on [Chilling Adventures of] Sabrina. Then I went straight into Vikings: Valhalla. So I didn’t feel like I’d honored my country’s stories yet and I really wanted to contribute to that. When I read the script for He Ain’t Heavy, that situation hit so close to home. I wanted to shine a light on how addiction falls on families because that happened to my own. And when Territory came along, it was the most gritty, grounded, and honest depiction of Australian culture I’d seen. It was pretty unapologetic. And seeing the people that would be involved, I knew it would be very collaborative.

Let’s unpack Territory together. I binged the show. Well, I never received the final episode.

It hasn’t been unlocked for me, either.

Now I don’t feel so left out.

[laughs] How did you find the series?

There were things about it that hit close to home for me, too. It’s universal storytelling. At the same time, it’s distinctly Australian. You can feel the heartbeat of Australia in it. The series kicks off with Anna Torv’s monologue about the land, juxtaposed to breathtaking shots of Aussie landscapes. It’s like a love letter. This is something I wonder about: anytime I speak to Aussie talent, their love of the land is unshakable. It feels inborn, do you know what I mean?

It’s a good question. Australia is a unique country. You can find so many different landscapes within Australia, whether it be the snow down at Derby or the incredible rainforests throughout Queensland’s coast or the desert up in the Northern Territory where we filmed the series.

You play Marshall “Marsh” Lawson. We’re immediately clued in that he’s a wildcard. He’s not a complete loose canon of a guy—he’s marching to the beat of his own drum, let’s say. He’s someone to be tamed, to be lassoed back home to keep Marianne Station and the family legacy alive. You seem to embody this free-spiritedness, too. Was he easy to understand?

He was pretty easy to understand. He very much represents the Australian culture as it is now: the youth’s rebellion against tradition. That, of course, expresses itself with charm and grit and wit and cheek from Marshall. I always start with characters’ childhoods. I thought about the moment that he lost his mother. I also thought about the archetypal father he would’ve been searching for, which he wasn’t finding in his biological father. Perhaps that was his uncle who died straight away [in the premiere episode]. So that was a big loss to him, which is why I think he felt the need to come back home. At the same time, I think he intuitively knew that he wasn’t gonna find a sense of healing or a sense of purpose on that station. Just like Prince Hal in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, he finds a sense of community and belonging and not wanting to take life so seriously amongst the rebels and outcasts of society. I think that was so refreshing for him to experience. That is, until things start to go awry with Rich [Marshall’s duplicitous best friend played by Sam Delich]. Then he has to come to terms with his sense of responsibility. I connected Marshall with The Fool card in Tarot decks. If you look at that image, he’s not really looking at where he’s going. He’s trusting that the land will rise beneath his feet. Similarly, Marshall was trusting where his feet would land and take him.

I did know that you like to start with characters’ childhoods. To echo one of your quotes back to you: “It’s always the first port of call.” I feel the same way with these talks. I’m curious about your most impressionable chapters. You’re from a suburb called Matcham?

You got it.

Did you have a happy upbringing?

It was beautiful. We had a very beautiful community around us. My mum had the travel bug so we got to travel a lot and see the world, too. She had such a zest for showing me, my older brother, and my younger sister life outside of what we knew in Australia. And my dad was a carpenter.

Is it true that you grew up in a house that was built by your dad?

It is.

That sounds incredibly idyllic and romantic, and it’s a completely alien concept to me.

His practicality was something that I very much admired, and a lot of things that were common sense to him weren’t common sense to many. [laughs] By that, I mean, being able to fix things and build things. The house was designed by my mum and dad. Apart from being a carpenter, my dad was also a business owner. He ran a shop fitting business, and I worked for him. Learning to be practical with my hands, learning to build stuff and seeing the finished products, was really special. We bought this little car for like five grand off of eBay when I was 17. It was a Mini Moke. That was my first car. If you have a Google of what a Mini Moke is, it’s like an open jeep, except lower to the ground. The intention with that was for both of us to strip it back and rebuild. But I didn’t have too much to do with the rebuild because I was entering my final school year. So I was just watching him as he slowly turned this rough looking car into something pristine and fun.

It’s so special whenever we get the chance to bond with parents through shared hobbies.

It’s definitely something I took for granted for a long time, thinking that everyone’s dad was like that. It’s pretty special to have. A lot of the furniture around me now, he’s built. He has worked very hard. He actually left school at 16 and became a jackaroo out on properties like you see on Territory. So there were a lot of stories I’d heard that influenced my performance. On the flip side of that, my mum battled cancer three times while I was growing up. With that came, you know, a certain level of fear. There were definitely difficult times of uncertainty. But that also filled us with gratitude for the lives we had, and probably amplified my mum’s encouragement for us to do what we love even more. And my dad never pulled us away from chasing anything we were interested in. Then there was my mum’s brother who was in and out of our lives. He had alcohol problems so she would keep a lot of that away from our family. Even though he wasn’t present so much, my uncle was always like a spiritual guide for me. I’ve never met my grandfather on that side, either, because of alcohol. So I wanted to end that pattern of addiction. I don’t even drink anymore.

I’m really glad that you’re broaching this tough subject. Territory and He Ain’t Heavy both explore addiction and trauma in their own ways, and how those things can imprison an entire family. About He Ain’t Heavy, you had previously said, “It dropped me into what felt like the most sincere connection I’d ever experienced to my late uncle.” That’s powerful stuff. Is it by sheer coincidence that you came upon these two projects with stark, overlapping themes?

Well, I think there aren’t many families addiction hasn’t affected.

It’s not so uncommon, I guess.

It really isn’t. But what is common is that, often, addiction is romanticized in film, and trauma is fetishized. I feel like these two project are very honest depictions. Michael Dorman, who played my father on Territory, and I had such an incredible relationship. We felt so safe with each other that we were able to go to the depths of ourselves and our hearts to really allow rage, anger, sorrow, and for any dynamic emotion that needed coming out to come out. And with He Ain’t Heavy, it was a very sacred set. You could really feel it. Our head of props would come and sage the place every morning and afternoon. I was in one location in that room the whole time so when “cut” was called, I’d just stay there. And if I needed to cry, I’d cry. It became a very cathartic experience.

He Ain’t Heavy in particular is a real plunge into darkness for you. Was that scary to do?

Yeah. But because of the thread connecting it to my real life, there was nothing I wasn’t willing to do to honor this character. There were lines in the script that I’d heard in my own life. The story was actually very much based on the director’s [David Vincent Smith] relationship to his brother.

I wondered about that because we begin with this title card: “This story is inspired by true events.” Naturally, you wonder to whom does this story belong? So it’s personal for David.

So personal. Leila [George] is David. He was often triggered during the day, you know? His family would visit the set and be in tears. He’s courageous. This is courageous filmmaking. I feel very honored to be part of it. And he has said that this is like the PG version of real events. I just really trusted his perspective. I knew that he was gonna do it honestly. And it was dark, so I needed my rituals. I started and ended each day with incense. There was a certain amount of water I would drink. I listened to two songs from my childhood that would open and close “the portal” for the day. Those were things I really needed to do, alongside the walking and fasting to lose the weight.

Movies ultimately belongs to all of us, right? It’s deeply personal for David, but this film belongs as much to you because you find your own meaning in it. It also belongs to the audience because they connect with it and see themselves in it. That’s what this is all about.

I completely agree with you. We just did a screening over in WA and there were mothers projecting their sons onto Max. When they saw me in real life, they started crying, hugging me. There was a gentleman who was now sober for four and a half years. He said he’d been going to NA twice a week, every week. He said watching this film felt like going to a meeting. He said he felt seen and validated, and it also helped him understand his partner’s experience. That just made me cry.

When you asked me what I thought about Territory, I told you it hit close to home for me. He Ain’t Heavy hit close to home as well because my dad is an alcoholic who ultimately ended up in hospice care. I want to share that with you because you’re being so open—this is a two-way street. I’ve always been cautioned by relatives to never drink because there’s genetics at play. You know. As you said, you don’t want alcoholism carrying on in your family line.

I appreciate you sharing that. I really appreciate you sharing your story because it’s not shared that often. People think they’re alone in it, but it’s actually so much more common than we think. I had my mates over on Saturday last week and they watched the first two episodes of Territory with me. These are mates I’ve known my whole life, but it wasn’t until that Saturday that we actually spoke vulnerably about our relationships to our fathers and our parents. That was really special to me. I definitely wanted to tap into that frustration of just wanting your dad to be dad and your parent to be your parent, particularly on Territory. Marshall just wants a stand-up dad. In the first episode, he grabs his dad and says, “You’re pathetic.” What he’s really saying underneath it all is, “I wish you were just a normal dad that I can fucking love, and it fucking rocks me that you aren’t.” Then his dad has a couple more goes and Marshall says, “If you wanna piss your life away, do it without me.” With that, I thought of the million times that he would’ve gone through that, you know? I thought of the million times he would’ve tried to get his dad back, before finally coming to accept that this is how he is. There’s always a part of you that wants your dad to be a dad. I also told you that I never met my grandfather on my mum’s side because of his alcohol problem. I could really feel that my mum went through some extreme highs and lows when I was a kid. I’m sure you’ve seen the light that exists within your dad—your true dad—get shrouded in characters that sometimes come out, that aren’t actually him. I think I recognized that early, so I was able to not take things personally when, you know, my mum’s anxiety intensified or she felt overwhelmed. So it’s the same thing with her and her father’s relationship. For him, with alcohol was rage, and it was physical. I never heard anything particularly good about him. Well, actually, I did sometimes hear that he was very protective and all. But he would lash out, and then cry and apologize.

It’s heavy.

It is. It’s a hard thing to deal with. And it’s part of life. My mum quotes the film, connecting my uncle, Chris, to Max: “He’s the easiest and the hardest to love.” I feel like that’s so on point.

It’s never one thing. It’s complex because people are complicated. I only had memories of my dad being a happy drunk as a kid until I was told otherwise after I’d grown up. So I was in the dark about his darkness. And once you get the full picture, your perception is shifted.

We’re so multifaceted. There are so many different facets to a person.

This is the kind of deep-impact experience we hope to have with anything we do in life, right? You’ve described He Ain’t Heavy as “a passion project” and “a labor of love.” In a perfect world, everything we do would be a passion project and a labor of love. It’s just not realistic.

Yeah. I think He Ain’t Heavy is all heart and soul. Those who see it will be profoundly moved. Territory is also heart and soul, but with a commercial aspect. It’s like a Venn diagram crossover. 

I didn’t immediately make the connection that you worked with a real-life mother and daughter duo in Greta Scacchi and Leila. That must’ve infused the experience with a singular spark. That’s authentic so there must be transference happening from camera to screen.

In regards to chemistry, Leila and I arrived in WA first. I was walking 20,000 to 30,000 steps a day trying to cut the weight, and she’d ride a bike next to me. So we’d just talk for hours and hours and hours. We became very close, very quickly. We share a very similar sensibility when it comes to the art. We’re willing to go wherever we need to go in order to honor the characters and their circumstances. Greta came in with a more traditional approach, making sure that the lines are clear and whatnot. It was so beautiful working with Greta who has an incredible wealth of knowledge. It was just a different approach from the way Leila and I approached the work. And the way they worked with one another had so many idiosyncrasies because, as you said, they were pulling from their real life. I called Greta “mum” the whole time, and in my phone, Leila is still labeled “sis.”

How is your mom doing these days, by the way?

She’s doing awesome. My dad has battled prostate cancer, too, and went through a triple bypass. They’re both extremely healthy now. My mum’s traveling in Europe with my little sister. My dad’s playing with his motorbikes. My brother’s writing a feature film. So everyone’s in a good spot.

I sat down the other day to try and figure out the significance behind the film’s title and what it might imply. Then I came across this Scottish story about a little girl carrying a boy along the road. A stranger stops her and says, “He must be too heavy for you.” She replies, “He is not heavy. He is my brother.” Is that it? It fits so perfectly. It’s Jade and Max in a nutshell.

Well done. There’s a song by The Hollies called “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” which is from that story. We were gonna use the song in the film, but it ended up feeling too on the nose.

On the subject of music, there’s a scene where Max and Jade sing Blink 182’s “All the Small Things” together on acoustic guitar. It’s a life-affirming scene, and what also comes to mind is the story you once shared about spreading your uncle’s ashes on the beach, where you sang Leonard Cohen’s “Bird on the Wire” to him. Did you have a hand in engineering that scene?

Well, the song choice wasn’t mine. But me and my actual little sister, Amelia, did used to listen to Blink 182, Angus and Julia Stone, and Red Hot Chili Peppers. And we used to play guitar like they do in the film. When she was learning how to play, I’d get her to strum while I was doing the chords. So I definitely brought that in and suggested it. We had the music supervisor in the room with us. I asked, “Do you mind if me and Leila just go off and have a little go by ourselves?” ‘Cause I sensed that Leila was a little nervous. So we figured it out like that. That’s exactly how I used to do it with my little sister. It’s funny, too, because Blink 182 is one of the first albums I would’ve had—the one with the nurse holding up the glove on the cover [Enema of the State]. And then Dani California by Red Hot Chili Peppers. And then, probably, American Idiot by Green Day.

I got to see Angus and Julia Stone perform live years ago in Vienna. You unlocked a very cool memory. You know, I wonder about your musical ambitions, too. That’s maybe the one thing you haven’t really opened up about. You talk about your other creative outlets: photography, poetry, drawing, and jewelry design that’s been tied to your philanthropy. You wrote and directed a short film called At the Motel. I have this suspicion that music is lying in wait.

I love music. It’s such a huge part of my life. It’s very rare when there’s no music playing in my house. I play guitar. I sing. There are projects that I’m producing and things I’m hoping to do in the future that would involve me singing in them. So to have that brief moment with Max singing and all that stuff, it’s nice to occasionally open the doors to, I suppose, a beautiful kind of private art.

Teasers for things to come. You’ve accomplished so much already, but part of being any artist is enduring potential, right? That leads me back to the story of your uncle. As you said, you didn’t get to see him as often as you would’ve liked. Yet, you’ve heard all these stories about him. He was an artist. Do you see a tragedy in not only considering a life that’s been snuffed out too soon, but also a creative spirit that went unexplored to its full potential? Is that perhaps what brings you closer to him? Do you see yourself as a continuation of him?

You couldn’t be more on it. That’s a hundred percent it. He had a lot to offer. My nan said he was dealt a bad hand. When we spread his ashes, it made me realize how good of a hand I’d been dealt, and that I should honor him by honoring the hand I’ve been dealt. There’s a fair few people that I hold in very high regard, whether it be Jeff Buckley or Heath Ledger or Michael Hutchence—artists and spirits that had so much to say. Their art and processes have inspired so much in me.

About your early days growing up in Matcham, you once said, “There was so much space and time to dream and play with my imaginary friends and my siblings.” As serious as acting can be and should be when you’re putting in the work, there’s a childlike playfulness about it that I love. When did that sense of play become a life pursuit? Is it something you can place?

There were weird things we would do as kids at the dinner table. We used to play this game called Voices, which would be us mimicking characters from Ace Ventura and Billy Madison. We would see who could do the best voice as a family. And the first time I remember going on stage is at basketball camp. It was a comedy skit we did. Making people laugh made me so happy, and I knew I had to commit to being ridiculously serious and seriously ridiculous. And then I played Captain Hook in Peter Pan in Year Six. That was gonna be the end of my career in acting. [laughs] I used to get very nervous giving speeches at assembly as the captain of both rugby and basketball in high school so my mum said, “You’re gonna have to speak in front of people no matter what you do in the future. Let’s do drama and see if you can overcome that fear.” At that time, I didn’t think of it as my future. But then I fell into drama school. With that, interest became passion and obsession.

We don’t always bridge the gap between seemingly disparate things like athleticism and filmmaking, apart from maybe on a broad performance perspective. But what’s neat is that, as you said, you used drama to boost your confidence as a a leader in sports. In turn, you learned coordination in sports, which I’m sure helps with hitting marks. So things do have a way of adding up in your toolbox, even if you’re not actively thinking about that all the time.

It all makes sense in hindsight. In basketball, it’s knowing that, when I pass the ball that way, the defense will look this way. When I was on stage at drama school at WAAPA, which is short for the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, I felt very in tune with space and movement as well. That was such a huge part of our training. On set, it was the same thing when I was doing the fight scenes in Vikings. The first fight scene was massive. We were originally gonna shoot it quite wide and have lots of cuts, but then we ended up having the camera involved in the fight, kind of like how Scorsese did it with Raging Bull or how Michael B. Jordan did it so well with Creed.

When you were cast on Vikings, you had to learn how to lead a show at 23 years old.

Yeah.

That went over really well for you.

Yeah, definitely. Jeb Stuart, the showrunner of Vikings, was so amazing at taking me under his wing. I learned a lot on the back end of that. He was very encouraging of me to contribute. We would, you know, plot out our whole arcs. We would rewrite scenes together and try to make it more gritty. That was really special. The directors changed every two episodes so myself, Frieda [Gustavsson], Leo [Suter], and Bradley [Freegard] were the main threads that people would follow. We all had a responsibility to look after the company when these changes would happen.

It’s really striking to me these great lengths you’ll go in putting in the work, sometimes for roles and at other times to also align yourself closer to your morals. There was a point on Vikings where you would brush your teeth with your left hand “to open new pathways in the brain,” right? During the third season, I heard you went celibate. Were you always this way?

I think I was always kind of like that. I’m a Taurus. I don’t know if it’s, like, a Taurus thing. We apparently have a strong will, or a stubbornness. I also remember reading in one book that Tauruses don’t like change. Then I was like, “No, fuck you, I love change.” [laughs] I suppose being aware of the addictions and habits of the people round me, I never wanted to fall prey to that—I wanted to be liberated from that. Spirituality and mediation became a big part of my life very early on. My brother was a pro golfer, and he would listen to Tony Robbins. And I had these ideas about being through Eckhart Tolle and different spiritual thinkers. With Tony Robbins, it was more about the doing and its practical structure. The two of them together, it’s like the feminine and the masculine almost. I woke up this morning, meditated, swam, stretched, and gym’d. I kind of love routine, no matter where I am. That gives me a sense of home even if I’m away. When I went to drama school, the main intention was to expand the domain within myself to be able to honor whatever script comes before me. I think that’s the thing I love about acting: anything I do really serves the art. 

It must be an amazing field to exist in. I would think one of the major draws is that you’re constantly learning. You work on yourself. You can go as far as you’re willing to go with it.

A hundred percent. And each role seems to find me exactly when I’m meant to find it.

In that short film you wrote and directed, At the Motel, Tati Gabrielle says in voice over: “Why do we always reach for more than we need?” What does that question mean for you?

Well, that was more a cautionary question. I think a lot of the spiritual practices would say that you are already it—everything you dream of and wish for is resting in that surrender. There’s that quote about how infinite patience welcomes immediate results, which I find quite beautiful. So why do we always reach for it? If you consider the ego, it’s often a sense of wanting to prove oneself, which takes a lot of effort. I feel like the best art and the best expression and the best way of being is when it’s seemingly effortless. It’s when you are revealing as opposed to showing.