All I ever strive to be is human.
A Conversation with Yura Borisov & Mark Eydelshteyn
A Conversation with Tom BatemanPhotography: Reto Sterchi
Grooming: Jordan Alex Hurst
Who doesn’t love a good old-fashioned villain? There’s a perverse thrill in watching villains act on their selfish impulses, torment their “Disney” rivals, and even go a little mad sometimes. Evil takes many forms on television. From cyborgs to serial killers, mobsters to capitalist pigs, and literal demons to just plain ol’ dickheads—threatening, undermining, and generally sowing chaos within the context of their universe—rare is the show that would be any good without baddies running the goodies off the road. Villains are strong where the hero is weak. Heroes without villains aren’t heroes at all. As much a load-bearing beam to any story, villains give heroes their defining shape.
Australia’s own Sam Delich is the latest actor to make an indelible impression on the small-screen with his duplicitous character’s wicked ways—by turns unhinged, unpredictable, scarred, cheeky, and human. Set in the Northern Territory, Netflix’s hit original series Territory follows the plight of the beleaguered Lawson family, the owners of what’s described as the world’s largest cattle station. When a sudden tragedy hurls the once-great dynasty into a succession crisis, rival factions gather, generational clashes ensue, and the future of their cattle station teeters on a knife’s edge. Only the return of the prodigal son, Marshall (Sam Corlett), offers any hope of resolution. However, his arrival is flanked by the appearance of two incumbent strangers: the enigmatic Rich (Delich) and his rough-and-tumble girlfriend Sharnie (Kyle Day). The two outsiders present a unique challenge for the Lawson family: A package deal, they act as the proverbial gatekeepers for the estranged Marshall, who could very well be the defining factor in their resurgence. Their motives unclear, the Lawsons must reluctantly put their faith in these new arrivals, or risk losing Marshall for good.
Anthem connected with Delich for an in-depth conversation, and a photoshoot in Los Angeles.
Territory is now streaming globally on Netflix.
Hi, Sam. How are you?
Oh, you know, I had one of those shitty mornings. But I’m determined to turn my day around.
What’s going on?
Just life stuff. Sometimes I feel like all of this is less about the “why” I got into it and the performance, and more about the business. But other than that, I’m pretty bloody good. [laughs]
Do you think being in Los Angeles exacerbates that feeling?
I think so. I have a pretty good bullshit detector.
I’m sure that’s super handy.
It is good to have. Maybe it’s part of the Australian thing. We’re so far away. We see the world from a different perspective. But I do love Los Angeles. I just find that it can be a repetitive thing of people being like, “You’re so amazing. You’re so great.” But is anything actually gonna happen?
It’s funny you say this because I just watched this clip where a well-known comic talks about doing a social experiment at a Hollywood function. They went up to strangers and said, “Congratulations,” and they all replied, “Thank you.” Not one of ‘em said, “What for?”
[laughs] It’s true. I’d like it if someone was truthfully honest with me. Even if they didn’t like something I did, I’d rather they just tell me. You can’t win ‘em all, you know?
How much longer will you be in LA?
Two weeks. I thought I’d maximize the show being out at the moment and make a trip and say hi to my team here. Next week is all the usual Hollywood meetings. I suppose we’ll see what happens. I’m very much someone that likes to put a face to a name. I hate how everything’s so far away now. When you can shake someone’s hand and look them in the eye, then everything’s better.
I understand you wrapped on a new film, Beast of War, a few months back. I’m not BSing you when I say this: I’m intrigued by the premise. It’s a shark movie set in World War II?
It is. When I first got pitched the idea, I went, “There’s absolutely no way I’m doing that.” Because let’s be real: They’re not exactly the greatest movies in the world. But when I met Kiah Roache-Turner, the director, I saw how incredibly passionate he was about it. He said, “Ninety-five percent of shark movies are fucking terrible. How do we make this the five percent?” Everything was practical effects. We had the largest water tank ever built in Australia to film in. They built the shark. We’ve got an indigenous Australian lead. It’s set in World War II. As soon as he told me all this stuff, I went, “I’ve certainly never seen something like this.” From an acting perspective, diving into that project was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. You’re floating in the middle of a tank five days a week, ten hours a day. And we’re not working with a hundred-million-dollar studio budget. We don’t have the fancy amenities. But that’s also what makes it great—all the boys are looking after each other. It’s a really small cast. There’s about seven of us. It’s a very physical film: lots of fights, lots of swimming, and lots of action as you can imagine. At the core of it is a true human story. Selfishly, I think I get to play the best character—I get the biggest arc. He starts out as a bit of an asshole, to put it lightly, and then slowly redeems himself.
I don’t even wanna call this a guilty pleasure because that’s a cop-out: I love Deep Blue Sea.
And I don’t think there’s a single film in the world that can top the masterpiece that is Jaws. And there is a bit of a resurgence of the creature feature. There was Crawl a few years ago.
I saw that one in theaters. I remember enjoying it.
That was one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite films. There is something about bringing back these eighties, nineties practical effects that’s starting to happen. I think people are getting really sick of CGI because you can just instantly tell it’s fake. Also, as an actor, it’s so much better when there’s this thing in front of you. We had one animatronic shark head that was operated by a diver in a suit to sort of clamp the jaws down, which is hilarious. It makes such a difference. There is a campy element to these things and I think you have to lean into the fun of it.
Now we have AI to contend with, too. We need guardrails. Without them—
It’s gonna be a mess. I think it’s one of those things where you have to somewhat embrace change and embrace the fact that AI is not going anywhere. But at the same time, I think protections have to be in place. Because let’s be real: your job, my job—we all wanna stay employed.
AI is a wonderful tool for certain things, like previz. We just have to know when to stop.
We do have to know when to stop. It’s a strange time in the world. We always want more, more, more. Everything develops so quickly and so fast. You know, it’s interesting being in the States this time around. This is my seventh time to LA. My friend said, “Can you sum up the United States, or LA in particular, in one word?” I said, “Convenience.” Anything you want here, you can get. And that’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a pretty incredible thing. Maybe we don’t have as much stuff back home in Australia. It is this thing of, whatever you can think of, you can have. You want that movie made? You can do it. You want that extra large bag of Doritos? You got it.
That last bit is oddly specific…
[laughs] There’s nothing you can’t have here. I grew up quite simply so I find it a little bit jarring.
Do you think LA has changed a whole lot?
As we know, everything obviously changed post-Covid. I think there’s less things face-to-face in general, which is quite hard. I think there is slightly less of a willingness to find new things and new people. I do find it interesting, as far as casting goes in this industry. The United States does reach out internationally, but they go through sort of flavors. They might go to the Scandinavians for a period of time or the Australians or the UK or local homegrown talent. I mean, I think there’s brilliant actors everywhere, local and otherwise. It’s all just very strange. I think people are trying to find their feet in this new world. In saying that, there’s a lot of great things happening, particularly with diversity casting and new stories being told. I think there is a craving of new tales. Now lots of international filmmakers get to cut their teeth in the States and that’s bloody brilliant.
I feel like a case study now because I’ve been flying the flag particularly high for Australian actors lately. As you know, Anthem ran a feature on your friend Sam Corlett not long ago. Before Sam, we did a story on Charlie Vickers. Australia’s always been such a breeding ground for amazing talent. There is—pardon the cliché—something in the water over there.
I appreciate you saying that about Australian actors. I do think we have an abundance of talent for what is a very small industry. There’s huge respect for the craft in Australia. Unfortunately, it’s incredibly hard for any actor to break out due to the number of projects. There’s so few things being shot back home. But I think there are a few of us floating around that are slowly starting to get recognition, which is awesome. Generally speaking, the way we go about it isn’t dissimilar to the Brits. I grew up in Perth, in Western Australia, completely removed from the industry. Zero connections. At my drama school, WAAPA [the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts], you go through this break-them-down-and-build-them-up-after training. Sam Corlett went there, too, actually, but I graduated a bit before him. My graduating year of 2013 was sort of the last vestige of that old school system. I’d say it’s the British system where you really get whittled down to the bare bones and then taken back up. I did movement classes completely naked. I pretended to be a snow leopard and a flamingo running around class. We acted out fellow classmates’ childhood traumas and put them into scenes—things that you can’t really get away with anymore. But I don’t regret any of it. It’s a beautiful thing. You come out of that with such a sense of, I suppose, range and groundedness and respect for what actually goes into creating a character. It’s something that I’ve taken with me throughout my whole career. And I think there are some brilliant American actors and some absolutely fierce ones. I think the difference is that, generally speaking, they start younger here. I have noticed that, particularly with this TikTok generation, people just seem to wanna get famous. I got into this ‘cause I like hiding behind characters. Something about it feels good. Something about it feels great. I can do things that I wouldn’t do normally in my real life.
When you pursue acting in Australia, is it commonly understood that you will study it?
I do think, generally speaking, a lot of our best go through the institutions. I think that’s treated with reverence. Unfortunately, acting as a profession isn’t treated with the same reverence in Australia. Tall poppy syndrome is a big issue, where if someone goes against the trend or takes a different career path, we sort of cut each other down. It’s like, “No, no, no. You’re not that good. Come on!” That can help sometimes—you don’t want arrogance—but I also think you gotta realize you have something special to offer and something to give, and it’s okay to try and give that to the world. I went to what would probably be the Julliard equivalent in Australia. There’s sort of two main schools: the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney and WAAPA, which is where I went. I did it because I had no option. When it sort of clicked in my brain that this is what I wanted to do, I hadn’t done a play in high school. I just did a drama class, and I had an amazing teacher who pulled me aside one day and said, “I think you don’t realize you have an instinct for this. I think this might be something worth pursuing.” As soon as she said that, my mind opened up. She was so gracious and gave me plays to read that opened my mind up to it being more than just Shakespeare. I didn’t realize I could play men that were going through things I was going through. She gave me plays about high school guys surfing and having a really hard time mentally. I went, “Oh my god, people do this? There’s theater like this out there?” I was 16 years old and didn’t even know what an agent was. I asked her, “Well, how do I do it?” She said, “You try and either get an agent or you go to acting school.” And I said, “What’s acting school?” [laughs] She pointed me in the right direction and gave me some coaching. I was really lucky at 17 because, on my first go, I got in. It was the best three years of my life. I wouldn’t change a thing about it. The only thing it doesn’t prepare you for is the audition grind and the usual stuff that every actor has to go through.
You were also a finalist for the Heath Ledger Scholarship, weren’t you? I’m sure it’s insanely competitive. My guess is that most aspiring actors in Australia will try and go after it.
I think a lot do. It was a great experience at the time. It’s a great organization that helps Aussies in LA and in America. Getting to meet Heath’s dad was such a beautiful thing. He was incredibly open about his son’s mental health battles. It was grounding to know that, no matter how successful you get, there’s always something going on behind the scenes. There are problems at every level. It doesn’t matter if you’re a kid starting out with his first audition or a movie star making millions. We all have something. Everybody’s always constantly reaching for something else. Contentment is something I’m trying to get better at. I’m not quite there yet.
I also know you did an episode of Home and Away, which seems like a rite of passage for Australian actors. I think it was Simon Baker who first told me that. It’s one of the longest running series. Are there so many episodes that it’s simply bound to come into your orbit?
I do think every Australian at some point does a little run on Home and Away. I was quite young when I did it. I stepped in for one episode. I played a guy on this boys’ weekend away in Summer Bay, which is where the show is set. My character hit on one of the lead girls and tried to sleep with her. She said, “No,” so I got really angry. And then I beat up her boyfriend or partner or whatever he was at the time. I put him in the trunk of my car and dumped him in the woods…
Totally reasonable.
Totally reasonable! [laughs] I apparently have an affinity for playing these aggressive, angry men. All sleazy dudes. But you know what? If I’ve got a lane, then I’m happy to stick to it.
Incidentally, there are folks online describing Territory as Yellowstone-meets-Summer Bay. Summer Bay as a shorthand for Home and Away, right? What do you make of that?
To be honest, I don’t think that’s a very fair connection at all. I mean, there is a slightly soapy element to Territory. It’s not dissimilar to Yellowstone, tonally, in some way. But Territory is quite a grounded show. If you actually travel to the Northern Territory in Australia, you do find these characters that are a little larger than life as well. I based Rich off a lot of the ringers I met there. These guys come from all walks of life. A lot of ‘em come from pretty dark pasts. They’ve wound up on a cattle station and they work their absolute asses off. I would argue that, when I met some of these people, they almost seemed too big to put on screen. I see these Yellowstone comparisons and think, “It’s a western. It’s a cowboy show. Of course, people are gonna say that.” But Montana and the Northern Territory could not be more different. We’re talking about the arid and humid heat, and the wet rainy season, versus the wintry tundra that is Montana. We’ve got crocodiles. As far as the traits of cowboys go, American stoicism and Australian stoicism are two completely different things. In fact, the American bravado and the Australian bravado could not be further apart. I’m not going to rip into American cowboys. [laughs] I don’t need to get in trouble here. They all work incredibly hard. I just think there’s less flashiness to Australia. It’s very much head-down-get-the-job-done. It’s not about having the best pickup truck or any of that. It’s very much about holding your cards close to your chest. As you see in the show, that’s for better or worse, right? With my character, his mental health obviously goes on quite a journey throughout the show. Listen, I love Yellowstone. At the end of the day, if we have crossover with fans, that’s fantastic.
These comparisons are also made to market shows. It doesn’t concern you, really.
I agree with you completely. Look, there’s nothing wrong with popular TV. At the end of the day, people come home from their nine-to-five, pour a glass of wine, sit on the couch, and don’t want to watch whatever arthouse film. As much as I love that stuff, it’s not easily digestible.
Popular TV also doesn’t mean that it’s any less artful, right? I mean, not always.
You know, the beautiful thing about shooting Territory was the fact that, although it is one of the biggest budget Australian shows ever made, we all lived on the cattle station alongside the ringers. We didn’t get some small piece of farmland outside New South Wales to shoot. We went to Tipperary Station in the Northern Territory. The lead cast stayed in the shearers quarters. I shared a house with Joe Klocek, who played Lachie. Generally speaking, if you’re on a Netflix series, you’re not gonna be sharing accommodations, but there were so few places to stay there. It’s also a beautiful thing where it becomes all about the craft. We lived it. We breathed it. We worked alongside actual cattlemen and women. That just seeps in. It’s the fact that you can’t go anywhere. We couldn’t duck down for the shops. We’d have one grocery run a week. We’d all share our meals together with the ringers and station hands, which is absolutely incredible. There’s no time to be a movie star. There’s no time for arrogance. You see how hard these people work and go, “They’re letting us shoot on their land. They’re willing to share that with us.” That is pretty bloody special in my opinion. We are using their cattle. We are using their trucks. There’s nothing flashy about it. I can’t speak for Yellowstone and Taylor Sheridan’s universe—those actors look like they work their absolute asses off—but I can almost guarantee it is not quite the same thing.
As a viewer, it was interesting to watch Territory a second time. Crucially, on my first go-around before the series premiere, Netflix didn’t give me the final episode so I didn’t know that Rich dies. I really felt for him, you know? His badness isn’t so black and white.
I appreciate that. That was really my biggest thing: I didn’t wanna play this as a generic bad guy. For many years, my survival job on the side of acting was working at what we call a bottle-O, which you guys call a liquor store. It was a rough one. It was filled with all sorts of wild people. I always say that every character I’ll ever have to play came through those doors. I was spat on. I was swung at. I broke up fights. I saw alcoholism at its worst. I saw people drinking ‘cause they were sad. I saw people drinking ‘cause they were happy drug addicts. I probably talked four people out of killing themselves—because it’s them, the bottle, and I’m the last person they’re seeing. I made connections with people from all walks of life, both very rich and very poor. And I had sympathy for ‘em. I got to see what true darkness looks like and what true lightness looks like. I’m not saying it was a job like being a paramedic or a cop or anything as hard as that, but I really absorbed everything I could out of these people. When I got cast as Rich, the first thing I used as my sort of jumping-off point was mental health. How did Rich’s upbringing and what happened to him as a child affect him? I picked pieces from the people I met at that job, and I picked pieces from the ringers and the station hands that I met. I did a little graph of where he starts and where he ends up. I have my own demons, as we all do, so the ruminating thoughts in my own life was something that I put into Rich. When you are stuck in a negative thought spiral, it goes and goes and goes. Then there’s drugs and alcohol. There’s the hot sun. There’s not being able to trust your best friend. There’s not being able to trust your girlfriend. What does that do to a man? Through this lens, I was able to sympathize with Rich, and I really do think that brings him to life. In saying that, of course, it’s also a TV show and there are parts where he’s just a pure asshole. [laughs]
And I also got to have a lot of fun. The beautiful thing was Greg McLean, our director, steering me in such a great direction. I was so nervous before my first day of shooting. I saw everyone delivering these really beautiful, still, and contained performances. You know, Robert Taylor. I said, “I’m going in a different direction. I’m gonna be the live wire. I’m gonna take a big swing and all you need to do is reel me in if it’s too much.” And Greg said, “You are the energy of the show. I want you to dive in. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. We’ll figure it out.” He was absolutely incredible. He gave me the best piece of direction I think I’ve ever gotten—something I’m gonna take to every job from now on. He said, “Violence implied is a lot scarier than actual violence,” meaning, unpredictability is absolutely terrifying. That’s something I also learned from working at the liquor store. And I think something that Australian men do have is an unpredictability. Again, the bravado is different. You don’t know what we’re gonna do. As I’ve sort of found a little niche, I suppose, playing rough men—not that that’s the only thing I can do—unpredictability in performance has become my favorite thing. Greg allowing me to discover and nurture that was so beautiful. It really did allow me to find the levels in the light and the shade. Otherwise, these things can become screaming matches, and nobody wants to watch three actors just yell at each other.
Did Greg direct all six episodes of Territory?
He did.
Is that common in Australia? I’m used to seeing a rotation of directors on series. There’s so much to get done. I saw that Nash [Edgerton] also directed all the episodes for Mr Inbetween.
He did. Mr Inbetween was one of my first guest spots. Nash is a great director. And his brother Joel is a huge inspiration for me, just seeing his journey. Coming up playing all sorts of great characters in Australia, struggling to break through internationally, and then, finally, when Animal Kingdom came out, I think he was about 35 at the time. He got that, did Warrior, and then continually does great work. Plus, he’s also writing and directing. I think it makes such a difference when you have that clear vision—one through line throughout the whole thing. A lot of actors seem to be afraid of directors. I just want a great relationship. I want them to know how I like to work. I want to know how they like to work. Hopefully, we find a nice harmony. And that doesn’t always happen, of course. That’s just the reality of any professional job. It’s like any boss you work for: sometimes they’re absolute assholes. [laughs] I think we have some great directors in Australia. Greg happened to be a fan of mine. He really pushed to get me this role. I do feel like I owe him a lot.
So do you prefer having one director on a series? I mean, alongside the showrunner.
I definitely prefer it. I have done series with multiple directors. It does still happen in Australia. But when there are too many cooks in the kitchen, things get ruined. More crucially, it’s hard when directors don’t nourish play. I’m someone that always says, “Can you just gimme a take where you let me off the leash? Let’s see what happens. Let’s go off book a little bit. Let’s play and do things.” Of course, if a director says they need to hit something or need to get something, I’ll happily do it. It is a job. It’s a craft at the end of the day. I think sometimes people forget that, thinking, “You just sort of learn lines and see what happens.” I don’t think that’s the way. My favorite thing is working in unison with the DoPs and the camera operators. There are times where you gotta know where your light is, where your head is, where your whatever is. Of course, it can be difficult. A lot of TV directors are by the book: hit your mark, say your line, see you later. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the directors that I chase and hope to work with in the future are passionate about what they’re making. They’re creative collaborators. And they’re not like that only with the actors, but also with the costume department, the script supervisors, with anybody. Passion comes through. There is a glut of TV at the moment, unfortunately, where it seems devoid of chutzpah. A bit of oomph, you know? Now when I read a script, and when I accept an audition or accept a role, the first thing I ask myself is, “Does it have grit?” It doesn’t have to be a heavy project. It doesn’t even have to be a drama. You can just feel it when something has juice behind it. Now that’s all I seek out—that marrow, if you will. The surface level stuff absolutely does not interest me.
What was a really important character detail that helped anchor you on Territory?
The biggest thing for characters like Rich is that, when you come from so little, you constantly have this need to survive. Maybe you don’t know where your next meal is coming from. Maybe you didn’t get nurtured as a kid. As much as Rich wants that friendship or love from Sharnie, for example, he’s terrified of it because, ultimately, these relationships end up hurting him. So when he does see an opportunity, he takes it. When he sees that Marsh comes from a rich family, he knows that this could benefit him. Why wouldn’t he? He came from nothing. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. And there is definitely manipulation. Whether he knows it or not is the ultimate question because sometimes people manipulate without knowing. I think he ultimately knows he’s doing a terrible thing, especially towards the end of the season. In my last scene on the show, he has moments of conflict. You can see the troubled little boy in there not wanting to do these horrible things. At the same time, life’s almost given him no choice and there is no alternative. I always feel sorry for people in these positions. I’ll never justify violence, but something I try to put in every character now is the troubled little boy. If you can find the little boy, I think you can find the role.
In many ways, Rich’s unsavory moments on the show make him the most human. It’s raw. It’s about shifting our perspective. As you pointed out, he has an overriding survival instinct.
All I ever strive to be is human, and it’s part of my process. I literally have a list: “Where is the human? What makes this man who he is?” I trust my instincts. And then I have my other work. I don’t need to go into all of that, but I call it “the juice.” So I combine the two. We’re all flawed human beings. There’s something churning inside. Rich’s not an asshole all the time, but there are times where he is and Greg helped me lean into that. I love playing cheeky. I love fucking with other actors. [laughs] In a professional way! I like spontaneity. I like seeing what happens. One of my favorite people to work with on the show was actually Dan Wyllie, who plays Hank Hodge. I’ve been a fan of his for many, many years. He’s one of the most playful actors I have ever worked with. He gave me some great advice as well. He said, “I don’t believe there’s any one technique to doing this. You find a platform and then launch off it. Hopefully, as you launch, there’s another platform.” It’s like Super Mario: you go from one to the other, and you see what happens. Working with Dan really helped me get outta my head and that was bloody awesome.
So there’s always something to take away. You’re a sponge.
I think you never stop learning. I’m learning more and more on every set I go on, good and bad. I’ve worked on some sets that I truly hated. They weren’t very collaborative. They didn’t take the creative approach. In those scenarios, you learn how to be a professional. You learn how to rock up, do your job, and go home at the end of the night. I’ve never viewed myself as someone who wants to be that movie star. It’s always been about the work and being a journeyman, job to job. These last few years, I’ve played a sleazy angry boss in Last Days of the Space Age, a live wire on Territory, and a gay Irishman on a BBC series [season two of Ten Pound Poms], which I can’t talk about quite yet. I’ve played a hypersexual criminal. I play a hyperaggressive man in Beast of War. And you’re right: I am like a sponge. I just wanna learn and learn and learn. What I’m learning right now is how to navigate the business side of things, which is something no drama school or sets can teach you. Getting your name out there, it is sometimes about who you shake hands with. That’s all new to me. At the end of the day, I do like to think that the work rises above it. It’s just been tricky navigating it all.
This is where our conversation started. It’s all very real for you right now.
Yes, like this morning. I won’t go into too much detail, but I was frustrated about the lack of creativity in things, and how sometimes how many Instagram followers you have and what your status is matters a lot more than performance. And that hurts. This has happened to myself and many mates of mine who are utterly brilliant. It’s about being a director’s pick for a job and all the creatives wanting to work with you, but the higher powers saying that you can’t because you don’t have a million Instagram followers or you’re not TikTok famous or whatever it is. The people I truly respect are the Joel Edgertons, the Jason Clarkes, the Tom Pelphreys, the James Badge Dales, the Shea Whighams, the Allison Janneys, the Sam Rockwells… These are people that didn’t necessarily play into all that. They navigated it. In them, I see the craft. I see how good they are. I see what matters. I had a very low point a couple of years ago where I was really dejected about everything in the industry. I wasn’t working a lot. I was having a really hard time. Then a friend of mine who is quite successful pulled me aside. We went for a walk one day and he said, “You have something that a lot of people with a lot of money and success don’t have.” I said, “What is that?” He said, “You have the respect of your peers. Other actors want to work with you. Other actors believe in you.” That really resonated with me. I thought, “That is what I can control. I can control the work. I can control how hard I push for the projects I want to do. All the other bullshit will come and go.” At the end of the day, no one remembers who was nominated for an Emmy six years ago. All I want is longevity and a nice career and a little bit of money to live comfortably.
Did you have others dreams prior to discovering your path forward in acting?
I think I actually wanted to be a chef at one point. I’m clearly attracted to masochistic professions. [laughs] I just can’t sit behind a desk all day. When the seed was planted that I could perform, I jumped at the opportunity. Again, I grew up in Perth, so far from Hollywood and anything to do with the industry. It just never occurred to me that performing was something I could ever do.
You once said, “When you’re coming up in Perth, acting is not on anybody’s mind.”
It’s not on anybody’s radar. The biggest thing in Australia is sports. You obviously do your studies, but you also play sports. My brother was a fantastic athlete. He played lacrosse at almost the highest level in Australia. It’s very much ingrained in you that, if you’re gonna become anything that’s not in a “normal” profession, you’ll probably become an athlete. The arts is not something that’s generally cultivated in Australia, unfortunately. But it’s getting better. Again, it was my high school drama teacher who was so kind, instilling this creativity in me and allowed me to foster something great. And at WAAPA, it was having teachers be really hard on me. I once confronted a teacher because I was having a hard time and it was all getting to me, and she said, “We’re extra hard on you because we know you can be great. We’re not hard on everybody.” That was really nice to hear. What I also learned at uni was the fact that this is all subjective. You might love that I play Rich, but someone else might absolutely hate my performance. And that’s okay. At uni, I remember doing this thing called “the circle of death.” You sit down and the staff gathers around. It’s the morning after you close your play so we’re all hungover, obviously. [laughs] You go one by one in front of all your classmates and the staff tells you what they liked and disliked about your work. You get a score based on emotional resonance, energy of performance—yada, yada, yada. We did a re-imagining of Julius Caesar and I was cast as Portia, which is usually a female role. Every teacher broke me down. They said it was some of my worst work. It was this, it was that, you know, “Your voice was bad”—blah, blah, blah. And then the movement teacher, the truly terrifying one, heard the feedback from the other staff, looked at me, and said, “I thought you were fucking brilliant.” I don’t need to try and please everybody. Something I’m slowly learning as a 31-year-old man is that we’re constantly trying to please people, and I like to just skip through the bullshit. As I’m navigating Hollywood and Los Angeles, the more I can just cut to the point, the better. I’m happy to meet casting directors, but are they actually gonna cast me? That’s what matters. I’ll throw my hat in the ring and do the work. That doesn’t bother me in the slightest. But don’t lie to me and tell me I’m gonna be a movie star ‘cause I can see right through that. I might be coming across like I hate Hollywood. Not at all. I think you can do what you dream. I think you can rise above. Things can get made. People can see your work. It’s not frowned upon to dream in America and that’s something I absolutely love about this country. If you end up doing good stuff, you can get paid quite healthily for it as well, which is fantastic. Back home, we work for peanuts so you can never really do it for money and money is not on your mind at all. And I think Americans are some of the friendliest people I’ve ever met. They’re the most open and warm people. Every time I come here, I leave with new friends and new connections. That’s a beautiful thing. Obviously, it’s a different country so it’s a hard country as well. I’m slowly navigating it.
I appreciate and admire your honesty.
I’ve grinded away for so long. Like I told you, all I can control is the work. The makeup artist on Territory was amazing—one of the best in the country. I was having a bit of a hard day on set and letting all this shit get to me, and she said, “I’ve worked with every big Australian actor. Ben Mendelsohn. Joel Edgerton. Cate Blanchette. All of them. You have something that is gonna go a long way: you’re authentic to who you are. You’re gonna meet a lot of movie stars. A lot of fuckwits. A lot of people that are gonna try and cut you down. And maybe some people will get the recognition when you don’t because you’re not about all that glitz and glamor. But if you stay true to authenticity, the people that matter will hire you and you will work.” That stuck with me. That’s something I’m trying to do. The last time I visited LA, I didn’t have that mentality. I think I wanted to break out and become the next big thing. The movie star. Now it’s like, “Nah. I’m me.” If me is enough to get there in the end, then great. If it’s not, well, fuck… [laughs] I did my best.
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