The Australian Fast Bowler
To many people, Grant Bowler
will soon become known as Nolan, on the upcoming Syfy original series
‘Defiance’, but to this little Aussie kid, he’ll always be known as the
ill-fated Constable Wayne Patterson on the hit Australian show ‘Blue Heelers’,
nearly 20 years ago. Since then, he has bowled us all over (groan-worthy pun
intended) by going from strength to strength, from a guest spot on ‘LOST’,
through to starring as Richard Burton opposite Lindsay Lohan’s Elizabeth Taylor
in ‘Liz & Dick’. Mr. Bowler epitomizes the term “Professional”, before the
interview officially started I gained a sense of Grant’s easy going nature and
yet again I have been blessed with another generously honest interview from one
of my personal industry icons. This is Part One of our conversation.
AW: G’day,
thanks for taking the time to chat with me, especially at a point in your
career which must surely be a highlight, your first leading-man role in a US TV
Series, 'Defiance', which has an interactive MMO attached could you tell us a
little bit about Nolan- more specifically, what sorts of layers are you as the
actor adding onto the character compared to what was already written? I
understand you developed the character during the early game-building stages?
GB: Well,
when I came on board… See, this is a really interesting confluence of events…
You down in Oz, or Kiwiland (New Zealand, Grant’s birthplace) might “get it”,
but, they’d been chasing me for the job for several months, and it wasn’t that
I was playing hard to get, it’s just I wasn’t in town, I couldn’t do it. I was
in Perth (Australia) the first time it came around shooting ‘the Great Mint
Swindle’, and the second time it came around I was on the Race, ‘The Amazing
Race’, and I thought ‘ahhh, this thing’s gonna go away’, you know, it’ll
disappear, coz there’s that many actors in LA, there’s a hundred and ten
thousand SAG actors in LA, jobs don’t hang around long when you’re not in town.
Anyway, I got back and the thing was still open, um, and it was a really good
pilot, but I had problems with it. It was more like a movie than a “pilot”. The
problem for me was that it finished, I really dug the character, and a lot of
the dynamics, but it was just a bit too done for me.
Anyway, in between the times
where I couldn’t come in, Rockne O’Bannon, who was responsible for 'Farscape'-
shot in Sydney, one of his other pilots got picked up, so he left ‘Defiance’ to
go do this pilot and they brought Kevin Murphy on, now, the day I went back
into town and met them… Jet-lagged and just buggered, and-uh, 'coz I knew I was
running out of time on this project; it was actually Murphy’s very first day.
So I come in, and he had an empty office, it was the strangest meeting with a
show runner I’ve ever had. There was a couple of cardboard boxes and a chair,
there was- He’d just thrown out the script, He had no script, uh, Scott Stewart
was there, who directed the pilot- Epic guy, I have nothing but respect for
him; and the two of them started the meeting, we shook hands, and Kevin was
hopping up and down, and he says “I have to tell you, I’m the world’s biggest
‘Outrageous Fortune’ fan.
AW: (Eyebrows
rise up) Ah, ok, random!
GB: The
first words that came out of my mouth were “How the hell did you get your hands
on ‘Outrageous Fortune’?!” Like, where did that come from, he must’ve been the
only executive in the United
States who’s ever seen ‘OF’. And he said
“No, I’m a massive fan, I’ve seen every episode, I loved Wolf (Grant’s
character), Wolf was my fave, and it was funny because if I had gone in the
week before, Rockne would have still been in charge and the character and maybe
the tone of the show might be very, very different. But, Kevin being the huge
‘OF’ fan that he was, he said to me; “I’m so excited about the idea of you
playing this role because I loved that “darkness” and that humour you guys had in ‘OF’ and that’s where I want to go, I
want to go a darker tone, a much darker world than the original pilot”- And
that right away interested me, because that’s territory that I feel very
comfortable in, that I think is different to a lot of what you see on TV.
Characters are extremely imperfect, extremely flawed… I always get driven crazy
by those characters, especially on network on TV, where they manage to say and
do the appropriate things…
AW: Solve
the crime neatly by the end, with a little bow?
GB: Yep,
that drives me nuts, and in doing it they never blow up, they never lose faith,
they’re just these kinda stoic, perfect people… I don’t know them in my real
life, you know, I gotta screw something up 9 times before I get it right. But I
just can’t recognize these characters, so, I think that was the big thing for
me, Kevin knew what I loved doing. He’d seen my work on ‘True Blood’ and
‘Betty’, but because he’d seen ‘OF’ he knew the territory I really like
exploring, and that was key. Him and
Scott, and I sat down and they pitched me what they wanted to write but they
didn’t have it, they didn’t even have an outline, they sent me that 4 days
later- not only did they not have an outline, they hadn’t even run one past the
studio, so they had no idea if they were going to be allowed to do what they
wanted to do, at the end of the meeting we shook hands, and we said “OK, let’s
have a crack at this”, and they took
everything we talked about to the network and the studio and it got green lit,
Kevin wrote it and we then started down that path. So, that was a bit of a
situation to be in that I could never have predicted, if I had been on the job
the week before that wouldn’t have been the same case. It was just one of those
things that happened and I was really fortunate, Mark Stone, who’s the head of
SYFY, in terms of new drama, he asked me to come in to one of the studio sets
and test with the actors who are going to come on the show, I got to have a
level of input that I never would have dreamed of – I just never would have
expected to be given- not in this business over here, so, it’s been really
interesting. It’s been a lot more creative than often times being #1 on a show.
AW: Does the
role of Leading-Man status bring a sense of adrenaline to your craft, than
something smaller than, perhaps, your ‘Ugly Betty’ role?
GB: I think
I just feel a much higher degree of responsibility and accountability for what
we’re making. It’s easy to put your hand up and say you want more input but if
you get given it, geez, you better work your arse off to make sure it bares
through… It’s a massive project, I think it’s something like $100million split
between the game and the show.
AW: Eek, ok,
so you’ve got a lot riding on your shoulders then, aye mate?
GB: Yeah,
it’s a bit different to what I’ve had before; it’s interesting when you talk
about smaller roles… I’ve been so lucky in the States, the first job I got was
a thing called ’12 Miles of Bad Road’- it got killed in the writer’s strike
(never made it to air)- but it was still an incredibly prestigious thing for me
to get on, it had Lily Tomlin, Gary Cole, Mary Kay Place… Just some amazing
people on it, and then I ended up doing that and ‘LOST’ at the same time, one
show in LA, one in Honolulu simultaneously, and from ‘LOST’; ‘Betty’ and then
‘TB’, and what it gave me, even though the roles were kind of increasingly
longer-term and better, if you like, what it gave me was this wonderful
pedigree in the States, that I had actually never had in Australia, I had been
on all these really awesome projects and people kind of look at that here, you
can come out of ‘Bold and the Beautiful’ and there’s no problem with that in
the United States. I’ve been fortunate enough to be hired by really good
Show-Runners on shows that had all won Golden Globes, and Emmys and all been
really successful, and that makes a big difference, and I honestly… I found
sitting around a table doing table-reads at ‘True Blood’ more intimidating than
anything else I’ve ever done in my life.
AW: Oh
really?
GB: I
remember the episode 4 table read… in season 3, there was 2 Academy Awards,
about 14 Emmys, maybe 16- and half a dozen Golden Globe winners sitting around
the table.
AW: You were
in good company then.
GB: Yeah,
and everybody brings their A-Game to a table read on ‘TB’, because Alan’s (Alan
Ball) sitting there and if he sees something really good he’ll re-write to it.
So, it’s uh- it’s the best kind of blood-sport, a table read on ‘TB’, I loved
it. Having said that, ‘Defiance ’
is a level of responsibility and there’s a whole new level of terror because
it’s my head on all the billboards…
AW: 150ft on
the side of the Marriott at comic-con?
GB: (laughs)
Yep… We’re on the side of another hotel on Hollywood Boulevard at the moment… That’s
kind of exciting, I like that pressure.
AW: As you
say you popped up on a lot of genre shows, I was beginning to think you were
becoming the new Mark Sheppard…
GB: Mark
Sheppard!? How so?!
AW: I dunno,
I’d just be watching all these shows, ‘TB’, ‘LOST’, ‘GCB’ and suddenly you’d
appear in all these places, just like him, and then he got permanent employment
(Supernatural), and now you have, but I want to talk about your first professional
job- ‘Blue Heelers’, did you ever wonder why there were so many criminals in
such a small town as ‘Mount Thomas’?
GB: (laughs)
I love talking about ‘BH’… Especially the first bit, I always remember one of
the first shots was I get pulled up driving into town, I think it was by Maggie
(Lisa McCune) or Nick (William McInnes), I get pulled over on the side of the
road and there’s the ‘Mt Thomas’ sign, and the population at that point was
about ten thousand, but in the course of ‘BH’ we had a salt mine, we had
several hospitals and airports- We just kept developing infrastructure, so that
town- in the end- had the best public amenities, and the most productive
industry, there was an abattoir, honestly, it had more industry in it than the
United States.
AW: (laughs)
It made for good story telling, in the very least.
GB: I
remember we done one episode, I think it was only the first season, and Bill
McInnes and I just lost it, in the first draft of the script Ninjas came to Mt
Thomas.
AW: Ninja!?
GB: It got
thrown out, but there were these kinds of black-hooded figures, and they were
doing stuff and attacking, Bill and I were like “we’ve gone from 10,000 to
Ninjas in less than a season, we’ve got to be careful here” and we had a word
with the writing department and they said “I dunno, maybe” – but yeah, that
town just kept growing. I understand every time someone drove past the
town-sign the population kept going up.
AW: I’m
pretty certain that was the case.
(AW: Disclaimer- The following section took place at the beginning
of our conversation, before the interview officially began, and has been placed
here for continuity’s sake.)
AW: As I
mentioned, ‘BH’ was your first professional job, if not your first lead role.
GB: And who
was the lead in that?
AW: That
would have to be John Wood.
GB: You know
it’s funny, ‘Heelers’ was probably the best thing that ever happened to me, I
haven’t told anyone this story in a long-long time, but I was determined that I
was never going to act in front of a camera. The reason for that was I had done
2 ads right after finishing drama school; one before I started with the
Shakespeare company- one at the end of the first season, and those times I had
such a miserable experience in front of the camera. I got told to do so many
takes, one ad I remember there wasn’t a shot that was under 24-takes, and being
a young actor I thought every single take was my fault- I wasn’t told any
different, they’d just come give me notes- I found it so soul-crushing, I was
getting it wrong so many times, all these people standing around, all this
money and, uh, by the time I finished the second ad I swore I was never going
to work in front of a camera again. By the end of the second season of the Shakespeare
company I was broke- just busted up and broke, and the pilot for ‘Heelers’ came
up and I did it because I thought it wouldn’t go to series. (Both laugh). And
of course it did (13 seasons) - I struggled to… I didn’t feel confident in
front of the camera- it gave me my apprenticeship, it taught me everything I
needed to know. It was a good job for me, it was a difficult one because I felt
so out of place, but it started everything for me in terms of working in front
of the camera.
(AW: Back to our interview in real-time.)
AW: Since
‘BH’ you’ve been killed off many shows, but being your first professional
television role, did it make you sad to leave as much as it made us to watch it
with the rain and the car and the tears?
GB: I left
‘Heelers’, I left over a lot of objections and a lot of really good-will,
especially from Hal McElory who had hired me and wanted me to stay… I was,
geez, I was 25, 26 at the time, I just had so much going me at that point, and
‘Heelers’ as successful as it was, and great of an apprenticeship as it was, I
wanted more, I wanted to be playing different roles, be doing different things.
We shot 40 episodes a year, there really wasn’t any time to do anything but
‘BH’, I just felt like I needed to move on, I was frustrated. In the beginning
the character (Wayne Patterson) was kinda- he had a lot more to do, when, you
know, he had his Wife, there was a lot more story wise for him, in the end I
kinda felt like he was wandering around the background looking for evidence,
and I just wanted to bite off more, I’ve always been a bit restless that way.
I’ve actually left a lot, in the past, and not on bad terms, just, you know
“ok, I feel like I’ve done this now”, and Acting is a funny thing, if you can’t
keep it up, if you can’t find a reason to get up for a role, you’ll start doing
it badly, and I felt like that was starting to happen.
AW: After
your 3 years on BH, You moved on next to Medivac, from a Bold Cop to a Bald
Doc, which did you have more fun with… Chasing baddies, or playing with fake
blood and guts?
GB: (laughs)
Nice call, mate… I loved ‘Medivac’; I was always disappointed it wasn’t more of
a success. You know, Tony Cavanaugh is such a good writer, I remember at one
point he wrote me a three page monologue... There was a scene where I sang ‘Son
of a Preacher Man’ over a dead guy on the side of a hill, he was a really brave
writer, I really loved doing his stuff. It was an opportunity to act stuff I
didn’t know how to do, and big operatic stuff for an Actor, and on camera, how
often in an Australian drama do you get the opportunity to lock-down a 3 page
monologue on and try to make it work on camera? It just didn’t click with
audiences and that’s fine. That’s alright; you roll your dice and take your
chances. But I loved Medivac.
AW: Glad I
threw that question in then.
GB: No one
ever asks about it.
AW: My
memory is vague but I do remember you were bald.
GB: I loved
the role, it actually set up something for me that I’ve done ever since, and
that is I cherry-pick my roles- when I looked at the character description on
Arch Craven (Medivac character), they described him completely outwardly; bald
head, earrings, motorbike pants, rode motorbike, plays drums in a rock band. I
always look for those things- Cooter on ‘TB’ was another one, I look for those
roles because I find when you go in to play them you’ve got almost open-slather
on how you fill them in.
AW: Blue
Heelers, All Saints, Always Greener- in the first 10 years of your career you
were in some of the biggest Australian dramas, but you also mentioned the cult
favourite ‘Farscape’, was this your first experience with CGI and blue screens?
How did you find it, was that a good learning curve for doing ‘Defiance ’ now?
GB: ‘Farscape’
came up, I was broke, did it, it was great because my mates were on it, Claudia
Black and Anthony Simcoe, and that was cool, but I hated it. I absolutely hated
it because of all the make-up and the prosthetics and the mucking around of it,
after ‘Farscape’ I swore I wouldn’t do Science Fiction again, and I didn’t not
until ‘Defiance ’.
AW: Nope, I
can refute that- you did ‘The Lost Word’…
GB: Ahhh,
that was the Dinosaur show, I kinda consider that period.
AW: (laughs)
GB: Even on
‘TLW’… I shouldn’t be telling people this, but it’s time I came clean. I said
to them “Hey, I think this guy has a beard or a goatee or a moustache, I can’t
remember what I told them, and they’re like “OK!” and I said “I think he has a
hat and a monocle, or glasses” effectively I tried to cover up my face as much as
I could (laughs)
AW: (shocked
and appalled- jokingly) That’s not cool, Grant! Do you know how much I love
that show! (Laughs)
GB: Man, I
was just trying to hide my head.
AW: (laughs)
‘The Lost World’, was one of those shows that seemed to have every working
Australian actor of the day guest starring, were Aus-USA co-produced shows like
‘Farscape’ and ‘TLW’ your stepping stone into the US market, or at the time
were you too focused on your career down here?
GB: I was
told at the time that you couldn’t- and we’re going back 12-14 years, so not
that long ago in the scheme of things, but back then you were told as an Actor
that you don’t go to the US unless you were invited, and if you hadn’t done
something that propelled you over there by the time you were 30 don’t go, it’s
too late. Those were the 2 golden rules. And the only guy I knew who had broken
those rules was Anthony LaPaglia, he came over cold and just ground it out
himself and that’s why he was a mentor for me when I came over. So I didn’t
think you were allowed to go over until you got that entrée movie or whatever
that brought you. In the end I got really pissed off and frustrated and just
decided to go anyway. I had done ‘On the Beach’, that was the thing, I did that
Bryan Brown and Rachel Ward- who have come over and was working over here, and
they all said to me “Why don’t you come over, you’ll get work” and that’s what
made me make the decision, because they had done it.
AW: You
bring up ‘On the Beach’, I have a Q on it that I would like to mash-up with Liz
and Dick, in ‘OTB’ you played Peter Holmes, who was previously played by the
iconic actor Anthony Perkins, in ‘L&D’ you played an iconic Actor, Richard
Burton, could you tell our readers about the differences in the steps you took
to portray each character?
GB: In ‘OTB’
I kinda discarded the original, had to, David Williamson had done a complete
re-write on it, and I’m a huge Williamson fan, I really wanted to honour his
script, when I watched the original I felt depressed for them 2 (Perkins and
presumably Gregory Peck) in those roles because it really wasn’t given an
enormous amount of weight, it was all a bit “arch” for me, it was very strained
looks, it looked like a Metamucil commercial. Not to say they weren’t fantastic
actors but I just think the focus was very different in the original film’s
script. Jackie (Jacqueline McKenzie) and I just came at it and went
gang-busters together at what David put in front of us. I ignored Anthony
Perkins’ performance and- I could, because I was given permission, and it was
actually the best thing to do. If you’re going to remake something you have to
make it your own, you can’t pay too much homage to who did it before you or
else you won’t do your job properly. This was completely different than Liz
& Dick; because for ‘L&D’ I had to go back and try my hardest to pay as
much homage as I possibly could. As I was capable of, given the lead-up time,
the shortness of the shoot, given everything that went on- and my own
limitations- to do as good of a job as I could in honouring him (Burton), so they’re completely opposite.
AW: That same year you began your role as host of
‘The Mole’, one of my all time favourite shows. I understand you requested not
to be told of the Mole’s identity, out of the four seasons, how many of the
pesky buggers did you guess before the reveal and how soon in?
GB: Just an
interesting little link-up, you know I was asked to host ‘the Mole’ while I was
shooting ‘OTB’, Grant Rule at 7 (Channel 7) – they had bought ‘OTB’ in
Australia, and he came up to visit the submarine set, which was this very
expensive set, and he pulled me aside and he said “Listen, we’ve got a show we
want you to do”, and I said “oh, great, give me a call” and they told me what
it was, and nobody had made Reality in Australia, and I said “I don’t even know
what you’re talking about! Why would you want me, you want a host, somebody
who’s done hosting!” and they said (GB puts on voice) “No, we want the
opposite, we want somebody who can scare the crap outta them so they can’t
figure out what they’re doing!” and I went “Oh, then I can do that”. So those 2
jobs are always linked for me, but, on ‘the Mole’… Yeah, no, he (Mole executive
producer David Mason) always said to me “Do you wanna know? Do you wanna know?”
and I’d say “Nup, don’t tell me, I wanna figure it out”, and doing what I did
on the show, being in the centre of all that, I would figure it out eventually.
How clever that makes me, I don’t know, because it’s a very privileged position
to be in. Sooner or later it’d just become inevitable that I’d figure out who
it was just by the nature of my place in the machine, more than any braininess
or anything like that. But I enjoyed not knowing, and I’d get it wrong,
constantly, before it became apparent to me. Which I always loved, because I
think that’s the mark of a really intriguing show.
AW: I
wonder, were there any times you tried to make the guilty party slip up,
perhaps when speaking to them you’d try to catch them out on a lie?
GB: Nup, no,
I was so in love with that concept and that format that if you do something
like that you might jeopardize it, if you do it and anyone else is around or
anyone catches on you’ve blown the whole thing.
AW: Would
you ever like to see Channel 7 merge Amazing Race with the Mole- perhaps… the
Amolezing Race, a globe trotting mystery?
GB: The
Amazing Mole? The Mole Race? No, never.
AW: Fair
enough, still on ‘TAR’ what is a typical day on the set like? Is there a lot of
waiting around?
GB: The
‘Race’ is one thing or the other, the ‘Race’ is 98% wondering if you’re going
to get to the next place on time, the consequence of it is the whole thing
falls apart, so it’s always like the stress level that will kill you, and then
the other 2% of the time: bored out of your brain and having no idea where they
are. Sometimes they’ll all trip up at the same time and you stand there for 14
hours and then the whole thing explodes and you’ve got to get them in, and the second you get them in you’re off
again – the ‘Race’ is torture, it really is. Everybody earns their money on it,
but I had so much fun on it… You get so sleep deprived and so crazy, living
with no idea of what’s happening next. We giggle like school kids at the back
of the bus, me and my crew. Honestly, we just crack up at the most ridiculous
stuff, and cry laughing while we’re driving through the middle of Africa for two and a half hours and nobody able to talk
or stand up because you’ve just been reduced to ash by this format. It’s always
taken me a month to 6 weeks to recover from the race physically.
AW: So how
do you fit this in with everything else that you’re doing? It’s obviously a big
commitment.
GB: I’m not
sure if I can anymore. I’ve always had a bit of a thing running where at any
one point I’m usually doing 2, maybe 3 jobs in one form or another. I love
staying busy, I love working, but it’s getting tougher and tougher to do that,
I’m having to adjust. ‘Cause you know, the higher up the call sheet you go, and
the bigger the project, the more people want you around to focus, and actually
focus on that one thing. So I’m having to learn a new skill-set these days
which is, you know; “this is my project and I commit to this” then, “now this is my project…” and just do things
in a bit more of a linear fashion.
AW: You’re
known for hosting in Australia
(as well as acting) and known for your acting in USA , do you ever feel like you’re
leading a double life?
GB: No,
every job I’ve had I’ve taken for my reasons, and I wouldn’t do it otherwise.
There’s a couple of jobs you’ve mentioned in there that were, you know, feeding
the kids, or coming back from the States broke and needing to rebuild. You
always try to do the best job you can in a job but Actors are just people,
sometimes you’ve gotta pay the bills or you’re in trouble. In terms of ‘the
Mole’, that was one I didn’t need to do, I was just obsessed with the show,
‘TARau’ was just an opportunity to do ‘the Race’, and I’m so glad I’ve done
that- and done it twice- which was incredible, I got to visit 30 countries and
watch people run that race. People sometimes say to me “well are you an actor
or a host?” None of your business, they ask me “are you Australian or NZ?” None
of your business, I am what I am. I’m me, and, and… ‘the Mole’ intrigued me,
‘Amazing Race’ intrigued me, ‘Outrageous Fortune’ ‘True Blood’ intrigued me,
‘Liz and Dick’ intrigued, ‘Medivac’… and ‘Defiance’ intrigues me, and I don’t
know what else makes them all fit together other than that I dug them.
AW: Was
there ever a point back during something like ‘OF’ where you thought “Wow, I’m
the luckiest man alive”- to have quantity AND quality?
GB: Yeah,
absolutely, it’s funny because I’ve always been quite driven around work and I
wanna do the best work I can, and I’ve been so
lucky there’s always been another opportunity, and I’ve been lucky to get the
amount of work, I’ve been really lucky to be given the quality of production
I’ve been given. And then there’s another thing; you can walk into that and
think “Great, I’ve been tapped on the shoulder”, or you can walk in and go “OK,
this is an opportunity to get better” and you’re on your toes the whole time. I
prefer the second. Every job is an opportunity to get much better at what I do
and if there’s no opportunity, then it’s one to learn better at how other people
do their job. But, I don’t see a finish, I don’t see any “OK, I’m on top of my
game now, I’ll just clock off…” and I think that’s the other half of it,
because if you’re Hungry, then you’re Excited, and if you’re Excited, people
get Enthusiastic.
AW: I think
that’s a brilliant note to end Part One on, with such a fruitful career and
bright prospects for the future I look forward to the second half. Thank you
kindly.
GB: Thanks,
Aaron, enjoyed that, cheers.
Grant’s Twitter -
@GrantBowler
Interview by Aaron Ware.