David
Wenham
X-Press
Magazine
2002
A Dan For All Seasons
Lets get one thing straight: David Wenham likes to work. In the three years
since completing Molokai: The Story of Father Damien with Paul Cox, he's
appeared in no less than eight other features, including the second and third
installments of Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings as well as leading roles in
The Bank, Russian Doll and Better Than Sex.
Equally at home playing a sociopath or a saint, and everything in between,
Wenham isn't your typical chameleon type who changes his appearance drastically
from role to role in order to inhabit a character. He does, however, have an
uncanny ability to be completely natural in any part he plays, large or small.
Speaking on the phone from Sydney last week the 36 year old actor, maybe best
known for his role of Diver Dan in the ABC's runaway hit Seachange,
makes it sound all too easy.
By TIM STEWART.
Well for many reasons, absolutely, it certainly is. It's a story about people
150 years ago, people who were suspected of having a particular disease and
were sent away to an island - out of sight, out of mind - literally to rot and
die; and I just think there are parallels to what's occurring here at the
moment.
How hard is it to sustain interest in something you've finished working on so
long ago? Do you find there's a sort of residual presence, or do you just shrug
off each role like a snake shedding its skin?
It depends on the role, really. This one stayed with me for quite some time
because I lived on the island with Paul (Cox) for four and a half months and we
lived within the community there, with people who lived there out of choice,
people who suffered from Hansen's disease. It's a great community, full of
great joy and absolutely no bitterness. And then, to spend that time and come
back here and you know, I live in Sydney, rather a big city, and you just find
that our priorities are somewhat skewed, living back here. So in a way it was a
good thing, it was a great thing actually, to have gone through and hopefully a
lot of that still resides in me some years after.
There was a point in the film when it dawned on me that: "hang on a
minute, this isn't make-up," it was the real deal. With something like
that where you have the reality of these people right there in front of you, as
an actor that must be a tremendous bonus.
It certainly was. It was irreplaceable, in a way. Initially the people who live
on the island weren't going to have any physical involvement in the film. They
own the land and they'd given us permission to shoot there and that was the
extent of their involvement. However, Paul eventually gained their trust, so
much so, that they actually offered to become involved in the film. And, you
know, looking back on it I just think, God how could we have actually told the
story without them, because they lend a - well obviously a realism to the film,
but certainly a great purity and honesty to the story.
One of my favorite scenes is when Leo McKern hears
your confession. How hard was that, to act in French, standing in a boat and
staring right up at the sky?
Very difficult when you don't really understand French, so you just have to
have great faith in the people who've helped you get to that point in your
performance. It was actually the last scene of the film that we shot, and I was
rather exhausted by that particular point in time. But I loved it, because it's
just such a wonderful scene; and I just wished, in a way, that it was subtitled
as well, to allow the people who don't understand it get an insight into it,
because there's a wonderful humour in that speech as
well.
Given the emotion that did come through, and the context of the scene, it
seemed it was the right decision not to have subtitles.
(Sounding surprised) Oh, good. That's good to know. Obviously the skill of Leo McKern in particular, makes an enormous difference,
by the way he's reacting to what I'm saying at various given moments. He
definitely gives you some idea as to what's going on.
When you're looking for a role, is there a conscious effort to step out of your
comfort zone, or is it more a case of just being happy to be working?
(Laughs). You know, I'm always happy working; I am at
my happiest when I'm working but yes, I certainly like to be pushed, I
certainly like to be challenged. I never want to become complacent, because the
minute that starts to happen I think the work deteriorates, so I do like being
challenged and this role certainly did that for many different reasons.
Watching Better Than Sex, Josh didn't seem much of a
stretch for you at the time, but I suppose it would have been as quite a
necessity to have a bit of light relief after having just played Father Damien.
I actually loved the script. I just thought it was a really clever little film,
and it was also the opportunity to work with Jonathan Tiplitsky,
the director, who I think is a great talent.
It was a clever construct, the way it was put together, but it was rather
co-incidental how you had the European film A Pornographic Affair, come out at
the same time.
That happens quite a lot. It's strange, that, what's it called,
the collective unconscious?
Like if one person can have an idea on one side of the world, then that idea
becomes available anywhere out there, in the ether, so to speak?
There might be something in that, although there also might be something in the
fact that there's no new ideas, necessarily. There's
that old thing - essentially there's only six stories, and it's just a
re-telling of any one of those six.
Do you have an opinion about the current obsession with reality TV? It seems as
though people are looking for a more 'truthful' experience, but they're looking
in all the wrong places.
Possibly the use of the word "truthful" there is rather interesting,
because is it really? All those programs are manipulated; they get all the
footage and then it's at the whim of the editor and the director. The idea of
truth is quite fragile, I think. But there's room for everything it hasn't
really broken into the feature film business; If there was a feature film of
Big Brother I don't think too many people would be lining up to pay their 14
bucks or whatever to go and see that. That's when you know that people like myself will have to be concerned, but I don't think we
really have to worry about it too much at the moment. It's a fad on television,
and why it is, is because it's bloody cheap to make. Drama's expensive to make
for television, unfortunately.
Yeah, and with Big Brother they get to use the same set twice.
Everything. And it's wonderful product placement as
well, but eventually people will see behind those cynical motives. I have a lot
of faith in the intelligence of others.
Going back to your very first part it was Sons And
Daughters, wasn't it?
Oh God.
Or maybe A Country Practice? Did you feel back then, as a young actor,
obviously very hungry, did you feel as though, "now I've made it?"
Well, it's all happened rather... (chuckles)... back
then when I was doing television, did I think I'd made it?
Yeah.
Oh, back then I was quite ecstatic to be working, in telly.
I thought that was pretty cool at the time. But the progression from there to
now has been quite gradual, in a way, so I've not really noticed any great
shift; which is good: I would have hated to suddenly, at the age of 18 or 19,
been thrown into a big international film. I don't know if I would have been
able to handle it, because I think at that age I was rather immature.
How do you feel about the North American movie factory that is
It's like anything, I think, there's good and there's bad. Sure,
Of course. It's sad that people equate success with a
major North American release. It doesn't necessarily mean one thing's got
anything to do with another, does it?
Yeah, exactly I'm right with you.
I held off on watching The Boys for a long time - not because of the subject
matter, but because the underclass characters you all played are usually only
ever two-dimensional caricatures. It soon became clear, though, that everyone
involved felt a great responsibility to nail it, and to really do the
characters justice.
Absolutely. It's rare that you get that on a project,
but all of us felt extremely passionate. And it was a very low budget film.
Where we shot, we rented this particular house as our set. The house next door,
we rented as our make-up room, our wardrobe, our green
room; so basically we lived in that environment for the period of filming and
we did become a closely-knit family unit. And sometimes that's the best way to
work; the low budget sort off needs that passion and that desire and that fire,
to really create something fabulous.
Where do you go to find the character? Or is that what the actor's skills are
all about, accessing those darkest areas, pretty much at will?
I suppose it is, in a way that's what the job entails. There was quite a period
between the film and the play that I did (upon which the film was based), so
I'd been with that character for a long time. And there was an incredible
amount of research done into the piece for the (others') character work as
well. I'd also spent time in Long Bay Gaol here,
working with inmates during the Year Of Literacy. I
grew up in the inner Western suburbs and studied in the outer Western suburbs,
so the whole world and the milieu and the characters they weren't foreign to
me. So, once you have all of that at your disposal, then you can let your
imagination just run with all that and hopefully you come up with what we did
in that particular film.
Toni Colette said once in an interview that there were times when you were
really freaking her out, got her quite upset. I
suppose that's as good a compliment as you could get from another actor, but
did it cause problems sometimes?
Not really. I do remember one particular instance when that occurred, but no,
you just deal with that, you confront certain things when you're acting. You
confront them, deal with them and then move on.
Now that you've achieved a reasonably high profile, in this country at least,
does it get any easier to find interesting roles? Do you have to sift through
more crap or less, as a result of that?
I think everywhere, not just in this country, everywhere, it's very difficult
to find, like, amazing scripts. I have so much respect for writers, because
look, writing a great script is not easy. So yeah, I do read a lot, but very
little actually really excites me
You wouldn't like to give me your agent's number, by
any chance, would you?
(Laughs) God no, I'll read anything.