It's in the news today, but it was actually on TV Reloaded podcast last week Airline. Welcome back guys to TV Reload. My name is Benjamin Norris, and on this podcast I go behind the scenes with the biggest players in television. Each episode you will get a front row seat with content makers like executive producers, writers, editors and casting agents, plus the talent that we see on our screens.
TV Reload reloads the shows that you're currently watching and gives you a better insight into our television industry and our streaming services. Today. On the podcast, I have the Australian icon Tim Minchin, who is joining me to discuss Series two of his brilliant TV series Upright, which drops
on the fifteenth of November on Binge and Foxtel. The scripted drama follows our two beloved miss Fitz, played by Tim and Millie Alcock, following on from the first series, which saw them both thrown together by chance in the middle of the Australian desert. They however, both reteamed for series two to track down Meg's mum and far North Queensland, and let me tell you the chaos resurfaces. Upright is a blend of humor and drama, which is executed beautifully.
It is crafted by some of Australia's best scripted drama creatives. The first series winning awards and I'm sure the second series will do the same. We will talk about Tim's creative process, whether he asked Millie Alcock about her time filming House of the Dragon, and we will also unpack the highs and lows of fame, which obviously Tim knows very well. However, let's get started with today's guest. I'd like to welcome writer, musician, actor and comedian Tim Minchin to TV Reload.
I think in Upright, and in my work in general, I'm trying to find ways to write stuff that does laugh in the face of pain.
And the winner of Best Comedy Series is Upright.
The category doesn't really matter. It's going to be funny if you get the right writers.
We've got this kind of gentle humor and the drama and it's really moving.
Lucky needs to take responsibility for the people that love him.
That We've had no short of actors who've wanted to sort of come and play with us on Upright.
I still, even after meeting so many famous people, I still my brain still makes the mistake of.
Sort of putting them in a different category. I'm looking for my mum.
You can't show up after four years and just expect me to hop on a plane with you. I could tell by the way she was talking about it that, you know, with all the confidentiality causes, I knew it could only be a couple of things.
Hi, Tim, how are your mate?
Hell Man?
How are you? I'm pretty good. Yeah, a little bit crusty only in the voice. Really. I had the launch of season two of our show last night and it was a little lots of interviews and stuff, So yeah, bit crusty in the voice, but I'm fine.
Well, you've been in the entertainment Zekeist for as long as I can remember, and you've made such an impact on you know, writing comedy, musicals, acting. I mean, the list really could go on, all the while still being very true to yourself. I guess the main question I have for you is where the hell do you find your energy?
Uh, it's mostly fear, I think, because I lock myself into things and then you're just sort of peddling to keep up. I think I really like doing new things and sort of challenging myself, so it's sort of self perpetuating. And also I think I wasn't sort of brought up to think that you have a right to be an artist, and you know, oh, I've got talent and I'm gifted. So I'll just sort of let the inspiration come and some days I'll be on and some days I'll be off.
There's sort of I don't know, something to do with the culture I was brought up here. It's like, if you want to be an artist, you'd work harder than everyone else. And you know, there are nine work hours in the day or whatever, and you work them. And if you actually just treat your work like work, it's amazing what you can get done. You know, if you don't do too much naval gazing, I still get a bit of naval gazing done.
Mind, we all need it, we all need it. I guess for me, I would be like, would I get distracted on the different categories, because like I can imagine you get up and you'd be like, oh, I've got some great comedy that's you know, for almost stand up, and then you'd be like, oh, but I want to write this musical. Does it all get quite distracting or can you block it so you know exactly what you're doing.
It's a good question.
I mostly structure my life so I know exactly what my task is at any given time. And that's why this last month's been hard, because when you're doing lots of press and things, that's another sort of part of your brain. And because I don't really I go, well, that's not really work, that's just talking about yourself. So I should be able to do something else during that
press heavy period. So I'm trying to write this new TV show and I'm on a deadline because there's a production company attached and stuff.
So it's not just like me going, oh, maybe I'll have a go on a show.
It's like I pitched this show and a production's company gone, yeah, here's your deadline, let's get it to market.
And I'm I'm trying to write it.
But I've slightly underestimated how much of my brain and energy is required for this incredible press cycle I'm doing because I've got so many things coming down the pipeline at the same time, and so it does my head. My head's been a little bit explody recently, but mostly I you know, I don't like have comedy ideas. In fact, I've not really done comedy for ten years. And it's weird because it looks like I'm simultaneously a comedian and
a composer. But really I did comedy between two thousand and five and twenty twelve, and since then I've mostly been not but because of YouTube and because when I get on stage, I'm still sort of vaguely funny. No one sort of has noticed that I don't.
Do comedy anymore.
I mean, every now and then I put out something satirical, but yeah, I do things in clumps, is the short answer.
It's hard for me because I'm in my forties and you've always been a part of my adult life, and so I think of you as all those things. You may not be all of those things, but for me, you are a comedian. You know, you did Matilda, like all of these things to me are all the things that you've achieved. So I just consider you to be those things where you know, you'd probably be a little bit mad if you woke up every day and needed to take some medication to try and balance it all out, you know.
No, it's all yeah, yeah, Well I love that that's how I sit in your head. And it's certainly been my ambition to be someone where if someone if someone says, what does he do that the answer is not not easy. I really really like that, and I really like that I get to I haven't got stuck in any particular area. But yeah, it's quite, it's quite. Yeah, I'm quite sort of diligent or something. I just sort of do what's
in front of me, and sometimes I struggle. But when I if I've got a score to write or a TV show to write, I do think I have. I do a lot of procrastinating and a lot of self doubt and all that stuff. But quite often I can just get into a if I'm in, if I'm kind of on and I've got a TV script to write, that I see no reason why he shouldn't get it done in a day, and I can't. I can get it done in a day. I can sort of hyper focus, and I think that helps me a bit.
Well. Upright is and you have put so much guts into every episode. This kind of is a bit of a beginning's a bit of an origins question. So we allow people that may not have seen series one to understand. But how did these characters surface.
Well, they were gifted to me really in their embryonic form, because I came on this project a little bit late. It was an idea by Chris Taylor, who's known as one of the Chaser guys, but he's been branching out over the last few years as well into all sorts of stuff, and he pitched to Lingo Pictures an idea of a guy trying to get a piano across Australia in a ute, you know, sort of an image in his head and he thought, you know, at some point he thought, oh, there could be a buddy comedy thing.
Maybe he you know, picks up someone on the way. And then Lingo got Kate mulvaney and Leon Ford, who both happened to be really good friends of mine, on board, because from quite early on Chris and Lingo Pictures went well, this we should try and get Tim and I was living in la and doing stuff, so they thought it was a bit of a long shot that they would get me. But they brought on Leon and Kate and developed the sort of they came up the idea that there'd be a.
Teenage runaway or a teenage girl.
And that it would be this weird, odd couple, you know, comedy lark, you know, And then they pitched it to me and I came to Australia for a week and sat with them in a room and sort of said to them, I'm not that interested in comedy, or at least I think the comedy will look after itself.
I want to know what the story is. I want to know what the drama is. Why is he taking this piano? All that.
So we did this big workshop and realized that we wanted to make it a drama. And again, we're all comic writers, so you know, the category doesn't really matter. It's going to be funny if you get the right writers. But I wanted the bones to be dramatic, and so from that point on I was very heavily involved in
the Watson whys and who's of the story. And you know, Meg rose up out of you know, Kate Mulvaney's comes from Joe and had a much sort of tougher upbringing, so a lot of discussions about what that was like growing up in the country, and she just kind of emerged.
But we wanted her to be a superhero.
You know that she was incredibly resilient and you know, could drive a car at thirteen and do all those things, but then of course she has all this damage as well well.
The balance between humor and dark subject matter throughout series one and two is like a tapestry like no other. Yeah, I mean, how hard is that to get that blend right when you're working in the writer's room, because they are short episodes and to then interwine something quite serious but also something that makes you laugh out loud. I imagine that to be really hard to do.
It's a really good question.
I'm really glad you think it succeeds, because that was always our obsession. I mean, we come from the history of our industry has always been that you either are doing comedy or drama, and it's sort of always been this artificial binary really to do with format, like they go, okay, we need it. You know, Channel seven needs a half hour show, which with adds is twenty six minutes or whatever, and you know that needs to be light and fluffy, because what can you get done in twenty six minutes?
And so you put a laugh track on whatever. And then at the other end is you know, the ABC wants a drama and it's going to be fifty seven minutes and it's going to have all this and.
It's just how the genres.
Grew up in our heads. But they're completely artificial, and now we all stream stuff. It's just gone away. And so I guess my answer is, I think if you get rid of those categories in your head and you try and write life in a really entertaining way, what emerges is a butting of comedy and tragedy, right, Like you can't help it, because that's what life is. That's
you know, I don't know. I remember when my granddad died and we're all sitting around watching him die, and the jokes that, you know, like, it's just there's so much comedy in the face of that stuff.
I think if you're being raw and you're being honest about something, I think when you're going through something as well, there can be something quite funny. I mean, I can relate to that. One of my girlfriends lost her sister very sadly, and she rang me afterwards to say that, you know, they kept laughing the day that she passed away, you know, in this room, and she felt terrible about it. And I was like, I think it's the human condition. I think it's a way of dealing with real world,
you know. So I said not to feel bad about it and this. When I started watching Series one, I did think it was very dark, but then I found myself laughing more than being sad, and I think that's a good balance to have.
Yeah, I think that's right.
I mean, there's so much to talk about there, just the role of comedy in dealing with the tough things of life, and that we must keep doing that, you know, in the internet world, because where our activities are observed and we're worried about saying the wrong thing and stuff, it can lead to a loss of irony because irony is something that requires you know your audience.
You know, the sort of irony.
You know, you don't have to be being an edged lord or anything, but irony in the face of tragedy is very very important within cultures, very hard on the Internet because you don't know who's watching the whether they understand the context. I mean, irony really at its core is saying the opposite of what you mean, but having your audience understand what you mean. Right. It's a clash between content and intent. I think in upright and in my work in general, I'm trying to find ways to.
I think all of us are trying to find ways to. Everything can get a little bit literal and a bit sort of precious and cautious, and I don't think that's how humans are. So I'm trying to write stuff that does laugh in the face of pain. And obviously, someone like Meg who's got this terrible, terrible trauma revealed in season one, you know, there's a few things that help her heal. I mean, she never people don't ever, one hundred percent get over that stuff, but art kind of
helps her heal. And ceremony in season one they bury a camel, but it's a ceremony that she needed, and he sings a song in the middle of the desert, and that's the art that helps reflect her emotions. And then there's humor, always humor. She turns around the next morning having just revealed this terrible trauma, and we're back into gags and undercutting and stuff, And I just think it's how life works. And if I can keep doing that in my art, that feels right to me.
Is this character for you in some ways a little bit cathartic to play.
Yeah, it's nice to play a person who's got a bit of damage because I don't. I don't have damage I have. You know, I've lived a few years now, and I've lived around the world, and I have more stuff to talk about than I did when I started writing. When I started writing, I was very much like writing about being a middle class I want to be rockstar and stuff, and I didn't know. I sort of taken the piss out of the fact I didn't have much
experience or pain to draw from. It's nice to write a character or co write a character who who's kind of like the version of me that I would be if i'd been less if I've made less good decisions, if I've made more bad decisions, like if you hadn't met Sarah, Yeah, if I hadn't met Sarah.
Like it's and it is nice to play. You know.
I was also not brought up to make much of a fuss of what my own feelings and my job is to be a good dad and to be a good artist and a good husband and be kind and appreciate my privilege and all that. It's quite nice to just write someone who's a bit fucked up, so you can just sort of do those bits of yourself that you're spending your whole time like going, well, there's no room for that in my life. I'll carry on being
a good you know, blah blah. So it's nice to just get into the grid of what, you know, the potential experiences of human life.
I suppose it's like the alternate reality. You know, this could really be where I am. Thank God I'm not, but I can dip into it and kind of enjoy it, you know, exactly without being the person that's rolled your life. You know, your chemistry with Mellie al Kock is unbelievable. Every episode it's positively magic. Did you know that she was a bona fide star the minute that you met her?
I think when I first saw the tapes, you know, with the casting agent sent out the call for young women to play this role, and of course Megan season one, we find out eventually is only thirteen. So you're you're looking for teenage girls. Well, yeah, you're looking for people who can play thirteen, and there are yea. Millie was eighteen when she or not quite when she auditioned, and looks you know, famously looks very young. So there was
all that, but yeah, there's absolutely no doubt. When I saw her tape, I thought, wow.
She's pretty.
The camera really gets her, you know, she really knows how to.
I don't know, I don't know what it is. You know, I can talk about it for a long time.
She eats the less like it, even if the dialogue isn't always it just a look, just an emotion, just an interaction that she has with Lucky is just unbelievable. I mean, a lot has changed for her in her life, you know, since you made the first series. I don't want to go too far deep into this, but were you able to ask her any questions about the Game of Thrones world House of the Dragon or did you just not ask her any of those questions?
Oh? Well, I yeah, we stayed in touch just vaguely through that year.
I'd just sort of check.
In a little bit because it's been a few years since we did season one, and obviously I can't remember. I saw her somewhere when she was waiting on She wasn't allowed to say what it was, and she told me that she was waiting on something, and I could tell she was talking about I'm going to have to go to England for a year, and I was like, well,
it's Star Wars or Game of Thrones. I was like, I know, I could tell by the way she was talking about it that, you know, with all the confidentiality clauses, I knew it could only be a couple of things. And I went and saw her in We had a really nice afternoon having drinks at so her house at the end of her House of the Dragon year before she came back and it up right, and yeah, I got a big debrief on what that was. Like, I mean,
it's I mean, it's a weird thing. I think viewer sort of think of the world as it's twenty million bucks an episode, right, and it's they're acting against green screen a lot, and they're you know, there's there's dragons that are out there actually just sort of sitting on cardboard boxes and all that. It's a different sort of world, but it's the same. It's not like you've got upright and then Star Wars and Star Wars is some extraordinary,
extraordinarily different experience. So still you get into make up at four am and you've got costume and the costumes in the costume department and you've got your lines you have to learn and that comes on a little a five piece of paper and it's.
Just like it is what it is.
The difference for Millie is that she's so gifted, she's so good that she even makes some of the most experienced actors in the world look a little like they're competing having to kind of hold on while she's on screen, but she's not.
But upright, it's harder. Upright, it's tougher work.
You know, if you loved her in Game House of the Dragon, you haven't seen up right. I mean season one she was a kid, but her work in season two is like so the emotional range she has to play and the brutality of making an Australian TV show where you're trying to do this huge thing for a fiftieth of the money and you don't have endless takes at all, You've got one or two, and you don't have the half a day to set up the lights so that you look absolutely perfect in every frame, and
you don't have all this structure around you. You're just you and your acting chops. It's you and the text and obviously fantastic lighting department, fantastic directors, fantastic cameras, but it's really harder and she I sort of just when I watch House of the Dragon, I'm like, well, she's amazing, but you guys should see this other shit she does.
But I like this show, understand I like this show more like you know, I think that says more about me. And I know that there's that fandom and that you know that following that goes with something of that territory, something as big as of the Thrones world. But for me, I like Australian content. I like to feel seen on screen, and I like to feel alive while I'm watching Telly, and I feel more alive watching this kind of a kind of a story more than I can lean into
that fantasy world. Absolutely, And I think people get out of stuff.
Like this well.
I think it takes it upright, really rewards patients in investment. Like if you sit with these characters, especially through season one, it doesn't start particularly quickly, not a lot goes on, but if you sit inside the upright world, by the time you hit a bait, you will definitely be like properly crying in a way that you won't ever with House of the Dragon, just because you're not as invested in the human characters. Like I love House of the Dragon, but you just got to think of it as too
completely separate. It's like comparing a ROAs Lamb to Pavlova. They're just like different genres and what we're working on, we're working with different tools, and our tools are the minutia of humanity, not the not the drama of epic generations of Dragon writers. You know, it's it's really much more sort of personal and relatable.
But yeah, I like I like Pablova and roast in Us.
You know, everyone's life is full of drama. We all have stuff going on in our life. But the thing I love about this show is I something like, yesterday I fell off my neighbor's balcony while trying to stop her balcony overflowing with water. She accidentally had a thing burst, and I was like, so ingrained in this show. I was like, this is the part of the episode where it turns sideways and it says.
Up right, I can't you fell off a balcony.
I know you could see. Actually I thought I'd broken my nose. You can't really see it, but we all have like cookie weird stuff that happens in our life that this show does very well.
That's so good.
I mean, it should just turn the camera needs to turn sideways. We're in the real world, so that doesn't happen before we go. I just wanted to say, I think that you tap into some really raw territory of
modern families. And I love that you've thrown stereotypes out the window, you know, because if I mean, we can think back to shows that we probably grew up with and there's a mom and a dad and it's all very you know, stereotypical, where this show really talks to the people out there that are living in family that isn't the norm.
Yeah, that's great, and it really tries to talk about how, especially Susan two, tries to talk about how the kind of people you have to take responsibility for other people who need you, you know, and sometimes we don't feel
very capable. That Lucky doesn't feel like people need him because he's self esteem so bad and he's so screwed up about himself, as you know, without spoiling it too much, but someone in the final app says, the thing with Lucky is he thinks he can not hurt people by taking himself away from them, but he ends up doing the oppos And your family is really the people who
need you. And I wonder if I'm getting a bit old and I'm a bit traditional or something, but I see all this stuff on Facebook, but people are like, you know, if someone's not bringing positive light into your life, like cut them out, you know.
Get rid of all the people who are bringing you down.
And then the energy vampires and you know, all that sort of self helpshit about, like excoriating the people from your life that are troublesome. And it's like, well, I know what you're saying, but if you're lucky enough to be okay, you'll have people in your life who are not okay, who are like a total frickin' drain.
But if they're in your life and they need you.
It's not about what you need, it's about what they need. And I think lucky you need to take responsibility for the people that love him. And that's what family is, I suppose in our show, and I think I think it is complex and messy, but I think that's where the emotion comes from.
It comes from people trying to resolve these issues.
You know, those people online are talking about themselves, right, you know those people that are like, I need to get rid of these people from my life. And someone said that to me. They're like, they're talking about themselves. They're talking about the thing they don't like about themselves. Because if you delve a little bit deeper, it's usually they're like, I need someone out of my life. That's drama. But then they're protesting too much. Like you can see
the drama in the text. You can see that.
And that's very that's projection, right, Yeah, that's bad.
That's the real self loathing. What has success done for Lucky?
Though?
And I have to ask you about success because people want to be famous, well people, some people want to be famous and have the money and have you know, the fame and the glory. What a success do you think done for liking? And is there a bad side to success? I guess this is the question that I'm really asking.
Yes is the answer to the second half. And it requires a lot of introspection and management to not let certain types of success ruin your life, but or at least make your life very odd. For Lucky, the reason I thought it would be a good idea to put him in a place in the beginning of season two where he, you know, to the audience's surprise.
And I don't think it matters if I spoil it a bit, because it happened.
It's revealed in the first two minutes of the show, but of season two, but to the audience's surprise. Lucky, who in season one is so sort of hapless and useless and ends season one with some spiritual resolution, but he doesn't even have a piano anymore, let alone a home or a girlfriend or anything. He's left kind of empty, but a little bit better. But he seems to have
got what someone like Lucky would want. He's the frontman of a band playing his own music to pack, you know, venues, and he has this incredibly beautiful girlfriend who's a celeb who's like, you know, got paps after her because she's like a lead in Aussie drama or a cop show. And the reason I thought that was interesting is because we then get to see very quickly the extent to
which it doesn't fix anything. So you can get the things you thought you wanted, but you won't feel good until you've dealt with the things that in your core that are fucking you up sort of thing. And so for Lucky, we know that he still has this huge, unresolved thing and he can't kind of get past it.
And I guess that's the wisdom in Upright Season two, is that you the exterior staff of success, and you know, a nice house by the beach and a beautiful girlfriend is all well and good, but not if you haven't got your base level sorted. And I think that's the same in real life. I think I'm very, very lucky to have got Artistically, my career is beyond my wildest dreams. Like I never thought I would get to do half this. I never thought i'd have musical on Broadway or be
writing TV or anything. I sort of thought maybe I could write music for theater or something. I don't know, but it's so far beyond what I dreamt. And in terms of other measures of success, like I've got a nice house and view of the beach and all that stuff that I put lucky and you know, I'm not happier than I was, and that's a sort of tough thing to learn. Everyone says that, but until you're there,
it doesn't feel real. There's a huge amount of benefit to ending up where I've ended up, and I'm very, very lucky, and I really enjoy it. But it's quite a profound feeling to go, oh, I've got all this stuff I dreamed of and I feel the same. And by the same, I mean, I'm fine, and some days everything's shit and some days it's a struggle, and some you know, and it's a it's a big lesson, but I don't know how to pass it on because it just sounds like absurd privilege to try and pass.
It on, you know.
No, it's weird, like some the most the most amount of success I've ever had, all the most amount of notoriety I've had, is actually been the loneliest time of my life. And sometimes having some notoriety and some interest from other people can actually accentuate some of the bad things in your life. So you kind of have to ground yourself. And I guess that's why you're wearing shorts that you brought from Big w that are really.
Short to Yeah, they're out of ass. I mean, can you get added as I couldn't see the aud As logo.
I'm going to go for a going to go for a run after this, Hey, do you think what do you think that's about? I mean, I don't know how long you have to talk about it, but do you think what's the sense of isolation about what happens? Do you change when you've got a lot of attention or do the people around you change how they relate to you? Does it isolate you?
I didn't feel like people. Problem is I didn't feel like anyone was listening to me. I felt like people were wanting to talk to me for the sake of getting facetimed. But what I noticed about everybody, including people that had always been in my life, where they were not listening to what I was saying back to them because they just wanted to be in your company. And you would know this more than anyone, because you're of a level of notoriety, much more than I've ever been
able to achieve. But you would know that feeling, you know, where you're talking to someone who's just really soulless because all they want is the interaction from you. They don't actually care about what you're saying.
Yeah, I think that's interesting.
It made me feel lonely, that's what it made me feel. Made me feel Really.
It's really interesting, and you might be more emotionally intelligent than me, because I think what I've done is just gone. I'm going to pretend that no one knows who I am,
because how else should one. When I meet a new person, I just sort of assume they don't know anything about me, and in Australia and England that's increasingly unlikely, but I just go with that, and if they want to bring up that they've seen me in a thing, or that they like my work, or that they disagree with me, and until then, I just sort of assume the relationships on even footing, because I certainly feel like I don't.
I mean, it's quite hard to explain the extent to which I don't feel at all like a better or different person from any person I talked to, obviously, but when you've seen someone and tell you a lot. Because I've been through this again and again. I've met you know, Tom Cruise and Sandra Bullock and you know, some of the most famous people on the planet. And every time I meet one of those people, I go, oh my god, this is a different person than Within a minute, I'm like,
oh no, it's just a fricking person, you know. But I still, even after meeting so many famous people, I still my brain still makes the mistake of sort of putting them in a different category. And so I think if you're sensitive to the knowledge that that's what they're doing, it would be very isolating. I think I'd just sort of pretend that's not the case.
You kind of have to to stay real. I mean, I think if you, if you are enjoying it, I think you're a bit of a psycho. You know, to be honest with you, you know where you kind of have to. I've now created a bubble, which means that I'm almost like in a bunker, which means that my life is so real world and normal for me that nothing really can interfere with it anymore like that. And I'm not going to lie and say that I didn't want that. Growing up, I was like, oh, what would
it be like to be famous? What would it be like to have people be interested in new to that capacity? And my fame was only very fleeting because it came from reality television. But there for a good yep, I couldn't do anything without people doing really inappropriate things like someone took a photo and put it on Instagram. With me and the toilet at a restaurant, and I just was like, I felt so invaded by all of this stuff, and it, yeah, I.
Think that version of it.
Yeah, I have no envy, and I worry a lot about kids who suddenly go from nothing to fame. I think that is probably permanently damaging. And I think if you wanted to have a chat on your podcast one day about that specifically, I'll be very interested, because I do you know, I worry about Millie and her sudden fame, but at least she's known for her art.
She's not a celeb, you know.
And if anyone ever calls me a celebrity, I go, what are you talking about?
Like I don't even know what that means.
Like celebrities are people who like go to red carpets and get given products to sell, and I like on the front of magas.
I'm like, a, I'm not a celebrity. I don't. It doesn't fit me at all. I just make work.
And but I'm very lucky because I have been with my partner since I was very young, and I already had kids.
On the way when things took off for me.
And I think that bubble you've talked about that you've created of sort of total normality. I think I got that for free by being already trapped into being having these family priorities, so it kind of I never got to sort of live in the crazy bubble of fame.
I was always pulled back to earth. And I think that's I'm so so grateful for that, because because being important is incredibly intoxicating being someone when you walk into a room, everyone goes, oh, that is It's something in our human many of our brains that want that, that status and that power. And once you've had it, it's very, very corrupting, and you have to find a way to take the value of that because that's poison, because that's
unsustainable and it's not the right thing to value. And being an applause addict or an adoration addict or an affirmation addict, which I think I am a bit, it's something I'm like literally working on.
Like you don't need everyone to love your work.
You just need your friends to love you, you know, Like you have to love your work.
I want to get up and enjoy what it is that I do, and it is about the work. I love chatting to people and It's what I've always been doing, and I want to stay in that space where that's my passion, because if I'm doing anything else, it's not real. It's not you know, I'm doing it for the money or I'm doing it for the cause, where for me, I genuinely want to have conversations and hear people's story.
And you're very good at it too, Ben like you. Not everyone can do that, can listen authentically and do what you do.
So I hope you feel that.
You've ended in a well for now, you're in a good place because it is a gift.
It's great.
Before you go, I have to ask you this question. It's something I ask everyone that joins the podcast. It is what is something from behind the scenes, something that we will not see that we you know, won't see from the making of this show. Is there any kind of funny, silly anecdote that you'll be sitting around the table talking about for years. I can't believe that happened.
Well, I can say two things about this. One is I'm terrible at these questions. My brain just goes I don't know, like, I'm like the worst anecdotalist ever. As you can tell, I love talking about ideas and unpacking ideas, but I'm terrible at telling stories.
It's like my pressure off.
Take the pressure off.
But the other part of the answer to that question is what people might not know is making tell you, especially in Australia with our relatively low budgets, it is like going on a you know, it's not Ned Brockman running one hundred k's a day across Australia, but it's a bit like that.
It's like every day is so full on.
So you know, all the anecdotes that spring to mind about upright or that you know, getting a phone call saying this location has flooded because it was you know, south Point, it was Queensland.
In the middle of the beginning of this year.
So and you know, we can't go into production because not enough rapid androgen tests to test everyone every day, and we can't do it without testing everyone because of insurance. And you know, yeah, so all my anecdotes are actually like anecdotes of like whenever you hear about any production like Apocalypse Now or whatever that's on a river or in a tropical environment, it's just horror stories, you know.
And also you kind of you I block it out like I kind of it's all a blur because you're getting so little sleep and you're when you're a writer, producer, star like me. I mean, my brain's just completely yeah, no shit, I'm shit in anecdotes, but yeah, it's all.
It's all.
It's all kind of somewhere in between one full and trauma making.
Telly mate, I have been in your audience for so long and I really appreciate all that you do. And this second series you've outdone the first series, which is impossible. I have only seen the first three episodes, but I'm absolutely addicted. But thank you for your generosity with your time chatting with me today, and thank you for the work that you do. You know, I've been in your audience for so long and I will continue to do so.
Thank you, Ben, And I want to hear from you by some means when you watch all of the rest of the episodes, I want to know what you think.
Well, got three episodes last night. I watched them all together, and I did watch series one all in one go. D who's listening to this will know that I watched that whole first series in one city.
It's a good way to do it.
I was so intoxicated by it, but I felt like I knew these people. You know, it's like having ownership over something.
But yeah, oh that makes me so happy.
Thank you so much for the chat.