Rake is a new Australian drama premiering on Rialto Channel tonight at 8.30pm. It stars award winning actor Richard Roxburgh as a brilliant, witty, self-destructive and politically incorrect barrister called Cleaver Greene. Superbly written and hilariously funny – this is one of the best television series I’ve seen in ages.
Recently I had a chat to Richard Roxburgh about the origins of the show, and how he’s flying the flag for Kiwi talent in Australia.
Rake is a new Australian drama premiering on Rialto Channel tonight at 8.30pm. It stars award winning actor Richard Roxburgh as a brilliant, witty, self-destructive and politically incorrect barrister called Cleaver Greene. Superbly written and hilariously funny – this is one of the best television series I’ve seen in ages.
Recently I had a chat to Richard Roxburgh about the origins of the show, and how he’s flying the flag for Kiwi talent in Australia.
Cleaver Greene is such a fabulous character – where did he come from? Who thought him up?
RR: I was always sort of banging on to my mate Pete who is a writer and director here, Peter Duncan, for years about basically writing me a fabulous role and why doesn’t he get off his lily white bum and do something about it. The character that I’d always been talking to him about was a wild and dissolute mate of mine at University who I always thought was great source material and we kind of couldn’t find a way to make that work over time, and then we started to think that the law would be a kind of really interesting place especially if there was a counter point of him being incredible good at law, an incredibly gifted barrister, but you know his personal life is an absolute disaster. There was something in that that seemed like it would have legs.
What’s the best thing about playing this character?
RR: The best thing I think is that I have some very talented writers writing for my mouth and they’re people who know my strengths and weaknesses and that’s a very rare opportunity in this life. And you know, there’s an enormous array of terrific things about this; we get an incredible company of people on the crew, we get the most talented directors, we get an incredibly talented bunch of actors working on each episode as well, so there’s a lot to be said for it. He’s obviously a lot of play, there’s a lot of playing involved with Cleaver which is fun too.
And nice to see you’re doing your bit to keep our Kiwi actors and actresses employed…
RR: Aren’t we just! Aren’t we just – we’re basically flying the kiwi flag over here.
How was it working with Danielle?
RR: Oh, it’s fantastic. What’s great is that from the moment we saw Danielle’s test she just kind of completely knocked our socks off. And we hadn’t seen her before and here she was doing this exceptionally, really knock out test for the role and she was filming herself from her neck up essentially in this. Then subsequent to that when we got her back in with great urgency - we’re really excited now, there are a couple of notes, can we just have a look at another test from you, and would you mind shooting it a bit wider - she then revealed she was 6 months pregnant. But such was the quality of her work, that we thought, OK, when we did the arithmetic we thought that means she’ll have a baby of about 3 weeks old by the time we start shooting, we still have to use her because she’s just dynamite, and she has been, she’s been wonderful.
But you know, we’re very pro-Kiwi, we really are.
Who else turns up? Martin Henderson turns up in Series 2…
RR: Oh, Martin Henderson turns up in series 2, and one of your most famous exports Sam Neill a dear friend of mine. Robyn Malcolm is exceptional and hilarious; she really gets forefront and centre in the second series and plays quite an unforgettable character and as you can imagine is a lot of fun to work with. We’ve had a revolving door of fantastic Kiwi actors [such as] Craig Hall and Kiwi directors. Jess Hobbs is one of our main directors who is going to be really working as a show runner in this season [season 3] because she just completely gets what we do.
Back to Cleaver Greene, he probably shouldn’t be very likeable but he is – he’s a breathe of fresh air on screen. Do you think he’s likeable because he says the things we all wish we could say, and does the things we’d all like to do, but don’t?
RR: I think there is a lot of that. I really do think there’s a lot of that and one of the big flags that we fly is the one about political correctness and the nanny state and all those things that really are – they’re my pet bugbears. The nanny state and the nanny of individuals is my great bête noire in this life, so I love any opportunity when we’re working on the next series to kind of sew as many of those into the mix as we can and its an opportunity for us to get stuff off our chest.
But also, I do think there’s a lot of times, now days in this life, when you have to bite your lip where you can’t say exactly what you think and in a sense it’s not only a depravation of liberty, but it’s a kind of depravation of life itself. There’s a lot of zip and zest and fun that used to exist when you had the carefree opportunity to tell someone they are kind of a moron in a public arena. Now, I don’t know, the PC police would be after you, so there is a lot of that in there, to answer your question.
And what I really like is the only person who gets the better of Cleaver is his son…he’s a very human character.
RR: What you gradually gleam over time is that Cleaver actually has a highly organized moral compass, it’s just it’s a very personal one, it’s a very particular one. But he really has his own guidelines beyond which he will not step and so there are some very interesting revelations in regard to that stuff in the second season.
You’re co-creator of the series and for the first time with a television show, co-producer, what kind of power does that give you over the direction of series?
RR: Oh, look its wonderful, I have a parking space at the production office with my name on it. I have a profound and probably unwarranted sense of power over other people around me, my minions. Look, what it really means is that we can kind of pitch in as a bunch of mates, which is what we really are. And so we’re all kind of on an equal footing, and we’re all at a time in our lives when we’re not trying to grandstand, we know one another very well, so I think the power relationship, it’s resolved itself in a very simple, honest way.
The series is excellently written, there’s this great balance of courtroom drama, relationship drama and comedy – was it a hard balance to achieve or once you had Cleaver defined, did it flow naturally?
RR: I think it is a hard balance to achieve and it does take a little while to achieve it perfectly. To my mind it’s those first few episodes you spend a lot of time doing, in any series, laying the foundations so you’re telling people who everybody is. There’s a lot of spelling stuff out, and in that sense we didn’t really get an opportunity so much to explore the perimeter of that, at that time.
Whereas I think we hit that really perfectly in the last four episodes of series 1 and then on into Series 2. But it can be at times tricky, the scripts that we were working on, by the time we were shooting the second season, the scripts that we were working off were 12th drafts, so we spend a lot of time fiddling and tinkering and making sure that even though we might bend the rules a lot, we’re not busting them and things are falling in a heap. It can’t ever get silly.
How do you feel about Greg Kinnear playing your character in the American version of the series? Congratulations too on being picked up by an American network by the way.
RR: I can’t really think of anybody else who would be, really, in that ballpark of Cleaver over there, so I think he’s a great choice to play the role. It’s on Fox so I really hope that they’ll be able to keep its kind of bumpy edges, you hope its not circumscribed, but I have every hope it will do well.
We’re absolutely thrilled to be playing the series on Rialto Channel and good luck with the third series.
RR: We’re very glad that its finally showing over there, we were very surprised, thinking come on NZ – what’s keeping you?
Yeah, were you thinking “how many more actors do we have to we have to hire before they’ll play the series?”
RR: (laughing) We’re employing all of New Zealand – what do you want!
Rake kicks off tonight at 8.30pm on Rialto Channel