Source : the age
Brendan Cowell was sitting in a sauna recently, when a woman said to him, “Oh, we just love you in Colin From Accounts. You’re so funny”.
“And I said, ‘Thank you, but that’s not me. It’s my friend,’” Cowell recalls. “And she goes, ‘No, it is you.’ And I said, ‘Actually, it isn’t me.’ She goes, ‘It’s your face and your voice, it’s you.’ And I went, ‘Do you know what? You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s me.’”
The woman, of course, was talking about Patrick Brammall – Cowell’s good friend who is now also his co-star in the new Australian psychological thriller Last Seen. You can see it would be an easy mistake to make – they’re both blue-eyed blokes who have been mainstays of the Australian screen for decades – but where Brammall has perfected the easygoing everyman, Cowell is something else altogether. He’s the guy you call when things get complicated.
“I get asked to come onto projects where you want to make monstrous men accessible, likable, or possibly understand what pain caused this reprehensible behaviour,” he says. “And I get brought in to humanise, possibly, men that could be just labelled one thing or discarded or seen in a Machiavellian or villainous way. I guess I can bring some humanity to people that behave in certain ways, I don’t know what that says about me, but you can’t judge it.”
He did it in his breakout role in Love My Way and in Plum, in which he played a retired rugby league star with a brain injury. He’s done it again in Last Seen, in which he plays Henry, a deeply religious family man who lives on an isolated property near the south-west coast of Victoria with his wife Jenna (Maxine Peake) and their teenage daughter Sarah (Chloe Jean Lourdes).
Henry is distrusting of outsiders, and wants to protect his family. However, that existence is soon disturbed when Sarah makes contact with the outside world. Her distress call is picked up by former police detective Ian Ridley (Brammall), who becomes convinced that Sarah is in fact Maggie, his daughter who disappeared 11 years ago.
What follows is a cat-and-mouse chase across Victoria – filming took place at Warrnambool, the rugged high country and Docklands studios in Melbourne – as Ian becomes obsessed with tracking down Maggie and Henry is even more determined to protect his family. It’s Cowell and Brammall playing men who are neither wholly good nor bad, just trying their best to do what they feel is the right thing.
“He’s got so much love, especially for his family, for the two women in his family,” says Cowell. “So much so that he’s hiding them from society, and has convinced himself that outside of this little valley, are the enemies and the devil and all the sinners, but it’s [only] a matter of time when you’ve got a teenager and when you’ve got a secret. You can’t contain those two things. Your secrets are your sickness.”
The series is Apple TV’s first Australian production (the 2022 series Shantaram was primarily backed by US companies), adapted from Ryan David Jahn’s novel The Dispatcher by Australian screenwriter Kris Mrksa, and directed by German Christian Schwochow. And while it might be a classic page turner – filled with vengeful dads, bad dads, family trauma and life-and-death choices – Last Seen also benefits from Schwochow’s outsider’s eye on the landscape and more arthouse approach.
Cowell says Schwochow, who directed on The Crown, would ask him about the very Australian language in the show and was also overwhelmed by our wildlife on set.
“He’s like, ‘The birds. I can’t hear. I can’t hear from these birds,’” says Cowell, laughing. “And you forget that [how different it must be] … Every scene was the most important movie ever made, and I love that because it’s un-Australian to be that passionate about something and want to make the greatest, most high-stakes piece of art ever.”
Last Seen also marks the first time Cowell and Brammall have worked together since 2015, when Cowell directed Brammall in the film Ruben Guthrie, which Cowell also wrote.
And while Cowell jokes their constant confusion for one another is “a bit Face/Off Australia 2026”, their casting in Last Seen is perfect, as Brammall is playing against type – you basically don’t expect to see him playing a vengeful dad – whereas Cowell’s natural shiftiness on screen is exactly what you expect of Henry.
“I was genuinely blown away by his performance in this because I hadn’t seen him before, that untapped rage,” says Cowell of Brammall. “And it’s so good for the story because my character, you could go, ‘Well, that’s the villain in the trailer’ – and lots of people have texted me, ‘You the bad guy again?’ – yeah, the charismatic bad guy who doesn’t make it to the next series is usually what I play.
“And what’s brilliant about this is it’s so murky and grey, which is what you want in drama. Many thrillers are good and bad and this is like everybody is implicit. Everybody is doing the wrong thing. Everyone’s hurting people, and Patrick just pushes away his son while chasing down his daughter. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen him do, and his performance really helps me because it keeps flipping.”
Why then does Cowell think people see darkness in him?
“I don’t judge my characters, and sometimes that takes you to a dark place because of what you have to try to understand,” he says. “I’ve played characters who’ve done things I don’t want to do, I’m pretty sure I won’t do. But it’s the wolf you feed, isn’t it, in life?
“And you know, I went down some dark paths in my life, and I was drinking a lot and stuff, and you think, ‘Oh, you go down there and then go down there [when accessing characters].’ The mind is a warehouse. There’s all sorts of characters in me and I feel like I can find those in me. But I look to the pain and what pain caused the behaviour, and work from there.”
Part of the pain for Henry comes from his past. Without giving away any spoilers, it was Henry’s desire to have a child that Cowell found a connection with.
“I’m not a father, and I wanted to be in the past, but it hasn’t worked out,” he says. “And I don’t think that’s a regret or anything because I feel I’m on a spiritual journey in life more than anything, and I’m going where I need to be, but that definitely helped me.
“This kind of feeling of wanting something, or wanting to find a way to nurture and to pull something off, you know, when it might not actually be true. So I think I brought a lot of that kind of energy to it, and doubling down, which I think I used to do a lot in life – just keep going, keep going, it’ll work – which is not who I am any more. But I really love that about Henry. He just loves his daughter so much that he will not stop until it’s how he pictures it.”
Cowell has been acting since he was in primary school – his first gig was a Cornflakes commercial when he was eight years old – so he had a deep appreciation for his young co-stars, Lourdes and Felix Cameron, the breakout star of Boy Swallows Universe.
“Chloe, I don’t think needs any advice,” he says, laughing. “She is a force. The first Zoom we had, she was like working on layers. Maxine [Peake] and I have done 50 plays, we’ve done all those things, and we looked at each other going, ‘What’s with this sweet face?’ [She’s a] force, and could mix it with us …
“I spoke to Felix a bit about what it’s like at school and stuff like that, and it is a bit different. And I did a lot of TV ads, and I’d turn up to school, and people would be singing the jingles, the whole school and stuff, and it was pretty tough.
“But kids are different these days. They’re a little more advanced, and Felix and Chloe probably don’t need my advice. They’re they’re on their way, and he’s good that kid.”
Now 50, Cowell says he feels more creative and useful than he’s ever been. He has another show premiering this month, season two of Binge’s High Country, opposite Leah Purcell (yes, he’s shifty again), and will feature in the new season of SBS’ genealogy program Who Do You Think You Are? He’s also finished writing another book and life is split between Sydney and London. One of his few regrets, though, is from Last Seen in which they cut a scene in which he took his shirt off.
“I did try to stay fit and trim because there was a shirtless wood chopping scene which didn’t end up in the bloody show! I’m like, ‘Thanks Christian.’ I was on the asparagus for six weeks,” he says laughing.
In future, he jokes, he may need three months off for any shirtless work.
“I did a nude scene in Love My Way, and they cut most of that out as well. So I don’t know what the messaging is. [Actually], I think the messaging is, ‘You’re 50, and you’re not Richard Gere. No one wants to watch that any more.’ Instead, you’ve got the beard, you live under a bridge, and you think you did something terrible.
“I’m just happy to be involved. It’s a tough job acting, and most people who leave it make the right decision because they have the kids and they get an adult life. I think one thing about not being married with kids and having a golden retriever is that in 48 hours I can leave, I can go wherever I want. So it has allowed me to live the artist life in a lot of ways, just being a one-man show.”
Last Seen is now streaming on Apple TV.
