Source : the age
Each week, Benjamin Law asks public figures to discuss the subjects we’re told to keep private by getting them to roll a die. The numbers they land on are the topics they’re given. This week, he talks to Toby Schmitz. The writer, director and actor, 47, is known for his award-winning stage productions and roles in TV shows such as Black Sails, Boy Swallows Universe and The Twelve. His debut novel is The Empress Murders.
Toby Schmitz: “A convincing sex scene is like fight choreography: you want it to be safe.”Credit: Louie Douvis
BODIES
Toby, how’s your body going? How’s your health? Good! I went for a run and did my press-ups at 6am this morning. But now I just feel like I’m ready for a nap.
Welcome to the mid-40s, right? That’s right, but I’ve gotten back into the swing recently. I’m going to be in a play soon which will be very demanding, and I thought, “You know what? I need to get as fit as I can.”
Do you enjoy working out? Not for a single moment. It’s all hideous; I find it so boring. But podcasts have changed everything. Now I can listen to some tweedy boffin talk about trench warfare in World War I and 45 minutes can pass.
You were never that sporty person at school? No, I was doing so much extracurricular debating, drama and the school newspaper. If I’d been good at it, maybe I would’ve got into sports more, but I was tall, pigeon-chested and pimply, and never derived pleasure from competition. And I always loathed the idea of there being one winner and one loser.
Yet you’re often cast as the handsome, dashing man on stage. Is this vision of an acne-ridden, pigeon-chested Toby real? Absolutely real. I couldn’t smile without bleeding and the acne was well down my back. But by the time I got to NIDA, it had cleared up. And notoriously, at NIDA they make you deal with the fact that you have a body. On the very first day, they’re like, “Get down to tights and a singlet.” I’d forgotten to bring mine, so I was down to my silky Davenport boxers. From that point on, I owned it, and started to love my body more.
What else are you noticing nowadays? When my daughter says, “Whoa, your grey hairs!” or “Daddy, you look old this morning!“, you’re like, “F— me!” But I’m most aware of it when I’ve said things like, “Where’s my audition for such-and-such?” And they’re like, “Do you mean the guy in his early 30s? Yeah, look, there’s another role we think might be more appropriate for you …” I may have passed Hamlet and Romeo, but it’s not Lear yet, is it?
SEX
What’s the secret to performing a convincing sex scene? It’s like fight choreography: you want it to be safe. Intimacy officers are a complete boon for stage and screen. Of course, it’s awkward in the teething stages for all of us, but it’s about a language, brokered out of the most boring concepts: “I’m going to touch you on the hip, then my hand’s going to come up your rib cage, and it’s going to linger there for maybe two or three seconds. Then I’m going to peck you on the side of your mouth, then I’m going to give you a full lip one.”
Gee, that’s so precise. It means that once the camera’s rolling or the audience is in the theatre, at least you’ve got a scaffolding rather than a free-for-all.
You’re also a playwright and now a novelist. What does it take to write a good sex scene? Martin Amis famously warned against writing about sex – unless you’re a woman. There’s something so sacred about sex that literature kind of stops outside the front of that cave and goes, “Is it sexier to swerve?” If the idea is to be articulate, sexy or to turn your reader on, I genuinely believe it’s about stopping before the act. I mean, does Sally Rooney’s new novel [Intermezzo] have good sex scenes? Yes, but because they’re more like fist-in-mouth, oh-my-god train wrecks.
MONEY
Did you always know that you wanted to act and write for a living? I had no idea that it would be possible to carve out even a slight niche as a performer.
And for a lot of people it actually is impossible, right? That’s right; it remains very hard. I basically pissed away a law degree by doing a lot of university theatre with people like Tim Minchin while going, “I have no idea what I’m going to do; I can’t be a lawyer any more.” I was really at a very obvious impasse.
What was the circuit-breaker? I got into NIDA and, in a matter of months, I was living in Sydney. It wasn’t until about a year into my training that I dared to think, “Some people actually pay their rent doing this.” I didn’t have a fallback plan other than writing. So it really surprised me when I got a few commercial gigs as an actor – early stuff on Home and Away and with the Sydney Theatre Company.
What do you like spending money on? Other people; it’s the world’s biggest kick.
What can’t you understand other people spending their money on? Cars and houses that are too big for them.
Now that your debut novel is out, is this a major career pivot for you? On some level: I’ve been writing plays all my life. They were all performed at fringe festivals, but I couldn’t get a main-stage theatre to read one, let alone make it. Eventually, Leland Kean – who used to be the artistic director at The Old Fitz Theatre [in Sydney’s Woolloomooloo] – said, “Why don’t you just write a book and skip the hassle of producing theatre? In 2013, my play [Empire: Terror on the High Seas] was put on, to limited success, but years later, I went, “Maybe it should be a novel” – hence The Empress Murders. I know how to work an audience and not be scared, but I’ve always considered myself a writer.
diceytopics@goodweekend.com.au
To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.
