From cops and robbers to doctors and vets. Rodger Corser has played them all. He tells Matt Myers about played the gifted but naughty Dr Hugh Knight on Doctor Doctor.
Doctor Doctor has been quite a ratings winner. What’s the secret?
Rodger Corser: It’s always hard to put your finger on it. If we knew the formula, we’d repeat it every time! Audiences are a kind of moving beast, and it goes in cycles, but maybe it was just time for another show like this. Around fifteen years ago we had McLeod’s Daughters, and further back The Flying Doctors and SeaChange, which all had that rural small town kind of thing. But Doctor Doctor also has dry humour mixed in with that bad boy element, which I think is part of the secret.
Yes Dr Hugh is a gifted heart surgeon, but also a bit of a bad boy. What research did you do?
Well as far as the bad boy part, we all have a past I suppose (laughing). But I did speak to some surgeons, not necessarily ones like Hugh, but when we talked about his character, they did say there’s a couple like him around. They’re fairly rare, and we may ramp it up for TV, but it’s funny how the heart surgeons we spoke to blamed the brain surgeons for being the party-boys. And I think the brain surgeons blame the heart surgeons! So apparently they’re about, but it could be a myth.
Where is Dr Hugh headed this season?
He moves into the hospital and the prototype artificial heart he’s been working on is about to go into a human. So he’s reinvigorated thinking about life outside Whyhope, and how it’s going to be successful. But we’ll see if that’s a success or failure. He’s also biding his time and making a joke about it with a countdown clock. He thinks he’ll do his time, not get involved in work politics and get out of there. Well that’s his intention, but obviously as time passes, things will happen to make him more invested.
In some ways his situation is similar to Dr Joel Fleischman on Northern Exposure.
Yeah I’ve heard that quite a bit, and also Californication. They have those different degrees of the bad boy and fish out of water scenarios.
Nicole da Silva, who plays Charlie, also co-stared with you on Rush, and has had great success playing Frankie on Wentworth. Do you get a chance to watch that show?
I’ve seen bits of Wentworth, not a lot, but whenever anything happens on that show we see how popular Nicole is through her social media. She’ll get like forty thousand responses, because she has an amazing Twitter following from Wentworth. It’s so great that it’s doing well internationally.
This is our entertainment issue. What shows do you watch?
I’m not into Game of Thrones as yet, but I’m definitely a House of Cards fan. I’ve got a two year old, and it was the period before she was born where I’d watch shows more regularly. Mad Men and The Wire for instance, but now it all depends on a combination of work and children. I watch less and less television series!
You’ve been a regular cast member on shows such as McLeod’s Daughters, Last Man Standing, Home and Away, Underbelly, Rush, Puberty Blues, Dr Blake, Glitch, Doctor Doctor…the list goes on! Would you consider yourself a seasoned actor?
An old actor? Sure! (Laughing). I guess if you hang around long enough you’ll pop up everywhere. I’ve been lucky over the past five years to be in a good variety of shows. I think it started with Rush. I’d been in a few cop shows, so I was sort of typecast, but then Claudia Karvan gave me the opportunity to be in Spirited, which was a real gear change. It was quite a comedic role, as my character was a bit of a doofus. I started to then get more character-based roles, rather than procedural stuff and I moved onto things like Puberty Blues where I played the abusive father. Then Emma Freeman, the director of Glitch, gave me the opportunity to play another very different character, and here on Doctor Doctor, even though we’re a drama, there’s a lot of comedy in our scripts. So I get to build on my comedy chops as we work on comic timing and make it bounce.
Some would say you’re like an Australian version of Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon! For instance there are two degrees between you and Johnny Depp, Natalie Portman, and Hugh Jackman.
(Laughing) None of them would ever work with me! They like to keep at least two degrees of separation! Sometimes when I get a job I do think the audience must collectively roll their eyes thinking “Oh my god, it’s this bloke again!”
(Laughing) Well, there’s also the Hyundai commercial!
Actually I haven’t been on TV with that for a while, but I still do all the voice-overs. I’ve been doing that for ten years now! Ninety five percent of those voice-overs are mine, and the only time I don’t do them is when I’m stuck on set.
And to think it all started back in 1998 when you were selected from 6,000 to play Roger in RENT!
Yeah, I remember we fronted up for the open call auditions for a cast of around twenty. There were three imports and the rest of the cast came from the 6,000 who turned up to strange casting venues. Mine was at the Prince of Wales hotel in St Kilda, and it was more rock and roll than the usual auditions.
When it comes to music, who’s your diva?
My fourteen-year-old daughter influences me, and she’s a mad Beyoncé fan. It’s Queen Bey this and Queen Bey that. So if I didn’t say her, I’d be in trouble! I do also like a bit of Adele, but when I’m driving with my daughter we have a battle of the iTunes!
If you were gay, who would be the one?
Rob Collins who I worked with on Glitch. I say that, hoping that he would turn for me. But I know that I’m not pretty enough for him, because he expects people to be as good-looking as him! He stated recently in another interview that I’m not hot enough for him.
Well he recently did this very interview, but said he’d turn for Ian Meadows from The Wrong Girl.
Well, he’s enough for me, but obviously I’m not enough for him!
When we interviewed you back in 2005, you were watching Queer As Folk and said it worked well on SBS because it was too racy for the other networks. Do you think it’s a different story these days?
Probably still not for the commercial networks because the streaming services and cable audiences are always going to be a bit more genre. The ABC and SBS can always afford to be a bit more like that, with broader appeal. And that’s with everything, not necessarily just the gay content in Queer As Folk. Those sex scenes were quite graphic…mind you Underbelly had some sex too, but by nature you’ll have a lot more on cable. I recently re-watched the English version of Queer As Folk and it’s a little dated, but stands the test of time. My take is that it also intended to shock, and nowadays that door’s been broken down, because of those very shows like Queer As Folk.
Have you ever had an on-set wardrobe malfunction?
I ripped my pants while filming Glitch! I can’t give too much away, but my character finally gets flashbacks to who he was. So I’m wearing these ye olde pants that button up at the front, with no stretch in them whatsoever, and I had to be submerged in water. So the pants kind of tripled in weight and then I also had to run, and the things just split! I don’t know why, but for some silly reason I had no underwear on, which I never ever do, and it was like “Cut! Put some underwear on Rodger!” It think these pants were sitting so low that I didn’t want my Calvin’s poking out the top, so I’d taken them off. I think they left it out of the scene, but I had definitely given the wardrobe people a shock.
So are you fitted boxers, jocks or a freeballer?
Definitely not a freeballer and never again after that moment! I used to be boxers but for some reason I’ve gone back to jocks. I think my wife started buying me briefs awhile back and I just stayed with it.
Doctor Doctor screens Wednesdays 8.30PM on Channel Nine
