Playing rock legend Stevie Wright of The Easybeats could be something of a challenge, but as Matt Myers discovered, it seems the role Christian Byers was born to play.
You play Aussie rock legend Stevie Wright in the new production Friday On My Mind. What research did you undertake?
I was actually sitting in the Mona café in Tasmania when I heard of the project’s funding announcement. As soon as I saw they were doing it, it wasn’t even a question for me. I was like “Good luck anyone else!” I read and watched everything I could for months, even before the audition process began. In my mind, seeing the announcement was almost as good as being told I was cast. That was the first step in preparing, to tell myself that I’ll be playing Stevie. Casting was a five-month process, and during that time I read, listened and formulated a thorough back-story. I’ve wanted to play Stevie since I was fourteen!
Stevie Wright had something of a tortured life. Is that covered in the script?
Not as such. This really covers from 1964 to the end of 1969, and the period of his Evie and Black Eyed Bruiser music was where that other stuff really began. From my perspective, when you’re playing someone like him, the character is kind of self-evident. The very thing that attracted so many people to him was detrimental to his own life later on. People talk about how much he changed later in life, but there’s a glint in his eye, which stayed exactly the same right until the end. The one thing I will say in terms of preparation is that I didn’t look at anything after 1969. When you’re playing a character you want back-story. You want to avoid postscript as much as possible because it’s not relevant to the story being told.
You sang and played guitar in a band called The Slippers, which has shades of that era, particularly the Beatles. You’re certainly prepped for this role!
Oh no! (laughing) I was sixteen then, and nobody is proud of what they did at sixteen! I guess in the same way if you’re making a sports film and playing a footballer, there’s a degree to how much you’re invested if you did that sort of thing when younger. It’ll be there subconsciously. But more importantly, in that band my brother was the bassist, my best friend the second guitarist and we had a revolving cast of drummers. So I learnt how to fight from being in that band, and for this project, that was the most useful thing. The cast has all been in bands and we all know how to fight…in an exclusive way about creating something together. I asked the Friday On My Mind director, when was the moment he realised it was not a pile of shit. He said the moment he saw us performing and thought, “We’ve got a band!”
How did a Gen Y’er become a fan of Stevie Wright?
I was watching the Long Way to the Top concerts in the early 2000’s with my folks and thought who’s this fat old dude with the ponytail, rattling off a song I’d never heard of? My dad was like, “That’s Stevie Wright”. That was when I first had a conscious understanding of who he was and I connected the dots from there. From the images of when he was young I noticed a gap from A to B and thought, “Wow, there’s clearly a story here.” I was interested from that point onwards.
You actually do look like the young Stevie!
You’d hope so! I see images of him performing and see myself at age eleven. It’s a certain smile that he had. Fabs, a grip on Friday On My Mind who actually grew up as a friend of Stevie’s son Nick, and new him, says the three of us have one common element. He said we all have the same eyes with a glint in them. I thought great, I’m doing my job!
One of your first roles was in December Boys with Daniel Radcliffe. How did you find working with Harry Potter?
Well I was young enough to be the right demographic for Harry Potter, so I was one of those kids who was devastated when I didn’t get an owl for my tenth birthday! To a degree it could warp you working with someone like Daniel, because they say, “Never meet your heroes”. I did meet a hero, and in a way had it shattered because he wasn’t a wizard. When I asked him about shooting the Quidditch sequences he said it was horrible, how he had to sit on a big long stick for weeks. It was the most brutal thing a twelve year old could hear. But it was also good, as it disabused me of some of the fantastical notions connected with celebrity and the magic of show business. Daniel was really something of a mentor and schooled me and other kids in the cast with keeping our feet on the ground. Like how to live our lives outside of the profession…and the bullshit. One of the other kids, James Fraser is a very dear friend of mine, and we still work together.
You’ve played a couple of gay roles too.
Yes, I did a short film called Kettle, shot all around Sydney and it became quite a significant commitment over a two-year period. It’s actually just gone up on Vimeo. It’s about a kid who went to a very repressed Catholic school, with a reserved mother and his father has abandoned the family. He rediscovers his sister as a stripper, and has his own kind of burgeoning sexuality as he’s in love with his best friend.
And you have a significant part in the upcoming movie Riot, about the 1970’s gay rights movement.
Yes I play Peter Murphy, and it’s all about the lead up to the first Mardi Gras in 1978. It was an incredible experience and a beautiful project to work on, especially with the way things are at the moment. We were filming a scene where my character is giving a demonstration at Macquarie University where Jack Mundey and the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) backed this gay kid called Jeremy Fisher who had been kicked out of the Robert Menzies College. Mundey got them on the basis that they couldn’t discriminate through a religious text. So we filmed the demonstration and literally that same day, the High Court confirmed that the same-sex marriage postal vote would go ahead.
Sounds like it was a special production?
Yes, with this project probably more than any I’ve worked on, I felt the weight of that time, but also the present moment, and it really endowed a lot of spirit. It’s a story that really warrant’s telling in this country, particularly for Sydney with its roots. I spent time with Josh Quong Tart who plays original 78er Ron Austin who is also his actual carer. It was incredible just to sit with them and learn. History first hand isn’t history. It’s very personal. I also spent a lot of time with Peter Murphy and his wife Pat. They are beautiful people, and in many ways mentors. It’s difficult with the slow crawl of neo-liberalism in contemporary society! And to spend time with people like that who are still very committed, was an incredible experience.
Let’s play fuck marry, cuddle and kill with your Easybeats costars.
I’d fuck MacKenzie Fearnley, marry Arthur McBain, I think Du Toit Bredenkamp is the cuddliest person ever, and I’d kill Will Rush, who plays George. I think the DNA audience will appreciate the degree of subtext between Stevie and George, if you know what I mean!
You played a certain style of sixties-inspired rock with your band, but what would be the campest song you’d dance to?
The Rhythm of the Night by Corona, absolutely! It’s got a melancholy to it that makes you need to dance. It has an “I’m alive, life is fine, let’s dance” feel to it.
What about a music diva?
To me there’s a very archetypal thing about the diva, and I’d have to say Laurie Anderson. In terms of a diva, performance is so important, and her stage shows are so incredible and personal. I really love her concert film Home of the Brave. Her style is so idiosyncratic and she understands performance in a way that most people don’t. I also love Kate Bush.
This is our swimwear issue, what will you be rocking this summer?
My partner’s mother has immaculate taste and she got me some very nice trunks as a Christmas present. They’re like briefs, so not as inglorious as budgie smugglers and not as daggy as board shorts. They’re very Riviera!
And for everyday wear are you jocks, boxers or freeballs?
I’m a jocks guy because I like to be snug. For the Easybeats I was in tighty whities and they were a nightmare. There’s a scene where you see me roll into a hallway, clearly pissed and a bit wobbly on the legs – and I’m in my tighty whities!
Friday on My Mind screens 8.30pm on ABC1 and iview
