“Colourblind Casting Prevails” (Joy’s interview with Tony Ayres in this month’s MEAA magazine)
September 30, 2015 By
Interview with Remy Hii (Marco Polo, Better Man, Neighbours)
July 16, 2015 By
Remy Hii is an Australian actor. He attended the National Institute of Dramatic Art for three years and appeared in various theatre productions before being cast in television. Hii starred as Van Tuong Nguyen in the miniseries Better Man and was cast as Hudson Walsh in the soap opera Neighbours in 2013 and currently starring in Marco Polo. Hii was born to a Chinese-Malaysian father and an English mother. His early theatre work was with The Emerge Project an arm of Switchboard Arts. There he performed in a number of original productions in Brisbane by local playwrights between 2005 and 2007. From 2009 to 2011 he attended the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) in Sydney where he graduated in 2011. I was lucky to interview Remy who’s currently filming for Marco Polo.
1) When you were growing up who were your role models on Australian TV & Film?
I actually grew up as a young kid in Papua New Guinea; we didn’t have television reception out there so my grandparents in Sydney would send out the TV guides from back home, and I’d highlight the shows I wanted to be taped, and they would mail back VHS tapes for us to watch. Gary Sweet in Police Rescue was a pretty big part of my life back then. Sadly looking back to my younger years, I don’t recall there being many faces of colour on our screens to look up to.
2) What made you want to break into Australian TV / Film?
I’ve always been motivated to succeed in this industry, as an artist, to be able to tell stories that excite me and in turn excite others. To get people passionate about Australian stories again. My friends and I always bemoan the often heard line “It was good… for an Australian film”. Somewhere along the line our storytelling stopped connecting with the audience: it stopped reflecting the country that many of us are living in; and yet there is a strong push now for new voices to be heard and that is something I want to be a part of.
3) How did you get started in your career?
A fantastic co-op theatre company in Brisbane run by Dr. Errol Bray allowed me to hone my craft as a young actor and recognise the importance of new writing in Australia. It was through performing there that I was asked to audition for a new play at the Queensland Theatre Company – The Estimatorwritten by David Brown. It won the Queensland Premier’s Drama Award in 2006 and I was playing the title role to sold out shows for an extended season. It was a wonderful induction into the industry, and cemented for me the idea that perhaps there was a place for me as an actor in Australia.
Coming from theatre in Brisbane, Film and Television seemed like this unattainable and mysterious thing. I found myself being sent for roles like Asian Gambler in East West 101, Asian Nerd in The Strip, and Asian Ladyboy in SeaPatrol. It wasn’t until I graduated from NIDA that other options started opening up for me, and chances to play interesting characters who were more than their skin colour or racial stereotype started to present themselves. Looking back, I’m kind of glad I never got the part(s).
4) Do you see a positive change to colour blind casting in Australian TV / Film and Theatre?
This is a really tough question to answer, as I can only speak from personal experience and sometimes it seems like we’ve really made it and sometimes it feels like we’re back living in the 50’s. I think we are making baby steps towards a place that reflects the wonderful variety that is our nation. It’s slow, and there’s a long way to go but television is no longer the same as when I was young and diversity on our screens meant the other variations of white like Greek and Italian.
5) What changes would you like to see in the TV & Film industry?
More risks. Some of our countries greatest runaway hits have come from projects that the commercial networks would recoil from. Shows like The Slap, Please Like Me and Redfern Now have all found success and audiences here and overseas, and they refused to be safe – from casting to themes and subject matter. Rather than being afraid of what makes us different, we should be embracing it.
6) What more do you want to achieve in the future?
I feel like I’ve barely even begun! I’ve been working for the last few months on the second season of Netflix’s Marco Polo. It’s a very big budget, action heavy production requiring hundreds of actors and extras, hours and hours of physical training, fight choreography and punishing hours on set. It’s an incredibly rewarding process, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it, but I’m looking forward to coming back home and getting back to the theatre. Just a stage and that magic connection between the actor and the audience.
Photos courtesy of Remy Hii and Australians in Film
Q & A with Australian screenwriter / producer / director Tony Ayres
April 8, 2015 By
Tony Ayres (born 16 July 1961) is a Chinese-born Australian screenwriter, director in television and feature film. He is most notable for his films Walking on Water and The Home Song Stories, as well his work in television –The Slap and teen adventure series Nowhere Boys. He’s Executive producer on Maximum Choppage (a six part kung fu comedy series for the ABC starring Lawrence Leung) and The Family Law (six part comedy series for SBS based upon the memoirs of Chinese Australian journalist, Benjamin Law).
Q. When you were growing up who were your role models on Australian TV & Film?
Tony: When I was a kid, I actually avoided Australian film and TV. There was nothing that I watched, except for getting the occasional guilty glimpse of “Number 96” or “The Box”. Perhaps it was because I felt a typical Australian cultural cringe? Or perhaps because there was no one on the screen who represented “me”? Or some weird amalgam of both. The shows I loved were mainly American TV shows.
Q. What made you want to break into Australian TV / Film?
Tony: I had always loved words and wanted to be a writer, but half way through my university degree, I realised that academia was killing my passion for literature. I ended up changing to a visual arts degree at the Canberra School of Art. If I had found a creative writing course, I probably would have done that. Film and TV for me was never a driving passion, more a logical deduction. Words + plus pictures = screen. It was only when I started getting into the area that I grew to love it.
Q. How did you get started in your career?
Tony: After film schools (both VCA and AFTRS), I started work as a TV writer, and was fortunate enough to get work from the start. Lucky, because I entered the industry relatively late (my late twenties). Those were the days when SBS was starting to produce scripted drama, and there was a greater appetite for multicultural stories. I wrote a number of TV plays for a number of anthology series- “Under the Skin”, “Six Pack” and “Naked- Stories of Men”- which gave me a grounding in writing drama. As well, I started directing documentaries and short dramas which gave me a taste for directing. I feel like I was at the right time at the right place because I was able to make an early career out of the marginal identity politics which I was personally grappling with- being Chinese, being gay, being Chinese and gay. I think that’s harder to do these days.
Q. Do you see a positive change to colour blind casting in Australian TV / Film and Theatre and do you incorporate this method of casting in your own productions?
Tony: Honestly, whilst I think the rhetoric has evolved, in the scripted area I don’t think that there has been a substantial change in terms of colour blind casting. Every few years a non-Anglo actor will do a significant film or TV role and in the press junket raise the question of diversity as a public issue. There will be a flurry of associated articles, and these days a bunch of “likes” on Facebook, but soon after the status quo will settle again. The network mental “default” will still to be to white. Non-white cultures will still be massively under-represented. It will be just as hard for non-Anglo actors who attract attention through a breakout role to sustain their careers. Diversity for the Australian entertainment industry is like “gay marriage” for Australian politics. A lot of people believe in it, but few people are prepared to cross the floor to vote for it.
For there to be substantial change, I think that it’s about the people who are genuinely invested in the issue of diversity (ie people from diverse backgrounds themselves) becoming the decision makers, the commissioners, the network executives, the makers. I guess I’d look at my own work as an example. Diversity is important to me because I have personally felt the effect/damage of growing up Chinese in a white culture. So, it’s one of the determinants of what I do. My kids show, “Nowhere Boys” has a recurring role for a Chinese Australian actor (and the actors playing his family). I’m currently executive producing “Maximum Choppage” (six part kung fu comedy series for the ABC starring Lawrence Leung) and “The Family Law” (six part comedy series for SBS based upon the memoirs of Chinese Australian journalist, Benjamin Law). And I’m also EP’ing a feature film, “Ali’s Wedding”, a Muslim romantic comedy.
Q. What changes do you want to see happen in the entertainment industry?
Tony: In terms of diversity, I’d like the Australian government funding bodies to take this issue seriously enough to create some kind of quota system in terms of representation. The US and UK industries have both found relatively benign ways to legislate for diversity, and I don’t think it’s harmed their products or their share of the world market.
Finally what projects are you currently working on?
Tony: Aside from the shows listed above, I’m also executive producing a new show for ABC Drama called “Glitch” which is the ABC’s first supernatural TV series, and EP’ing and co-writing the feature film version of “Nowhere Boys”. There are some exciting new projects in early days as well, yet to be announced. But a recurring theme of diversity can be traced through them all.
Q and A interview with Benjamin Law about diversity
November 30, 2014 By
Benjamin Law is a Sydney-based journalist, columnist and screenwriter, and has completed a PhD in television writing and cultural studies. He’s also member of M.E.A.A. as a freelance writer.
Benjamin is the author of two books—The Family Law (2010) and Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East (2012)—and the co-author of the comedy book Shit Asian Mothers Say (2014) with his sister Michelle and illustrator Oslo Davis. Both of his books have been nominated for Australian Book Industry Awards.
Benjamin is also a frequent contributor to Good Weekend (The Sydney Morning Herald/The Age).
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What made you want to write your story – The Family Law?
I’d been writing personal columns for frankie for a while, and I noticed the ones that made reference to my family – especially my mum – got a great response. Which isn’t surprising, really – my mum is pretty hilarious, unique and baffling, in the way that only mothers can be. And after I wrote longer pieces for an anthology called Growing Up Asian in Australia, my now-editor approached me, asking if I had a book up my sleeve. Part of what motivated me to write The Family Law was this idea of writing a book I wish I’d read as a teenager. One with a hilariously dysfunctional Chinese-Australian family.
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After writing your story, what steps did you take in order to get your story / screenplay seen by a network or producer?
I didn’t actually seek out screen options myself. I think my publisher would’ve had chats with production companies, and the book was also on people’s radars after a certain point. But when I heard Matchbox Pictures and Tony Ayres – whose work I’d admired for years before we even met – were interested, I knew they were the ones for me.
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Your screenplay will obviously open doors for diversity…however will your screenplay also be open for “colourblind casting?”
I’m only on the show as a writer, so I don’t get to call those shots.
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Can you reveal how many roles will be Asian?
What I can say is that roughly 90% of the cast is explicitly written as Chinese-Australian, so we’ll need the majority of actors to have Asian faces. There are a handful of other roles which are specifically for Eurasian actors, and some roles are definitely white. As for the other roles, I reckon that can and should go to as many different actors as possible!
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When you were growing up in Australia, who were your role models on television and / or film and why?
There weren’t a huge number of Asian faces on telly when I was growing up. My family and I used to point at the TV and scream in excitement if there was an Asian on TV: “THERE’S AN ASIAN ON THE TEEEE-VEEEEEEEE!” But there was definitely celebrity chef Elizabeth Chong, on Good Morning Australia, and Dr Cindy Pan on sex/life, and I remember seeing Clara Law’s beautiful feature Floating Life, which affected me a lot. But I’d usually look overseas for Asian representation on screen. I mean, I watched The Joy Luck Club A LOT. But it’s getting better nowadays, and reality TV has done heaps to reflect how diverse Australia actually is. You see a lot more Asian-Australians in local comedies and dramas, but not nearly enough.
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What are you looking forward to in the future on Australian television?
I’m really looking forward to Lawrence Leung’s kung-fu comedy Maximum Choppage on ABC2 next year.
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