Tim Minchin is sounding almost apologetic about looking nice for his Zoom call with TV WEEK.
”I’m a bit over-engineered,” he says.
”I’ve got my ring light and my make-up and everything because I’ve been making videos for Netflix. Maybe I can slouch a bit?”
You might think someone as ridiculously successful as Tim – who wrote the songs for Matilda The Musical, played a rock star in US comedy drama Californication and sells out arenas with his musical comedy shows – wouldn’t give a second thought to how he looks in a Zoom call. But he does. He’s a person who lives with self-doubt, despite his success.
”I doubt myself constantly and almost dysfunctionally,” he explains.
”I think you can only make the stuff I’ve made if you doubt yourself so much that you’re pedalling very hard to prove yourself all the time.”
Inspired by Tim Minchin’s hit song Naughty from Matilda the Musical, comes a funny and heartfelt story about why being little doesn’t mean you can’t do a lot!
(Image: TV Week)Tim is on Zoom to talk about Upright. He’s the lead writer, executive producer and star of the road-trip comedy drama, which premiered in 2019, co-starring a then-unknown Milly Alcock. The second season was shot this year in Queensland, with torrential rain flooding many of the planned shooting locations.
”We’re trying to make a huge world-class action adventure in less than 50 days, so you’re just panicking the whole time, trying to get the shots you need, and so when rain comes it just makes you die,” Tim remembers.
Once again, Milly plays teenage tearaway Meg to Tim’s troubled musician Lucky.
”Milly had just come straight off House Of The Dragon into shooting this thing,” Tim explains.
”She’s up at four every morning, going to bed at 10. Season two is all about Meg. My fellow writers and I wrote this for Milly, for Meg.”
Tim Minchin with his Upright costar Milly Alcock.
(IMAGE: TV Week)In Meg, Tim has written one of the great teenage girl roles. It says something about how the 45-year-old feels about teenagers.
”I think we underestimate how brilliant young people can be,” he points out.
Tim and his wife Sarah have two teenagers themselves: Violet, 16, and Caspar, 13.
Tim says he has ”a lot in common” with his daughter.
”She can argue philosophically with me in a way that most adults can’t,” he says.
”She won’t let me walk over her with my big words and long sentences. And my boy’s playing music downstairs now and annoying me. He just plays all the time. We haven’t pushed either of them into music or art, but my daughter can really act and my son can really play.”
Violet has been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.
”So she’s like superhuman,” Tim adds. ”So happy not to have a boring one.”
A man of many talents!
(IMAGE: TV Week)Having grown up in Perth and lived in London and Los Angeles, Tim moved the family to Sydney five years ago to be near extended family. That didn’t quite turn out.
”I had two sisters living here, but COVID and my mum getting sick sent my sisters home, so everyone’s in Perth now.”
Still, the four of them now feel ”at home” in Sydney.
”We got a pretty strong lesson with Vi that dragging our kids around is not for us, or them. So we’re going to stick it out and see what they want to do when they leave school.”
There are no plans to live in the US again (”the business of arts over there is ruthless and competitive in a way that brings out the worst in me”), but the UK is a possibility.
”London is where we left our hearts a bit and where the kids were born, so I kind of like the thought that maybe Vi will want to go to uni in Cambridge or Edinburgh or Bristol.”
As busy as Tim is, he calls himself a ”pretty family-focused dude”.
”We love spending time together and I’ve got an awesome wife and I’m very lucky. We ain’t free of our little struggles, but we mostly have a pretty good time.”
