Todd McKenney has been looking forward to his new drama series, Significant Others, going to air. His 15-year-old daughter not so much.
“My daughter is horrified because I told her the first scene I shot was in a sauna pashing someone,” Todd tells TV WEEK with a laugh. “She was just mortified: ‘Dad, it’s not going to go on Netflix, is it?’ I said, ‘No, it’s on the ABC.’ She said, ‘Oh good – none of my friends watch that.’ I said, ‘Thanks for your support, darling!’ But no, she’s proud as Punch.”
For Todd, best known as the tough judge on Dancing With The Stars, playing Wayne in Significant Others is his first major dramatic role. It’s a character he feels a real connection with.
“To be honest, I think that’s the real me,” he says. “I think the Wayne I play is the real me and the other person on Dancing With The Stars is a character.”
The 57-year-old found it “really, really refreshing” to play parts of his life that were “exactly” like Wayne’s.
“You know, openly gay, proud about it – and I’m not a mince-y queen,” he adds. “It just felt like, for the very first time, I was playing the authentic Todd, and that felt really good.”
Todd as Wayne in Significant Others, with Kenneth Moraleda as his partner Den and Zoë Steiner as his niece Hanna.
(Credit: ABC)Adding to the air of authenticity is the fact that Wayne’s greyhound, Narelle, is played by Todd’s greyhound, Nancye Hayes (named after his good friend, the actress Nancye Hayes).
Tommy Murphy wrote the script without realising that Todd had two greyhounds of his own, and when Todd found out a dog was going to be hired to take on the role of Narelle, he suggested Nancye.
“She was a dream,” he says. “Tony [Krawitz] was directing her and saying, ‘Will she get up on the couch and lie down and rest her head on Rachael’s [Blake] lap? And I went, ‘Yeah. Nance, up!’ Up she got.
“She’s become very demanding now – wants her own trailer and her own couch!'”
In Significant Others, Wayne is the fiancé of Den, whose sister Sarah (Jacqueline McKenzie) has gone missing. As viewers get to see, Wayne and Den have an open relationship.
“Which is probably not like me in general,” Todd adds.
“I don’t know that they always work.”
Todd had never met Kenneth Moraleda, who plays Den, before the two were cast as long-term partners. He says the sauna scene on his first day – “pashing, in a towel, with a dodgy spray tan” – broke the ice.
“We did intimacy training, of course, beforehand, during rehearsals,” he adds. “We were both so into the project, it was surprisingly easy.”
With Sonia Kruger in 1992’s Strictly Ballroom.
Todd and Kenneth also filmed scenes at the Sydney Mardi Gras, and Todd’s “dodgy spray tan” drew quite a few comments.
“Everybody was going, ‘McKenney, what have you done?’ I’m like, ‘No, it’s for work.’ All my friends are there and I’m looking like an orange pumpkin!”
Playing a lead role in a TV drama may be new to Todd, but he’s done a lot of other things in his four decades in show business. Because his mum ran a dance school, he was performing from a young age.
“I had no doubt I’d be in showbiz,” he says. “It just feels very natural to me.”
A ballroom dancing champion who went on to appear in stage musicals, Todd took on a role in the classic 1992 Australian movie Strictly Ballroom at very short notice. It wasn’t too much of a stretch – playing Nathan Starkey, dancing partner to Tina Sparkle, who was played by his former girlfriend Sonia Kruger.
“I auditioned for the lead because it was originally written as a blond Aussie guy, and then Paul [Mercurio] got it,” Todd remembers. “The guy playing him [Nathan] got sick and they needed someone who could learn a rumba in one day and dance with Sonia, so I just got dragged in.”
As a judge on Dancing With The Stars alongside Helen Richey and Mark Wilson.
(Credit: Channel 7)Todd became famous in the musical theatre world as Peter Allen in The Boy From Oz and then, in 2004, TV fame followed in Dancing With The Stars. He says he came up with a “personality” to differentiate himself from the other judges on the show. “Most of the time, my tongue was firmly planted in the cheek,” he says.
“I had a lot of fun.”
Eighteen years on, he says he’d jump at the chance to do another season.
“I just wait for the phone call – or not!” he says with a laugh.
Whether or not that call comes, Todd is aiming to get back on TV in another dramatic role. He feels “grateful” that he was given a chance in Significant Others.
“Now, I just can’t wait for the next one [role],” he says.
“I want to get stuck right into this world. I loved it.”
Of course, Todd’s most important role is as father to Charlotte, his daughter with actress friend Anne Wood. He says that when he was growing up, he spent a lot of time working with kids at his mum’s dancing school.
“That was my life, just kids, kids, kids, kids, kids,” he remembers.
“So it was just always in my DNA, I suppose.”
And yet for a long time, he didn’t know whether he would become a parent.
“Back when I was growing up, people like me didn’t have kids,” he points out. “But I’m absolutely blessed that we did it. Times have changed, and I’m rapt and thrilled to be a father.”
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