There’s a scene in Brendan Cowell’s new series Plum where Von, an older woman with a pink mohawk, gets up on stage to read a poem. Von is played by Brendan’s mother Yvonne, a retired nurse, who changed her hairstyle for the role at Brendan’s suggestion.
“She’s just got standard old-lady hair, but I thought she needed to be like a punk from the ’70s and she was up for it,” Brendan, 48, tells TV WEEK. “She’s been in all my films, little cameos, but this was her biggest part yet, and she hopes it really trampolines her into Hollywood.”
The poem Von reads, “Life At 80”, was written by Yvonne herself.
“I told her I’d give her a line and she sent me a three-page poem. I’m like, ‘Mum, we don’t have time for you to read a three-page poem. We need to keep the plot moving, and Von the poet is not an enormous part of the plot!’ So we let her do it, but it kind of fades out.”
It’s fitting that Brendan’s mother has a role in the series, because if it wasn’t for her, he may never have become a writer and actor. Brendan was brought up in the Sydney beachside suburb of Cronulla in the Sutherland Shire, home of the Cronulla Sharks NRL team, but his mother made sure that he always had the arts in his life.
“We were driving in from the Shire to see Three Colours: Blue [the 1993 French psychological drama] at the Verona [cinema] in Paddington [in Sydney’s east],” Brendan remembers. “She was always like, ‘Think outside the box, think outside the Shire and see things.’ She’s been my muse and my greatest supporter.”
Sport was Brendan’s first love, and at school, he played rugby league.
“When you’re young, you fancy yourself,” he explains. “Even though I was in the Bs, I was like, ‘Yeah – I’ve got something here.’
“I was very tough in the under-14s, but in the under-16s, the men came back twice as big. I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to tackle him.’ And so I went for the emotional pain of the arts rather than the physical pain of rugby league.”
Brendan started his TV career with small roles in series such as Water Rats before Love My Way came along. He wrote episodes of the groundbreaking drama and starred in it, alongside Claudia Karvan and Asher Keddie. Since then, he’s appeared in shows from Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War, where he played cricketer Rod Marsh, to Game Of Thrones, where he played Harrag. On the big screen, he appeared in James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar: The Way Of Water.
In his twenties, he “really disappeared up my thespian alleyway”, he jokes, but in his thirties, he found himself missing rugby league.
“Living in London and New York, I craved it and I became really obsessed with the Sharks. It’s almost like it anchors me to home.”
A few years ago, Brendan decided to put his “two loves” – the written word and the Cronulla Sharks – into a novel, Plum, about Peter “The Plum” Lum, a retired league superstar who discovers poetry just as he realises he has a brain disorder caused by years of head knocks.
When Brendan finished writing the novel, he sent it to Asher, who he’d stayed friends with since the Love My Way days. He asked her to read it and give him a cover quote. She not only read it, she decided that she could see herself playing Plum’s ex-wife.
“She goes, ‘Yeah, I think I’m Renee,’” he remembers. “And I’m like, ‘Well, if we ever make this thing into a show, you’re Renee and I’m Plum.’
“When Asher Keddie signs on to your show, everything escalates. It made me realise, ‘I’m making a proper adult TV show.’”
Plum is now premiering as a six-part drama, with a cast full of big names, including Susie Porter and Jemaine Clement, guest appearances by rugby league greats Andrew Johns, Mark Carroll, Paul Gallen and James Graham – and, of course, Yvonne.
“Look, if Von the poet pops, then there’s always room for a spin-off!” Brendan says.
Plum starts Sunday, October 20, 8.30pm on ABC
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