Brenton Thwaites on family Christmas, How To Make Gravy and the Johnny Depp he knows
Actor Brenton Thwaites hit the big time with Maleficent, Titans and Pirates of the Caribbean, but says a new Australian Christmas classic made him appreciate life at home.
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Just like his character Dan in the new Australian Christmas movie How To Make Gravy – which was this week nominated for 15 AACTA Awards including best film, soundtrack and direction – Brenton Thwaites knows what it feels like to be a bit of a “blow-in” during the festive season.
The Cairns-born actor, who first found fame in 2011 as bad boy Stu Henderson on Home and Away, spent most of his 20s in living in Los Angeles, New York and Toronto, and travelling the world for roles in movies such as Malificent and The Giver, as well as the lead role of Dick Grayson (aka Nightwing) in the DC Comics TV show Titans.
“I would fly in for these little snippets of time,” recalls Thwaites over Zoom call from his new farm on the New South Wales/Queensland border. “In a weird way, similar to Dan, I would come in and just have a great time and leave. Admittedly, there wasn’t really a lot of deep connection with my family due to the transient nature of that time in my life.”
Now 35, and a father of five with partner Chloe – “my oldest is eight and then there’s six, four, two, zero” – Thwaites is all about family. He’s running slightly late for the interview because he’s been dashing around the farm the family moved into about three months ago, after relocating from the Gold Coast. When he finally appears on screen, he’s shirtless, slightly harried but clearly living the dream “in the middle of the Aussie bush”.
“By 9pm you want to go to sleep, if there’s a cow out you have to chase it down, bunnies are digging holes, the chickens are growing so you have to build a coop for them,” he beams. “And then you have five kids who are screaming at you and need to be fed. It’s full-on but it’s good fun.”
It also means that Christmas is going to look very different for the Thwaites family this year. Growing up with a midwife mother, Thwaites rarely got to celebrate on the actual day, but his years away and his own brood have given him a new-found appreciation of the season.
“Now we have an opportunity to start fresh and I’m going to have Christmas on the block and just see how that goes,” he says. “The good thing about Christmas is really just getting together and just bringing people together. Kids think of presents or whatever, but when I think of those Christmas lunches, or any kind of Christmas thing that we did as kid, it was getting together with family and friends and hopefully that’s what we’ll try to do this year.”
The family themes in How To Make Gravy – adapted from the beloved Paul Kelly song of the same name – plus the fact that he could drive to the shoot made the project a no-brainer for Thwaites. He plays the Dan of the opening line – “hello Dan, it’s Joe here, I hope you’re keeping well” – the brother of the incarcerated author missing his family in the lead-up to Christmas.
In this version, written by ARIA-winning musician Megan Washington and her husband Nick Waterman, who also directed, Dan is once-famous, but now fading, musician back to visit the family of battlers and the daughter he rarely sees. In the movie, as in the song, there’s an uneasy tension between Dan and Joe’s wife Rita (played by French actor Agathe Rousselle in her first English language role), who is now struggling as a single mother, raising the question of whether Dan is, in fact, going to do the dirty on his jailed brother.
“It’s an interesting character because he is a bit misleading,” says Thwaites. “You don’t want to like Dan, but at the end of the movie you realise his heart is in the right place and he’s trying.
“He is coming to a point in his life where the travelling and the transient touring and the music stuff is coming to an end or simmering down, and he’s trying to atone for a lot of the mistakes that he’s made as a father, as a brother, as a son.
“Part of the film is him trying to make things right, trying to step in the right direction. Even though he is stepping in s**t sometimes, he’s trying to move forward.”
Thwaites, a keen guitarist and singer-songwriter himself, also says he was intrigued by the concept of adapting song into a film that would speak to modern day Australia rather than making a more conventional music biopic such as Bohemian Rhapsody to Rocketman.
“It’s dealing with themes like the patriarch of the family, abuse, violence and even just the little things in the family dynamic,” he says. “Like a couple that are falling out of love that learns to fall back into love. And a young girl who just wants more attention from the father. The loss of a mother and how older adult siblings are struggling to deal with it even though they are in their 40s and well into adulthood. So it’s a great mix of the music world, but also weaving in what everyday Aussies will connect with.”
The last time that Thwaites worked near his then home on the Gold Coast was on the $300 million fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Dead Men Tell No Tales, and he says that despite working with many of the same crew on How To Make Gravy, the experiences could hardly have been more different.
“The budget that we had for half a day on Pirates was probably the budget for the entire movie on How To Make Gravy,” he says with a hollow laugh.
While that movie ended up being better known for its troubled production – the volatile relationship between star Johnny Depp and his then wife Amber Heard played out in very public and ugly fashion in a US courtroom in 2022 and their dogs Pistol and Boo created an international incident when they were snuck into the country on a private plane – Thwaites says he was oblivious to a lot of it at the time.
“Now I know ‘oh, that’s why maybe Johnny wasn’t coming to work’ or ‘that’s why I was sitting around learning flamenco for 12 and a half hours by my trailer waiting for people to come to work’,” he says.
Overall though, his experience with the huge sets and over-the-top action scenes was positive and even though his chapter made the least money of the four films (but still over a billion Australian dollars), it’s one he would repeat in a heartbeat – Depp and all.
“For me as an audience member, I love Pirates so much, and it’s such a wonderful franchise,” he says. “It’s so entertaining. It’s fun. It’s funny. Johnny Depp is just a f**king star in it – he’s so good. And he’s such a sweet guy. So good to fans, he was great to me. He was great to everyone on the set. I don’t know if that was the reason why it didn’t do as well, but definitely (in 2022) the biggest show in the entire world was the Johnny and Amber show a lot of it was on the Pirates set.”
Similarly Thwaites has had just enough time to be missing his Titans character, Dick Grayson, although he’s doubtful he will ever get the chance to play him again given that the DC comic book universe has been entirely rebooted by new CEO, director James Gunn.
“I think James is just a wonderful visionary for that property and whatever he is going to do, he’s going to do amazingly,” he says. “He’s seems to knock it out of the park every time.”
In the meantime, he likes to keep the legacy alive by doing the occasional appearance at conventions – a great way to see the world, meet the fans and make a little cash between jobs.
“It’s just a fun way to connect with the people who are consuming your product,” he says. “I should have done them before Titans because they give you so much insight to the character – they seem to know the characters way better than I ever did, which is funny.
“I’ve never had a bad experience, and they’re always just a ton of fun, and everyone’s just so keen to see me and it’s super flattering. I really get off on making someone’s day – like that person is there to see you and if you can just give them a little slice, five seconds of energy, it’ll just make their year.”
How To Make Gravy is now streaming on Binge, available through Hubbl.
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