Big project set to launch tween dad’s career

Actor Jason Wilder talks to Stellar In Summer about navigating Christmas as a single dad of tween daughters, how he found his way into films and the big project that will see him take off in 2022.

You’re a single dad of two girls. What are they like?

I have Savannah, who is 12, and Arielle, who recently turned 9. I think I hit the daughter lottery because they’re very good kids. They’re pretty adorable as well.

“I hit the daughter lottery”

Christmas is just days away. What are your plans?

I’ve just bought an apartment, so I’ve been doing all the shopping for that, and I’ll be hanging with my daughters and trying to have as much outdoor and beach time as possible.

What’s on the wish list this year for your tweens?

Geez, I think they just want to be able to buy their own stuff this year. They’re like, “I don’t want to be disappointed in your presents, so let me sort that out.”

Gone are the days of trying to figure it out. [Now] they’re just like “I want to buy my own clothes and get my own make-up” and all that sort of stuff. I’m definitely entering a different stage of parenthood.

You’ve been very busy this year working on an upcoming series.

Yeah, which is really exciting. It’s with Netflix, and it’s called Irreverent. We just wrapped [filming]in Far North Queensland. We were up there for about two months living it up in tropical Mission Beach, which is where I grew up.

[We could see] the ocean, and [get] outside and sweating within three minutes. It was a beautiful experience. We’re now back down on the Gold Coast filming until March, and then that’s a wrap on season one.

Will we see it on screens later next year?

I believe so. I mean, look, that’s above my pay grade. I go in, learn my lines, do my

job and then leave it up to the bigwigs to figure all the back end out.

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Filming in Queensland is full circle for you because your first taste of the industry was as an extra on the set of Scooby-Doo in 2002 when you were 15. Did you do school plays and drama classes?

Not really, because the drama classes in high school were at the same time as sport, and I wasn’t giving up sport for drama [laughs]. But my dad noticed that I was a bit of an extrovert and threw me in with an agent down on the coast, who got me the spot on Scooby-Doo.

I remember stepping on to Moreton Island, which they had transformed into Spooky Island, and I thought: This is me. This is what I’m doing for the rest of my life.

Originally published as Big project set to launch tween dad’s career