‘My father was very cagey’: Marcus Graham’s family secret hits close to home

For 1990s soap heartthrob Marcus Graham, who got his start on E Street before branching out to US dramas – including David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive – joining the cast of 1950s historical drama Ten Pound Poms was a bittersweet connection to his past.

The father he never really knew, British-Australian actor Ron Graham (who appeared in Gallipoli and on Home and Away 14 years before his son), was a beneficiary of the Assisted Passage Immigration Scheme, which ran between 1945 and 1982 and brought more than a million people to Australia, on which the series is based.

“My father was very cagey about who he was,” says Graham, who only learned this detail of his father’s heritage on Wikiepdia after his death in 2020.

Marcus Graham plays slippery slumlord Benny Bates in the drama series Ten Pound Poms.

“He changed his name [it was Hosmer]. So I couldn’t find his family, but they were all out here. He had parents out here, a couple of brothers out here. I had no idea. And they all came out in the ’50s as Ten Pound Poms. I would have loved to have met them all and got to know them. Sadly, it wasn’t an option for me. But I do come from my father who was a Ten Pound Pom.”

Season two of the British-Australian co-production picks up the stories of the three Brits: nurse Kate Thorne (Michelle Keegan) who has come searching for the child she was forced to adopt out, and Annie (Faye Marsay) and Terry Roberts (Warren Brown), who are hoping for a fresh start with their two teenage children.

Playing British-born, suave slumlord Benny Bates in season two of the six-part series, alongside a local ensemble that numbers Rob Collins, Leon Ford, Emma Hamilton and Stephen Curry, Graham built a backstory more complex than his character’s slippery stereotype.

He worked with a voice coach to hone a blend of English plum with the clipped inflections of the refined Australian of the era, and collaborated on extending Benny Bates’ story arc with the series’ UK writers, headed by showrunner Danny Brocklehurst, who adapted Harlan Coben’s thriller Fool Me Once for Netflix.

The Australian cast in Ten Pound Poms includes Maya Stange as Maggie Skinner and Rob Collins as Ron.

“I found Benny terribly interesting to play,” says Graham. “It’s fun to see how wide a berth you can take – how likeable and charming and fun and industrious and progressive someone ultimately is – maybe destructive as well … Not unlike [manipulative Othello antagonist] Iago. I came on and I had the first three scripts. And I was like, ‘What happens to Benny in the second three episodes?’ [The writers] were like, ‘Would you like to do a few episodes of this?’ And I said, ‘I’d love to’.

“By the end, I was in the whole series … It was thrilling to see them run with what I was doing and have them write more for me. I’m really quite proud of that. It was lovely to be developing as you’re going.”

As much a hit with UK viewers as it was here, with 4.6 million Brits tuning in to the BBC One premiere in May, Ten Pound Poms presents a unique opportunity for emigrating and host countries to reflect on their entwined histories from both sides.

“It’s wonderful for them to be looking at Australia through a British lens,” says Graham. “There’s a different emotional connection. I think looking at colonialism without wanting to pull down the statues and throw paint over everything is valid and interesting … The show is not trying to pretend that there wasn’t sexism or racism. It’s just looking at it and dealing with it in a different way, which I think is enriching.

“And I find it intellectually stimulating to look at it without all this political stuff taped onto it. Not that we shouldn’t change the way we’re doing things, otherwise you learn nothing from history. But it does feel fresh to be looking at the ’50s through a lens that’s not trying to change it.”

Taylor Ferguson and Warren Brown hit the beach in Ten Pound Poms.

He observed subtle differences between the local and UK cast members’ acting methods. “The British actors get so centred and relaxed and go into this filmic mode, which I found wonderful to work with. They were very open with me and we all got on great.”

Graham was also impressed by the art department’s attention to historical detail, from the vintage cars and food props to the costumes and women’s hairdos, which he insists were not wigs.

“You would walk on set and think, ‘This is incredible! These people must have been working on this for months’. The women looked so beautiful and colourful and authentic. The work that goes into setting everyone’s hair – I looked at those women and I thought, ‘My god, it must have taken people hours to get out of the house in the ’50s’. I’m amazed by the production values.”

The opening episode involves a scene at a wood-chopping contest, where Benny Bates reveals another side of his personality.

“They are real wood-choppers. They’re very busy over Easter, doing shows and carnivals, and because we were shooting around that time, we had to wait for them to be available. It was something I’ve not witnessed before. It was amazing to see those guys climbing up the pole.”

Terry (Warren Brown) and Benny (Marcus Graham) in Ten Pound Poms.

Away from Ten Pound Poms, Graham is looking firmly at the problems of the present with his own writing project, a feature film exploring intergenerational family dynamics.

“I’ve never seen a time when people are being pulled apart so much by social politics. So I’ve written a drama set in a political field, but it’s really about the relationships in a family,” he says.

“I know families where you’ve got a 50-year-old father and a 20-year-old daughter, and the daughter cannot stand the father because he’s a freaky, middle-aged white guy. And the father is paying the private school $15,000 a term to teach his daughter to hate him. I’m not seeing one side or the other. I’m seeing everyone in it together, trying to work it out.”

Ten Pound Poms streams from March 10 on Stan, which is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.

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