‘It taught me a lot about life’: Matt Okine opens up about losing his mum

Back in Brisbane to be closer to family, comedian Matt Okine shares the joy of being a dad and how his mother’s death when he was 12 changed his perspective on life.

Matt Okine remembers the day well.

He was 12 years old, just getting home from school and looking forward to seeing his mum, Roslyn, to tell her about his day.

Instead the house was silent and Okine found his mother collapsed in the shower.

Just three weeks later she would lose her life to the breast cancer that had spread to her brain, and her death at age 42 would leave its mark on his skin in all sorts of ways.

“It taught me a lot about life,” says the Aussie comedian of his mother’s death.

“It taught me a lot about resilience and acceptance and not to sweat the small stuff.

“I take more risks now because I am aware that you only live once and you can’t really live for other people, you have got to make yourself happy and do things you love,” Okine, 38, says. 

“So that’s why I’m doing all these things.”

Comedian Matt Okine on moving back to Brisbane, fatherhood and his new show, Mother and Son. Picture: David Kelly

Okine – a stand-up comic, writer, podcaster, author and actor – is making moves, both professionally and personally and credits his mum’s influence helping him to make them.

In December last year he moved back home to Brisbane to be closer to his dad, Mack, and surround his daughter, Sofia, 4, with family, after 17 years in Sydney.

On the work front, he’s taken on one of his most ambitious projects yet as creator, writer, producer and star of the remake of the long-running classic, Mother and Son.

In the recently released ABC series, Okine plays Arthur alongside Australian comedian and actor Denise Scott as Maggie.

They were iconic roles famously played by Ruth Cracknell and Garry McDonald in the beloved original, created by Geoffrey Atherden, which aired from the mid-’80s to ’90s.

It’s a project close to Okine’s heart and in all the ways his mum has left her mark, this was among the most powerful.

“I think because I had lost my mum when I was 12, I’d never really pictured a life with a mum,” he says.

“So suddenly, there was this idea of, hold on, what would my life look like if my mum was still alive and it was my dad that had died instead of my mum? … And that just fits the storyline to Mother and Son perfectly.”

He came up with the idea years ago after touring with Scott through Hong Kong in 2013 and knew he wanted to work on something together.

“It was really nice to be able to connect through characters in a way that I’ve never been able to as an adult … so there was some really nice moments where the relationship certainly felt real to me,” he says.

Okine knows it’s risky to mess with a classic and feels the pressure but he was passionate to reflect the changing face of Australia in the decades since the original.

Matt Okine with Denise Scott on set for Mother and Son.

The series dives into themes of race relations, ageing, motherhood, and ethics in aged care, technology and changing family make-ups.

Okine worked alongside Atherden to create the series and has his full support, yet the comedian can’t help but pre-empt the critics.

“I think some of the naysayers think that this was done purely as an exercise in wokeness,” says Okine, who grew up in Indooroopilly in Brisbane’s inner west. “And the only reason why we’re doing it is because someone had the idea of remaking it, throwing some brown people in there to make it woke.

“It’s not like that at all … I find that frustrating because it’s suggesting that my whole existence is merely an exercise in wokeness and it undermines who I am, who my parents were and the lives that we have in our place in Australia.”

In anything he does there’s an element of the personal.

Whether it’s as a podcaster, actor, stand-up comic, former Triple J breakfast host, author of Being Black ’n Chicken, and Chips (based on his award-winning stand-up show) or writer and creator of popular TV shows including The Other Guy, it’s what makes him the storyteller he is, he says.

But of all the personal projects that have come before, he confronted a vulnerability he’d never experienced on the set of Mother and Son.

“I realised I don’t know how a son and a mother show affection to each other,” says Okine. “Because I haven’t done that as an adult before.

“It’s embarrassing … I was asking people things like, ‘Would I hug her here? Would we hug now? What do you think should happen?’

“Having to explore elements like that, which seem so small and trivial, was quite a vulnerable thing for me … realising I don’t actually know how a son would connect with his mum?”

Matt Okine for Mother and Son on ABC.

It’s been 25 years since her death but it’s forever etched in Okine’s memory.

He was in his first year of high school and six weeks into the term at Brisbane State High when his mum was complaining of a headache.

His parents had been separated for five years at that stage and Okine lived predominantly with his mum. He noticed something started to shift.

“She didn’t go to work for a few days and sort of just stayed in her room and then she had a migraine for two weeks,” he says.

Then Okine walked into a scene no boy should face.

“One day I came home and she had collapsed in the shower. Dad had dropped me at her house that night so I quickly ran back down and told him to leave the car there and help me,” he recalls.

“We took her down to the car and to hospital that night … she died about three weeks later.

“She died two days before my 13th birthday.”

It took time for Okine to find his way as “a 12-year-old, half African kid trying to fit in a new high school while his mum dies of cancer”.

He was thrown into living full-time with his father, who is of Ghanaian heritage, and after a bumpy road early on, Okine couldn’t be more grateful.

“I think looking back now, I learned more and more about the sacrifices he made and the situation that he was thrust into suddenly being a single dad to a teenager who just wanted to use all of the really typical outlets to get over the fact that he was suffering inside,” he says.

Most of his teenage years, he says, were lived in denial.

Acceptance only came when he first started studying a bachelor of fine arts and acting at Queensland University of Technology when he was 17.

“On our first day we had to do this acting exercise where you had to talk to someone that wasn’t there in the room,” he says.

“My acting teacher suggested I talk to my mum. I didn’t know what to say at first.

“I was in the corner of the room pretending that she was there … then I just burst into tears because I’ve never really confronted that or contemplated actually trying to express how I felt about it.”

Okine credits his mum for fuelling a fearlessness he needed to kickstart the comedy career he’d dreamt of.

“I’d always wanted to do it but realising that you only get one shot at life, that’s what propelled me to actually just say, ‘You know what, I’m just gonna give this a crack,’” he says.

“I just decided to start doing all the things that I really wanted to do and one of them was acting and stand up.”

And later, another of those things would be moving back home.

Living back in Brisbane for the first time since he was 21 has brought memories of his mum flooding back but he assures it’s in the best way.

“Walking along the bike path along Coro Drive (Coronation), or going out to Shorncliffe to get fish and chips on the jetty, catching the bus into the Myer Centre on a Sunday because they were the only shops that were open back then. Moments like that where they hit you and it’s unexpected.

“I think that’s part of the reason why I came back here, a reconnection to my place of origin.

“I’ve done my thing away and now it’s time to sort of settle back where I feel I belong.”

Matt Okine and his 4yo daughter Sofia at their home. Picture: David Kelly

Balancing light with shade is what Okine does best. As he candidly chats about life, he’s reflective and emotional yet brimming with brightness and jokes.

He’s always one to find the fun in the everyday but since becoming a father, it’s now an untapped source of happiness, he says.

“It’s not just about me anymore,” he says of having Sofia with his partner Belinda, also originally from Brisbane.

“Suddenly the most important thing in my life is someone else and it’s really refreshing, it changes your perspective on everything and certainly changes what’s important.

“I just really try to appreciate every moment that we get to be with each other because I know it might not always be like that.”

That includes immersing himself in his daughter’s favourite games, he jokes.

“She makes me be Moana,” he says with a laugh, “I’m like, ‘I really feel like I’m more of a Maui (character played by Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson) and you’re more of a Moana’ and she’s like, ‘No! I’m Maui!’ … So I say, ‘Fine I’m Moana,’” he says.

He adds, “I’ve become one with Disney.

“The Frozen songs live rent free in my head now … I’ll drop her (Sofia) off at daycare and then just end up listening to the whole album by myself while I’m driving to work.”

He knows the role of a dad is mostly finding yourself in ridiculous situations and tells the story of trying to go for a swim alone without his pool-obsessed daughter.

Matt Okine and his 4yo daughter Sofia at their home. Picture: David Kelly

“I found myself sneaking out for swims so she wouldn’t know,” he says with a laugh.

“I was tiptoeing out of the house – when she’s having a nap, I have to be quiet, I can’t splash or dive, I have to creep in … I can’t put the towels up on the line because she’ll know that I’ve gone for a swim without her.”

While he cracks jokes, he’s well aware he’s crafting the memories that his daughter will one day hold onto.

And, just like he does now, she’ll appreciate the lengths parents go to for their children.

“It makes you realise how much your parents sacrifice for you. All of those nights just trying to get you into bed, years of their life making sure you didn’t walk into traffic and you got to sleep on time and brushed your hair,” he says. “It also makes me think about how sad it must have been for my mum to know that she was dying and realised she wasn’t going to see me growing up.”

But through his years, her presence endures and Okine has left her imprint not just within his own family but with the rest of Australia through the stories he tells.

“It definitely gives you a much bigger perspective on life.” ■

Mother and Son is available on ABC iview