Actor Kyle MacLachlan unites with Brisbane coffee roaster Dimitri Piliouras after seven-year online friendship
Hollywood actor Kyle MacLachlan has finally gotten to meet his unlikely online pen pal - a Brisbane coffee roaster he’d been writing to since 2014.
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Hollywood actor Kyle MacLachlan has enjoyed some Brisbane hospitality.
After forming an unlikely online friendship with Brisbane coffee roaster Dimitri Piliouras seven years ago, the pair finally got the chance to meet last weekend for a tour of the city.
MacLachlan – a Golden Globe winner known for roles in Twin Peaks, Desperate Housewives and Sex and the City – followed Piliouras on Instagram in 2014 and the pair have been talking ever since about their passions for coffee and film.
A role as Howard Baskin on NBC series Joe Exotic brought MacLachlan to Brisbane this month and he subsequently organised to spend a day with Piliouras, of local micro roaster The Artisan Coffee Roaster.
“Kyle started following me on Instagram and I instantly followed back and sent a message thanking for the follow, I’m honoured, and from there we started talking for the past several years about coffee, film – my degree is in film and TV production so love talking cinema,” Piliouras said.
“We would talk about our respective sons and holidays and general work life schedule.”
“When he landed in Oz a few weeks ago … we arranged to meet up when he lands in Brisbane.”
Piliouras along with his son Elias took the American actor sightseeing, visiting the Mt Coot-tha lookout, and toured some of Brisbane’s best coffee spots including Stones Throw Cafe at Stones Corner and Seven Miles Coffee Roastery in Albion.
“We were both just (saying) can you believe that we would meet and that one day I would be working in Australia and in Brisbane for us to finally hang out,” he said.
“He’s a great guy. He has a great love for family, coffee, film and wine, so can’t go wrong.”
After Piliouras shared the experience to his Instagram page, MacLachlan replied: “What a wonderful day! Thank you for your gracious hospitality Dimitri and Elias! And for some truly damn good coffee done the Artisan Coffee Roaster way!! Loved meeting you and deepening our friendship in person with you and your son. What a magical day!”
A PLACE IN THE SUN
Jolene Anderson is among the growing list of actors who came to Queensland for a job and never left.
After joining season two of Brisbane crime drama Harrow in 2019, Anderson stayed living in Burleigh with her partner Dan Stephens as they welcomed their daughter Alice.
“My partner was doing work in Brisbane and I had Harrow. I shot one season and then I was pregnant,” she said.
“It happened quite quickly and, like I do, I said let’s just move up there, have the baby in Queensland, I’ll shoot Harrow and we made it up as we went.”
“Then season two with a new baby on set Covid hit. We were a week off finishing season three. We couldn’t really go anywhere. So we just kept signing another lease and we’re still signing more leases.”
She joins the likes of David Wenham, who left his Sydney home in 2020 and has been living in Brisbane for more than a year, and Todd Lasance, who travelled to Queensland to film Kidnapped and never returned to NSW, also settling on the Gold Coast.
While Anderson is shut-out from her family in NSW, who haven’t been able to watch her daughter grow, she felt she made the right decision.
“Southeast Queensland is just beautiful, the people are lovely, it’s a lovely community here in Burleigh, we’ve made so many friends out and about and it just feels familiar,” she said.
While studying a writing degree and working on her own screenwriting project, Anderson linked again with Hoodlum, who produced Harrow, and co-star Damien Garvey on the production company’s first podcast, crime drama Sunshadow, out now.
Launched in partnership with global platform Audible, Sunshadow is an original series inspired by the underbelly of Brisbane in the 1970s. It’s written by Brisbane-based screenwriters, Phil Enchelmaier, co-writer of award-winning miniseries Safe Harbour, and Bronwen Noakes.
“They had a winning story and script. It was a gift to be able to go in and read that. Every day was fun because the script was so good,” Anderson said.
“They knocked it out of the park.”
“It’s fun … I get up at 5am before anyone else is up and go for a walk and listen to a podcast.”
LOVE IT, PLEASE
Andrew Winter has revealed the mammoth task of filming property show Love It Or List It in the middle of a pandemic.
The Queensland-based real estate expert along with design guru Neale Whitaker spent 13 months attempting to film season four of the Foxtel show across Australia, which was more than double the typical production length.
The show involves Whitaker renovating a homeowner’s property while Winter shows them available homes on the market so they can decide whether to sell.
But because of border closures the gap between the pair returning to some houses stretched as long as a year.
“Any show dependent on travel and location and human beings is a little tough,” Winter said.
“The biggest challenge was Love It Or List It as a format. We follow the story in perfect timelines. It’s all very neat and tidy so the story evolves genuinely, that’s why it works. Neale and I never know the result until that moment we are told on camera.”
“But the gap between the beginning, middle and end was all over the place. Perth the gap was a year. It was literally ridiculous because we couldn’t get back to WA.”
Winter described the difficulty of constantly changing production schedules based on snap lockdowns.
“In Melbourne, I got a call and they said, ‘Quick we can get down and finish these episodes, you might have to stay three weeks’,” he said.
“Then you come out and the day before they go back into lockdown.”
He added with a laugh: “Please watch season four because it took a lot to make.”
The positive for the real estate guru was while he expected the property market to hibernate during lockdown, it quickly boomed across the country.
“I was quite worried at the beginning but of course during the year that didn’t seem to matter,” he said.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had a season where we go to different states and the housing market is performing in the same way. That’s pretty unheard of.
“A lot of the pricing would have been out of date two weeks after we finished shooting.”
Winter is now facing similar issues filming Selling Houses Australia and has been stuck in Sydney and away from his family in Queensland since July.
“My family pretend they miss me,” he joked. “I’ve never been completely sane anyway, so things will pan out.”
Love It Or List It returns Wednesday at 8.30pm on Foxtel and available On Demand.
GREAT MINDS
The mindset coach behind Ash Barty’s success and the new recruit for the Brisbane Broncos is sharing his top tips in a masterclass this week.
Ben Crowe, who has mentored some of the world’s biggest sports stars, will present a 90-minute virtual masterclass on September 29, giving every day punters access to the coaching he offers top athletes.
The presentation will see Crowe share his insight into how he helps people answer the three simple questions: who am I, what do I want and how do I get there.
A former Nike executive, Crowe has mentored the likes of golf great Tiger Woods, tennis legend Andre Agassi and surfing star Steph Gilmore, while Barty credits him as an important part of her rise to the top of the tennis rankings and her grand slam win.
Having also consulted the Richmond Tigers he is next tasked with transforming the Broncos, signing an exclusive NRL contract with the club.
For details visit mojocrowe.com.
10 QUESTIONS WITH... NATALIE IMBRUGLIA
1. Who was your teen idol/ crush? Madonna, Whitney Houston and Kylie Minogue!
2. Who are your three ideal dinner guests? Bono, Malala Yousafzai and Rob Brydon
3. What’s your worst date experience? Someone told me to my face that they couldn’t decide out of me and another girl! Needless to say I was out the door sharpish.
4. What’s the movie that made you cry? Rain Man
5. Which song do you sing in the car? My latest single, On My Way... of course!
6. What’s your favourite movie or TV series you never admit to loving? Gogglebox! My guilty pleasure.
7. What’s the most sentimental thing you own? A necklace with my son’s fingerprint engraved on it.
8. What was the last thing you Googled? Chicken coop for the garden
9. What’s your most embarrassing moment? Getting star struck in a hotel lobby in LA meeting PJ Harvey! I didn’t stop talking and I didn’t make any sense.
10. What’s on your bucket list? To do the Inca Trail to Machu Picchui in Peru.
Natalie Imbruglia’s new album Firebird is out now along with single, Build it Better.
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