Daniel MacPherson talks Strike Back show, finding success in LA
Daniel MacPherson took a deep breath, quit his high-profile hosting job in Australia and went all out to find work in the US ... it’s finally paid off.
U on Sunday
Don't miss out on the headlines from U on Sunday. Followed categories will be added to My News.
LOS Angeles’s Sunset Strip is a long way from Queensland’s Sunshine Beach.
And having chosen one over the other to call home, actor Daniel MacPherson is now acutely aware of the figurative distance between the two. For one thing, the traffic’s much worse in LA and the parking is, well, somewhat more hierarchical …
“I messaged Zoe to ask where she was, because we were supposed to meet,” says MacPherson about a recent “LA-moment” with wife, fellow actor Zoe Ventoura. “And she’s like, ‘Sorry, I’m parked in at Starbucks’.
Daniel MacPherson: ‘I got heckled by Prince William!’
Daniel MacPherson returns home to lend a hand
“Sure enough, Zoe got parked in at Starbucks on Sunset Boulevard by Lady Gaga in an SUV. Lady Gaga! OK, cool. That’s the kind of crazy thing about this town. You’re just not in the same game.”
It is mid-afternoon in Santa Monica and MacPherson is sitting, looking out at the beach as he chats on the phone to U on Sunday. The interview is for the current season of Strike Back, the US action/drama TV series he joined as a lead character in last year’s season 6. It is the type of US-breakthrough role he was aiming for when he put his laid-back Sunshine Coast lifestyle on hold, and hopped a plane bound for LAX in 2012. But it didn’t come about without a struggle.
“I came over straight after (Australian TV drama series) Wild Boys and it was very much like starting from scratch again. Nobody knew who I was; what I’d done,” says the Sydney-born 38-year-old who got his start on Neighbours in the late ’90s, before a gig on UK cop series The Bill, and then as a troubled detective on the Seven’s City Homicide.
“I’d come over at a time when I was 31, and I might have been a lead in Australia, and I was hosting Dancing With The Stars – but you turn up in Hollywood and, to be honest, nobody really cares.
“And so over the course of a year or two I had to realise that I had to go back to the drawing board and work out what I wanted to achieve and how I was going to achieve it. And that meant going back and working really, really hard on certain areas and aspects of my craft.”
Having former Packed To The Rafters star Perth-born Ventoura, 37, with him in LA was a great support. “We were going through the same challenges,” he says, “like how to understand the craziness of Los Angeles.”
The pair became a couple while working together on Wild Boys in 2011. They married on the Sunshine Coast in November 2015.
“That’s where we always sort of retreated to,” MacPherson says. “We’ve got great friends up there. Originally it was the triathlon races that brought me up to the Coast, but I set up home there in 2010.
“We get back there as much as we can – and Sunshine Beach is the complete opposite to Santa Monica!
“It’s a very special place for us. We got married up in Montville, and we had a recovery day at the Sunshine Beach Surf Club – so it was very ‘Queensland’.”
In the same month as the wedding, MacPherson finished up as host on Dancing With The Stars, having quit to force a “make or break” decision on his LA dreams. He went back into acting classes, and worked with a dialect coach to perfect his American accent. He also put on “10kg of muscle” to bulk-up his triathlete physique when auditioning for action roles.
“It is amazing how well you can apply yourself when you have to put food on the table and a roof over your head,” he says.
“When I first moved over here I was going home to Australia each year to do Dancing With The Stars. It was a wonderful 10-week gig that allowed us financially to pursue our time here. But then I deliberately took that away. You’ve got to get really good at what you do and really quickly, because there is so much that is out of your control if you want to have a career in the US.”
After a few smaller jobs, he scored a lead in Strike Back, playing US Army Sergeant Samuel Wyatt, described as a “smart-ass charmer”. The series follows the covert special-ops soldiers of Section 20 as featured in the novels by Chris Ryan. It has been a drawcard for top-line actors, including The Walking Dead’s Andrew Lincoln, Philip Winchester, Robson Green and Aussie recruit Sullivan Stapleton.
MacPherson co-stars with UK actor Warren Brown (Luther), and with Neighbours alumni Alin Sumarwata, who plays an Australian Lance Corporal (It’s unfair “she gets to swear and scream in her natural accent”, MacPherson teases). Sumarwata is married to Don Hany who also was seen in the series last year playing a terrorist leader.
The current season was filmed primarily in Malaysia, but the show has also taken MacPherson to Jordan, Budapest, Croatia and Hong Kong. “We’re just waiting to see where it takes us next,” he says, adding it has been an “incredible ride” so far.
“Certainly in this season there is far more complexity in all the characters; it’s really bedded down a lot more.
“There were only three returning characters from 2017; and that was great because we had more landscape to fill. We could expand the spectrum of what these characters are. So now we’ve delved more into places like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); and how and where you fit in after a career of active military combat; and when your unit feels more like family than your real family.
“That’s interesting stuff to discuss and explore in the middle of a gunfight or jumping out of a helicopter.
“And with Strike Back, season 7 has been well received in the US, so we’re hoping we will do more filming in 2019. And that means – only as Strike Back does – it will take us off to some exotic corner of the world to blow up everything in sight.”
In the meantime, MacPherson seems settled with the craziness of life in LA. As ex-The Smiths frontman Morrissey was quoted as saying: “I normally live in Los Angeles; if you can call it normal living.”
MacPherson surmises: “Your longevity in LA is very much down to your LA family. The people who you choose to spend time with. Between Zoe and myself we have a lot of close friends, and we all support each other very much, and understand the trials and tribulations of being in LA long term.
“It is just great to have a support network here ...”
He stops and chuckles.
“Hey, you want to hear something funny? I’m sitting here in Luke Hemsworth’s truck, and Ryan Kwanten just walked across the crossing in front of me. That’s how the Aussie mafia in LA works! We’re everywhere, mate.”
Strike Back, Foxtel, showcase, Wednesdays, 7.30pm
Vote for Brisbane’s best florist
You told us your picks for Brisbane’s best florists. Now it’s time to choose the top 10 in our poll. VOTE NOW
‘I’d give up all my Christmases to attend my own wake’
When people gather to send off the deceased, they come together out of love, affection or respect. There’s no other agenda but to acknowledge the impact that person had on one’s life.