How Wog Life brings Nick Giannopoulos full circle

Nick Giannopoulos and his team of wogs are back in a farewell tour asking all the right questions.

Standing on stage at the Enmore Theatre at his last film’s Sydney premiere, Nick Giannopoulos had come full circle.

Looking out at the packed audience – many of whom were also there for his first ever show at the famed theatre in 1985 – it’s clear he’s emotional. It’s also the same stage he’ll serve up his farewell tour, Wog Life, in March and his fans will flock as they always have.

He’s come a long way since he stood on milk crates as a five-year-old, helping his dear dad Leo, who died in 2021, serve at his Richmond milk bar. That’s when he was first called a wog.

“All us kids who were from immigrant parents, they decided to call us the wogs,” he tells Insider.

“And in retaliation, we called them the skips, as in Skippy the bush kangaroo, and a lot of that stuff formed my first film, Wog Boy – the famous lunch scene where he gets called wog boy at lunch because his mum packs him the big salami sandwich and all of that.

Nick Giannopoulos in Wog Boy.

“Even though we were born here, we didn’t feel like we belonged here.

“In a strange way, at school, by deciding to call ourselves wogs, it kind of gave us the power back. That took the word away from the racists and we used it to kind of make ourselves look cool.”

Vince Colosimo and Nick Giannopoulos at the Enmore Theatre, Sydney, to promote the stage show of Wog Boy.

Always the funny kid – he got that from his dad too, he says with a twinkle in his eye – how did he get into entertainment in the first place, escaping the succession plan at the milk bar? Well, that was thanks to his dad too. And a passionate teacher who, behind the jokes, saw potential.

“My drama teacher in Year 10 was an amazing woman, and she saw potential in me, even at a young age,” he remembers.

“And one day, she made the trip to my dad’s milk bar in Richmond after school – I thought I was in trouble – and she said ‘Leo, I’m not sure what your plan is for your son, but … I’d love to see you allow him to pursue his dreams. He really wants to be an actor, and he’s worried about what you’re going to say, because he knows one day you want him to take over the milk bar.

“And my dad did the most amazing thing. He looked at her and he said, ‘listen, when I was his age I wanted to go to acting school in Athens, but my family didn’t have the money. We were too poor. So I have no problem with my son going to acting school, I will be very proud’.

“So on my day of graduation, he was crying, because his unfulfilled dreams he saw come true through me.”

Giannopoulos dedicated Wog Boys Forever to the man who inspired him most, and the sacrifice his parents made – like so many – in coming to a new country to seek a better life.

“My dad was very funny – I probably got it from him,” he says.

“We used to laugh all the time, and when my dad had the milk bar, he used to make all the customers laugh and I would watch him as a kid, so I reckon it rubbed off on me.”

Learning from the best, he worked hard and, in 1986, graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts – as the first Greek Australian to do so. But despite casting after casting, he couldn’t get a job. And so Wogs Out of Work was born.

“So I’d go to castings and they’d say to me, ‘well we can’t cast you in anything before 1950 because there were no Greeks or Italians here then’.

“This was ’86 – the only stuff they were making was The Man From Snowy River and Neighbours – and could you imagine me on those?” he laughs. “I think Ramsay St was the only street without a wog on it.”

Nick Giannopoulos and Mary Coustas of Acropolis Now fame got back together after 25 years for a national stage tour, Star Wogs. Picture: Ian Currie

But Wogs Out of Work struck a nerve. The show was meant to run for two weeks in 1987 but ended up running for three years, seen by more than 700,000 people, In 1990, it morphed into his first television project and subsequent smash hit, Acropolis Now. The show had a huge impact on multicultural Australia as it was the first prime time show on Free to Air TV to feature predominantly non-English speaking background Aussies as the stars. That’s what he wanted because, growing up, he never saw people like him on TV.

“Through the ’70s and ’80s, the lack of cultural diversity on our TV and film screens meant that my way of life, living in a household where English was a second language, made it very hard for me to identify with any aspect of my ‘Australian’ way of life being represented on our screens.

“I watched my parents struggle and work seven days a week. My inspiration comes from them, from their strength and their sacrifice, and it’s important for us to pass that on, to never forget what they’ve done for us and to keep reminding everybody that this really is a great country – and we can make it even better.

“Because what it means to be an Australian is very different now to what it was 30 or 40 years ago.”

Wog Boys Forever came 22 years after his first film, The Wog Boy, broke box office records and became one of the highest grossing Australian films of all time in 2000. Ten years later the wogboys returned in the international smash hit Wog Boy 2: Kings Of Mykonos.

Vince Colosimo and Nick Giannopoulos in Wog Boy 2: Kings Of Mykonos.

The crowd – his audience of “wogs” – feel seen and heard. But despite that, inherent discrimination still happens today, he says. Are we better or worse? He’s not sure. It’s on to a different race now, he reasons. The Italians and Greeks have worked hard, proven their worth – it’s the newest to arrive that cop it.

“Are we as racist now? Ask anyone with an Asian, African or Arabic background and let’s see their answers to that question,” he says.

“Importantly, the film also makes the point of what kind of country do we want to be? Are we tolerant enough? Are we understanding enough of the true multicultural nature of our country? Are we accepting enough?

“If we want to hang on to all those things, we have to fight for them.

“There is a quote from the film that says ‘in this country, all new arrivals cop shit – it’s just the way it is. But you’ve got to keep knocking on that door, real hard. And one day, they’ll let you in’.

“Even though we were born here, we got called wogs but to that I say, ‘you know what? We didn’t ask to be wogs. We just got lucky’.”

Wog Life is coming to the Enmore Theatre on March 1, 2 and 3 before travelling to Perth and Wollongong. Tickets at woglife.com