Australian 1% bikie portrayal alarmingly real
THEY’RE the bikie club members led to a bloody fate by ambition, jealousy and miscommunication. Here is an inside look at the bikie gang 1% which has gripped Australia.
Confidential
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IN THE tough new Australian drama 1%, they’re bikie club members led to a bloody fate by ambition, jealousy and miscommunication.
But in real life, rugby player turned writer and actor Matt Nable and Ladies In Black star Ryan Corr are great mates.
“Matt’s a dear friend of mine and a real supporter in both my career and personal life,” says Corr, 29.
“We’re very close,” agrees Nable, most recently seen in Foxtel series Mr Inbetween. “We both deal with some very similar types of issues so there’s a real solidarity between us.”
That friendship made it all the more strange when Corr, as Paddo, stand-in leader of the Copperheads club, found himself face-to-face with a musclebound, tattooed and seething Nable as Knuck, the fresh-out-of-prison Copperheads’ president.
“When you’re getting lost in these characters on set, it can be a strange territory to navigate,” says Corr. “Matty’s got such an alpha presence, he’s like a bull — when he’s in front of you with these flared nostrils and you’re in his line of sight and he basically wants to destroy you, that’s intimidating.”
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Corr wasn’t the only one trembling in his presence. During production, family man Nable, 46, found strangers were crossing the street to get away from him.
“It was challenging because you didn’t want to be in situations where you’re making people feel uncomfortable. People who look like that, they make me feel uncomfortable,” he says. “Often I would wear a hat on the weekend, get the tattoos removed and try and soften things down with glasses … You try and hide those things but then it comes to Monday and there you are again.”
The term 1% was first applied to biker clubs in the 1960s when the American Motorcycle Association declared 99 per cent of motorcyclists were law-abiding citizens — marking the remaining one per cent as outlaws.
Inspired by Kiwi flick Once Were Warriors and having heard a few tales from acquaintances, Nable wrote the script for 1% in order to “explore the capacities of the people who live in this environment that is really violent and uncompromising — to share love, to hope, to better themselves and to rise socially”.
Corr sees the resultant film, which was shot in Perth, as an examination of family and toxic masculinity.
“I hope it shines a light on the brutality that, as far as I’m concerned, is unacceptable. I certainly didn’t watch it and find that something to admire — if anything, it starts to abolish the characters, all their worlds start to fall down when this violence comes to a head in the pursuit of that masculinity,” Corr says.
“It’s the female voices,” he adds, referring to Knuck and Paddo’s girlfriends, played by Simone Kessel and Abbey Lee respectively, “that are the strongest in this film and ultimately they’re the ones that come away least scathed. There’s something to be said about that.”
Playing the relentlessly aggressive, sexually confused and envy-fuelled Knuck across a fast and furious shoot took a toll on Nable.
“It was hard to shed,” he admits. “I went straight from this film into Christmas with the family. I drank too much and was self-medicating a little bit to get rid of it all … But it was hard for everybody. It was a film that really knocked the actors around. In saying that, it was a wonderful experience being that we all lived together for that period of time.”
An avid dirt-biker when he was a kid, 29-year-old Corr admits it was “quite the feeling having a rumbling Harley between your legs” on the 1% set. But his hobbies these days are far more cerebral.
“I spent a lot of time at the start of this year over in Los Angeles, which is probably the last place you’d think to have a weird sort of existential, spiritual shift,” he laughs, “but I did and found myself meditating and painting quite a lot. And I’m reading up on my Jung and Nietzsche.
“I’m getting to the pointier end of the 20s now, moving into my 30s, and I’m noticing my priorities as a young man slowly shifting. So I’m picking up my guitar a lot more, paying more attention to my fitness, making sure I run every day … Sounds pretty boring, but I’ve found it really enlightening.”
Nable, meanwhile, would love it if somebody could find him a nice, light comedy to do next.
“I’d love to do something the kids could come and watch — my kids struggle to see anything that I’ve done,” he laughs, “which is a problem.”
1% OPENS OCTOBER 18
