How Rectify wooed Aden Young back to television roles

ADEN Young didn’t want to be a TV actor, so why has he played the lead role of Daniel Holden in drama Rectify since 2013? Let him explain.

EMBARGOED Sun Aug 23 Rectify star Aden Young. Picture: SBS

THE LAST WORD WITH RECTIFY’S ADEN YOUNG

“I DIDN’T want to be a TV actor, but then television changed and the quality and the depth of writing in it just expanded.

All of a sudden you realise in so many ways it’s more like theatre than film was, because independent film and those mainstream dramas just disappeared overnight. No one wanted to fund them.

You’re left with the choice to do theatre, where you get paid in applause; or you could go to the gym, get your teeth fixed and make a million dollars doing tent-pole [blockbuster] films, which I have thought about.

It would only take me three months to build up all my weight, get fake teeth and then it’s pretty much assured that if you can open your mouth and mumble, you’re going to be a star in film. You just have to have 100 per cent commitment.

And then there’s TV where you have to play a character, explore a character and a story.

With Rectify, there’s probably no better example than that … it’s not episodic television where I’m doing the same storyline each week with different names. It’s a very engaging story structure so that’s exciting.

Engaging: Young with Rectify co-star Abigail Spencer. Picture: SBS

When it first came through I said ‘no, this is not going to work.’ I read about five pages of it and it’s the set up to getting to death row and it just seemed a lot of information coming out and a lot of exposition.

Essentially I just wanted to focus on anything that was going to be immersive. I had three scripts ready to go (produce and direct) and if I just put my foot down and said ‘this is what I am going to do’ I knew I had two-and-a-half to three years work in front to me.

As opposed to walking around the markets in Bangkok (where Young was filming a guest role in film The Final Recipe) going ‘oh it’s nice, but I don’t want to spend my life as a tourist.’ Then I read it and thought, I don’t want to go to LA. and it’s a little bit expositional … so I’ll just let it go. But it baffled me and started to haunt me, so I put something down on tape and immediately the response came back ‘we want you to come to New York.’

Aden Young as Daniel Holden in a scene from drama Rectify. Picture: SBS

I had four days between my next job and I actually had my family coming across to Bangkok on holiday. I thought, ‘there’s no way I can do this’, but sure enough they managed to get me on a plane that night.

Within two hours of landing I had to sign the contract. I had to go to Toronto first to update my [Canadian] passport which had expired. Managed to do that, get to New York then two hours later it was back to Bangkok.

I was picked up and taken to set to do the biggest scene of the film, I’m not kidding, where I had to hand pull Chinese f**king noodles, which I had been studying a year-and-a-half to know how to do. It was a gamble but it all paid off.”

RECTIFY, TUESDAY, 10.30PM, SBS

Originally published as How Rectify wooed Aden Young back to television roles