Why Guy Pearce loves being Jack Irish as second season arrives
IF you ask some of Guy Pearce’s friends, he wasn’t meant to play Jack Irish. But the Aussie actor loves the role — and reveals what’s coming in season two.
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IF you ask some of Guy Pearce’s friends, he wasn’t meant to play Jack Irish.
The ABC drama series - adapted from the late Peter Temple’s books of the same name - has earned the 50-year-old critical acclaim as the ambivalent hero and sometime lawyer, who has managed to find himself in the middle of a few complex murder investigations over three telemovies and now two seasons.
In the books, Pearce tells TV Guide, “the character of Jack is older and more crochety and curmudgeonly” that the man he plays.
“He’s like an old war vet and I actually had a lot of people, even friends of mine, who were big fans of Peter Temple and the books saying, ‘not you … you’re not right. It needs to be Jack Thompson, not you.”
Made more contemporary for TV, with Pearce’s Irish 15 years younger, it’s the humour which helps give his character and the series “a liveliness,” the star argues, yet another reason he loves this job.
Adding that light to the shady goings-on of the serious storyline this season is Hard Quiz comic, Tom Gleeson, who cameos as a Mikado-loving bird nerd, critical to Irish finding a key clue.
“To have somebody to play against where Jack can go [with eyeroll] ‘oh my god, this guy’ … [Tom] was just perfect for it. He’s really funny,” Pearce says.
From the opening episode, Irish is confronted by fatherhood, mirroring the “left turn” Pearce’s own life took nearly two years ago with the birth of his son, Monte (with Game Of Thrones partner, Carice van Houten).
“I’m absolutely besotted and fascinated by him and [fatherhood] because I’d got to a point in my life, quite early on in my life where I really thought I knew I was never going to have kids, I didn’t need to have kids.”
But, he assures, he’s no evangelist for all men taking on his life choice.
“As an ex-smoker and an ex-drinker, I’m very conscious of not being a hypocrite. I’m happy just to channel all my energy into my own sort of path and not try and spread the word too much. I’m more than happy to say how happy I am with my choice, but I’m certainly not going to go out and tell everyone else they should have kids.”
His career choices, however, have meant plenty of time away from his partner and child, who are based in her home city of Amsterdam.
Whether Jack Irish returns for another season, luring him back to Melbourne again for filming, has not yet been decided, Pearce says.
“We do need to have a conversation about it because we don’t want to flog a dead horse but at the same time, we don’t want to suck the oxygen out of it unnecessarily. As far as I’m concerned, if they keep coming up with great storylines, then I will keep playing Jack. I love playing him, I really do.”
* Jack Irish, 8.30pm, Sunday, ABC.