Don’t call Rodger Corser a sex symbol
HE may send women weak at the knees with his bedside manner in TV show Doctor Doctor but Rodger Corser has confidence issues just like everyone else.
Stellar
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HE is one of the most consistently in-demand actors on Australian television, the leading man on one of TV’s top-rating shows and a Gold Logie nominee for two years running. But please, don’t suggest that Rodger Corser is a sex symbol.
Having just been asked whether he thinks his good looks are responsible for his ongoing success, and if they might continue to guarantee his future earnings, the 45-year-old splutters with laughter before pointing to the device recording his chat with Stellar.
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“I’m not agreeing with that statement, by the way, so don’t put any inverted commas around ‘sex symbol’,” he says good-naturedly before self-consciously shifting in his seat. Corser has clearly connected with audiences as the womanising, hedonistic — and, yes, good-looking — heart surgeon Hugh Knight on the Nine Network’s Doctor Doctor.
As free-to-air networks continue turning their attention towards reality shows of all stripes, the series is about to enter its third season, one of a handful of scripted dramas still toughing it out in a changing environment. And Knight is just the latest in a string of roles that have made Corser a popular and bankable veteran on the nation’s TV screens.
But ask him to take any credit for his success, and he’s not all that willing. As Corser tells Stellar, “I’m lucky enough, without getting too political about it, that I’m a straight, white male — and there’s lots of straight, white male roles. One of my best mates is Lebanese and he had to leave the country because he couldn’t get any roles except for a taxi driver. So, is it what I bring to the table or is it being born into a demographic that’s used a lot more often?”
He pauses for a moment. “What’s promising is that it’s changing, and there’s a lot more diversity in all its forms. But I hope there’s still a job for me.”
Anchoring the latest incarnation of the “flawed family” drama genre rounds out a decade of solid work for Corser.
Since starring in the first Underbelly in 2008, he’s appeared in Network Ten’s cop show Rush and Puberty Blues, Foxtel’s Spirited, the political drama Party Tricks alongside Asher Keddie, ABC series Glitch and The Beautiful Lie and the Australian-American comedy Camp opposite Rachel Griffiths. He has also dabbled in narration work.
Yet for all his success there remains a measure of unrest about Corser. Whether it’s the torment of a career that offers glory but little surety, or simply an innate humility, this diffidence is at odds with the onscreen image he has cultivated.
He’s unresolved, for instance, about working in the US.
A few years back Corser had a holding deal there, which meant he was paid by an American production company to not work so that he’d be free when the right role came up. None did.
“Looking back, I was a bit choosy,” he muses. “The roles weren’t great. At that stage, [as with] Offspring, the lead was often female and there were really only four roles for males: the ex-boyfriend, the new boss, the current boyfriend or the high-school crush. It was hard to move my family overseas for a supporting role, so I held out for a lead.” He pauses.
“Maybe I should have just got in... but what do you do?”
Asked if he was disappointed, Corser offers a pragmatic reply. “You have meetings where everyone tells you you’re fantastic and you’re the next big thing, but then you realise they say that to everyone. You get better at not taking [rejection] personally, but you question your confidence. Everyone does.”
Corser signed with another American agent last year and hasn’t ruled out the possibility of working in the US in the future. But practicalities now drive his career more than ego once may have. He has three children, Budd, nearly eight, Cilla, six, and Dustin, three, with actor/dancer wife Renae Berry, whom he married in 2007. He also has a 15-year-old daughter, Zipporah (or Zippy), from a prior relationship with singer Christine Anu.
“When you have a family, you worry if you’re going to get the next job,” he explains. “Renae hasn’t been working much because she’s been raising our children. So at the moment I’m the breadwinner, and it has to go between five to six people.”
Corser and Berry have built a home in Sydney’s south, around the corner from her parents and sister, where they’re happily raising the family they feared they’d never have. Within months of meeting in 2006, Berry was diagnosed with cervical cancer and advised to undergo a hysterectomy.
But she insisted on a second opinion, and declined the surgery. (“Thank goodness we didn’t take the first option as gospel,” Corser says upon reflection.)
“She’s allowed me to have it all — both a large family and a career,” Corser says. He’s mindful she has done the bulk of the parenting, and says once their youngest starts preschool she will want to return to work. “I’m very conscious when she says she wants to regain some of her individual identity.”
In the meantime, he adores his offscreen role as a dad. “They laugh and surprise you and melt your heart, but as I get older I worry about the impression I leave on them,” he says. “Every time you raise your voice or don’t have the patience, you think, ‘That’s a little sponge soaking that up.’”
Corser also fears he has been a bit too conservative when it comes to his teenage daughter. Zippy is a keen dancer and singer who plans to follow her parents into the entertainment industry, but Corser has been encouraging her to study commerce instead. Asked if she has considered taking his views onboard, he laughs and admits a simple “No.”
Solid values underpin his approaches to both marriage and parenting. Despite the breakdown of his relationship with Anu — the two met when they starred in the 1998 musical Rent — Corser has chosen to be a hands-on dad to Zippy and also maintained a relationship with Anu’s oldest child, a son named Kuiam. “I was his stepdad for four years,” he says, adding with a smile, “and now we play for the same footy club.”
Corser and Berry recently celebrated a decade of marriage, but he doesn’t think that should be seen as some kind of accomplishment. Both of their parents are still married, he points out, and sometimes he wonders whether people give up too easily. “I don’t think we’ve been through anything better or worse than others. But you don’t give up when it’s easy to give up. Using the ejector seat isn’t in my repertoire.”
Of course, he admits, actors are not easy to live with. It isn’t just the self-doubt or intermittent work, but also the pressure of being constantly critiqued. “In any other industry the further you go up the tree the less your authority and ideas are questioned. But with acting, everyone has an opinion on what you do and how to do it.”
Public opinion, though, tends to be on his side. This year, Doctor Doctor notched up five Logie nominations — two for Corser. He lost to Ray Meagher for a Silver, and as for the Gold, he lost to Grant Denyer. He was more shocked, he says, that neither Tracy Grimshaw nor Amanda Keller won the latter prize.
“I was lucky enough to meet Tracy on the nominations weekend,” he says. “We flew up next to each other — she’s a really wonderful lady, so funny and down to earth. It’s the same with Amanda, she’s as relevant as ever. I thought between those two they’d have to raffle it.”
While there is some dissension about the outcome, Corser steers clear. “It’s a popularity contest run by a magazine. People love the kitschiness of it, but when it doesn’t go a certain way they write about it like it’s a failed election, or Brexit or Trump getting in. For me, it’s like our industry Christmas party. You see people, blow off steam and have a good time.”
His wife has followed a healthy lifestyle since recovering from cancer yet Corser is a bit more relaxed, particularly when it comes to bread and wine. But he’s still fitter than he was in his 20s and says exercise helps when he’s out of work. “I used to congregate in the city with other out-of-work actors because misery loves company. Now I get out and do things.”
To that end he grows olives — “I have five trees!” — and has dusted off his guitar so he can play with his son Budd and potentially form a cover band, as he did in his youth.
But what might be more important is whether or not the roles dry up. It’s almost impossible to find interviews with actresses over 40 that don’t address ageing, so it seems only fair he’s posed the same question. Already, he says, “I feel like the old man on set. We’ve got some young cast and I don’t get their pop-culture slang. We make jokes that my character is eternally 39. My hair is naturally salt and pepper so we have to dye it.”
More seriously, he worries that he’s perhaps starting to become synonymous with playing Dr Hugh Knight, about younger actors coming up and taking his place, about whether he overthought working in the US and should have just done it. He is also aware there are a limited amount of TV dramas made in Australia: “I can’t be in front of the camera on every show.”
Ironically, it might just be his constant thinking and analysing that makes Corser so good at his job. Ask him if he prefers playing a cop or a politician or a playboy doctor and
he says it’s not the profession that draws him, but the character within. In the end, he may need to take a cue from his wife, who has offered her own thoughtful diagnosis. “She thinks certain things come along at the right time — and that I’ve been incredibly lucky, and just need to trust the universe.”
Doctor Doctor returns 8.45pm, August 6, on the Nine Network.