Kettering Incident star Henry Nixon moved to tears and humbled by the Tasmanian Wilderness

The script called for Kettering Incident star Henry Nixon to hit the Southern Ocean in a kayak. He learned a very important lesson that day.

THE Kettering Incident star Henry Nixon says working in the wilds of Tasmania was a brutal reminder he is merely an actor.

Nixon, who plays Fergus McFadden, a cop and the show’s moral compass, in the Foxtel’s noir thriller which is set in the Apple Isle and co-stars Elizabeth Debicki and Matthew Le Nevez.

But Nixon said he struggled with his character’s obsession with kayaking near the dramatic Candlesticks rock formations, in the state’s south.

“I’ve been in a kayak a little bit, but never in the big swells,” Nixon told Confidential. “I was out in the swell, man, and I was freaking out. It was tough, man.”

Nixon said laughing: “It’s one of those moments as an actor, you think: ‘S---, man. I’m just an actor! I’m not trained to do all this s---!’ You can bluff all you want, but when they put you in a kayak on the Southern Ocean, the pressure is on. They’re filming you and you have to look professional.”

Henry Nixon as Fergus McFadden in Foxtel thriller, The Kettering Incident. Photo: Ben King.

The LA-based Australian actor also revealed he sobbed while discussing his character with the show’s writer, Vicki Madden. “I was welling up and I actually cried. I knew this character is in my heart. I responded to him on a very deep level, ” Nixon said.

“As weird as this sounds, I based a lot of Fergus on my mother. He’s a morally upstanding person, who always sees the good on people.”

Before being cast in Kettering, Nixon was shooting a docu-drama, titled Lost In Alaska, for US network Discovery Channel. “From Siberia to Tassie — it was a big year for me in extreme climates at opposite ends of the planet.”