Wayne Carey approached by Underbelly producer to appear in hit TV series

Wayne Carey has revealed he was once approached by an Underbelly producer to appear in a scene where Jason Moran would wave a gun in his face.

The Duck politely declined to appear in the Underbelly series.

Former footy great Wayne Carey has revealed he turned down an offer to star in the iconic TV drama Underbelly, about the infamous Melbourne gangland war.

Carey was approached to play himself in the hit series, cowering on the ground as one of the Moran crime brothers waved a gun in his face.

The scene was fictional, but was part of the script Carey was given when a producer knocked on his door sometime around 2007/2008.

The Melbourne gangland war took place in the late ‘90s, early 2000s resulting in a number of deaths including that of Jason and Mark Moran and their father Lewis.

Carey had been a neighbour of the family at one stage.

“Whoever was doing the series knocked on my door and gave me a script and wanted me to play myself in the Underbelly series,” Carey recalled on his The Truth Hurts podcast.

“They had obviously heard that we were neighbours. I did not say ‘No’ straight away, I thought I will read it and see what this is going to make me look like, or not look like.”

Producers wanted Carey to appear in a scene with the man who played Jason Moran.

Carey was surprised to find he was being asked to act out a totally fictional encounter between himself and the Jason Moran character.

“The script was basically that Jason knocked on the door and I answered and he is not happy with me for some reason,” Carey said.

“He pulls out a gun and threatens me and I get down (on my knees) and cower.

“And I think ‘Nup’, I am not playing that.

“Don’t get me wrong, you obviously would do that (cower) if someone did that, but I read the script and thought maybe if I grabbed the gun off him and did Kung fu or a Stephen Segal move.

“I just thought this makes me look really weak.”

Carey declined the offer. Picture: Michael Klein.

...because he would have been depicted as “weak”.

Carey’s podcast The Truth Hurts is worth a listen; he is never short of a tale to tell or an insight into his life.

For instance, Kittens, the South Melbourne strip club that is very familiar to many footy players, has a code name … ‘babies cats’.

Why … “because they (guests of the venue) don’t want to say Kittens, so they say baby cats because people don’t know what they are talking about.”