Jason Isaacs says Red Dog: True Blue film reminded him of working on Harry Potter

JASON Isaacs, known for his role as the villainous Lucius Malfoy, reveals that working on Red Dog: True Blue reminded him of the Harry Potter movies.

Jason Isaacs’s character Michael Carter in a scene with Justine Clarke, who plays his wife Diane in a scene from Red Dog: True Blue. Picture; Roadshow Films

BRITISH actor Jason Isaacs says that making Red Dog: True Blue in Australia reminded him of working on the Harry Potter series.

The versatile and globetrotting Isaacs, best known for his role as the villainous Lucius Malfoy in the hit series about the boy wizard, plays the older version of Levi Miller’s main character in the prequel to the hit 2011 film, Red Dog, which made more than $21 million at the box office.

Red Dog: True Blue, which opens on Boxing Day and tells the backstory of the beloved Pilbara pooch, has the same director (Kriv Stenders) producer (Nelson Woss), writer (Daniel Taplitz) and much of the same crew as the first film, which Isaacs said gave it a similar sense of family, confidence and stability to the Potter movies.

Jason Isaacs, as Michael Carter, with Levi Miller (Mick) in a scene from Red Dog: True Blue. Picture: Roadshow Films

Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy in the 2002 film Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Picture: Supplied

“It was a crew of people who knew each other — a well-oiled machine and a happy family,” he said. “They were very comfortable shoes to walk in and they were very confident in storytelling. Most of the time when you make films, it’s a group of people who don’t know each other and are tentatively trying to find some rhythm together. There is an undercurrent of fear on pretty much every project I have done for 30 years that no one like to talk about out loud and it’s ‘has anyone got any idea what we are doing? Is anybody going to watch this?’

“It’s overcome with a kind of false bravado. And with Red Dog it’s different and it reminded me of Harry Potter. Everybody knows that people love the story and the characters and the ideas and it’s tapped into something that is particularly Australian.”

Isaacs perfected his Aussie accent while working on the 2003 film Peter Pan on the Gold Coast. Picture: Supplied

Isaacs is no stranger to filming in Australia, having spent a year on the Gold Coast in 2002-2003 filming PJ Hogan’s big-budget version of Peter Pan. And, like Dev Patel revealed for the film Lion, Liverpool-born Isaacs has done what Meryl Streep and Benedict Cumberbatch couldn’t, by pulling off a flawless Australian accent, which he puts down to his time spent here and an odd character trait.

“I have a terrible psychological weakness, but it’s a professional asset,” Isaacs said.

“Basically I have a very tenuous hold on my own personality. So whoever I am talking to I kind of become them. A friend of mine in Washington said that the worst thing about (Donald) Trump is that whoever the last person he spoke to, that is his fixed opinion for the next couple of minutes. And that’s true of my accent. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by people who were just right for the part.

“It’s happened to me a few times before — I was shooting a series called Brotherhood in Providence, which is a very peculiar accent in New England in America, but I could do it as long as I was standing next to someone who sounded like that. I lived on the Gold Coast for a year and Captain Hook was in severe danger of sounding like Kath and Kim by the end of it. PJ Hogan kept having to pull me back and remind me I was English.”

Originally published as Jason Isaacs says Red Dog: True Blue film reminded him of working on Harry Potter