Power of the Dog star Kodi Smit-McPhee on bullying, Oscars and why he wants in on MCU

Australian star Kodi Smit-McPhee reveals the teenage pain that helped inspire his new, Oscar-buzzy role.

Kodi Smit-McPhee says he’s “absolutely humbled” by the growing Oscars chatter surrounding his role in The Power Of the Dog.

New Zealand director Jane Campion’s rave-reviewed drama is already drawing some serious heat for the coming awards season and fellow Antipodean Smit-McPhee is among the frontrunners from bookies and pundits alike in the Best Supporting Actor category.

“I take the conversation as a token of appreciation and I never could have dreamt of even being amongst that discussion,” the Adelaide-born actor says over a Zoom call from his adopted home of Los Angeles.

“That alone makes me see it as a landmark achievement and to think back on how this all started and the roots of my journey – a hobby and something I did with my dad and my sister and has now become my passion and my career.”

At age 25, Smit-McPhee is already a cinema veteran, having made his feature film debut opposite Eric Bana in the 2007 AACTA Award-winning drama Romulus My Father.

He made a splash in Hollywood two years later alongside Viggo Mortensen in post-apocalyptic survival film The Road and has worked steadily since, appearing in animated fantasy ParaNorman, vampire thriller Let Me In, sci-fi hit Dawn Of the Planet Of the Apes, and as Kurt Wagner – aka Nightcrawler – in the X-Men franchise.

Kodi Smit-McPhee as Peter in The Power of the Dog.

But Smit-McPhee says that his success and the spotlight it brought came at a cost. Being an artistic outsider, as well as coming and going from school as his acting career took off, made him a target and he says bullying was one of the reasons he left early.

“Luckily, I was blessed to get out of high school in Year 8 and ended up going into tutoring and travelling the world and I am very grateful to have had that experience,” he says. “But yeah, it was getting pretty rough for me in school.

“Also, I was just hanging around the wrong people. The more that I would go to the States and return back to Australia, I saw the people that I was surrounding myself with going down really destructive paths and that was kind of heartbreaking for me.”

Smit-McPhee’s unconventional upbringing also had him questioning his concept of masculinity from an early age. His father, Andy McPhee, who introduced Kodi and his sister Sianoa to the dramatic, arts, is a towering, tattooed wrestler-turned-actor who has appeared in TV shows from Home and Away to Sons Of Anarchy. The young Kodi wondered whether that kind of “macho” was what society and his father also expected of him when he was more interested in poetry, music and photography.

Andy McPhee and son Kodi Smit-McPhee attend the official screening of Netflix's The Power Of The Dog during 2021 AFI Fest at TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood last month. Picture: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

“He’s 6 foot 6, covered in tattoos, always riding with outlaw bikers kind of guy and I was around that on the weekends,” he says.

“I was cool with it, but there definitely was a time where I started to think, ‘Do I eventually have to grow into that?’. And I was a late bloomer so didn’t see it happening any time soon and that started to make me feel a bit like I didn’t fit in.”

Smit-McPhee says he and his father, who also teaches acting in LA and with whom he is very close, made peace with their differences long ago, but he drew on that feeling of being an outsider and the pressure to conform for The Power of the Dog and his portrayal of Peter, an effeminate but deceptively-steely aspiring doctor who finds himself living on a remote ranch when his widowed mother (Kirsten Dunst) remarries with a cattle baron (Dunst’s actual husband Jesse Plemons).

In the mesmerising Western-drama, Peter is teased and tormented by Benedict Cumberbatch’s conflicted cowboy Phil but never buckles, confident in his sense of self.

“I saw parallels with Peter in myself,” he says. “In terms of how he carries himself, he might have different interests to the general population and growing up that can be kind of hard since you don’t really fit into a box.

“For a lot of my life I thought, ‘Do I have to change myself to fit in a box?’ whereas Peter, I don’t think he ever had that thought. He is completely grounded in his being and he has an unwavering essence about himself and confidence that even when it’s combated, he doesn’t try to adjust himself to please others. So, if anything, I wish I could take on more of that myself.”

Benedict Cumberbatch and Kodi Smit-McPhee in a scene from The Power of the Dog.

While The Power Of the Dog is set in 1920s Montana it was shot last year in New Zealand in two Covid-interrupted stints, and Smit-McPhee, who has been based in LA for most of the past decade also used the opportunity to reconnect with his homeland. He and his long-time girlfriend, Rebecca Phillipou, relocated to her home town of Melbourne for the duration to be closer to his mother, Sonja Smit, and his younger brother, Caden. He also relished the slower pace of life compared to celebrity obsessed Hollywood and says he finds it “therapeutic” and “healthy” to escape that bubble.

“I got to visit my mum quite a bit and support her through those crazy times and honestly, since I spent so much time there I bought a four-wheel drive and I got a dirt bike and I have been rediscovering the landscape and appreciating it for what it is,” he says. “Living in LA you hear people say that they wish they got out to Australia but it’s too far, so it reminds you of what a beautiful place I come from. I can’t wait to get back to do those simple things and be fulfilled.”

The Power of the Dog is streaming now on Netflix.

Kodi Smit-McPhee says he’d love to reprise his role as Nightcrawler in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

MODERN MARVELS

Heads up to Marvel Studios President, Kevin Feige – Kodi Smit-McPhee wants in on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Having played the blue-skinned, teleporting mutant Nightcrawler in the past two X-Men movies, Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix, he says he’s up for more.

And with Disney having bought out the rights to the comic book favourites – and with plans afoot to integrate the X-men into the hugely successful MCU superhero franchise – the next time he faces off with his Power Of The Dog co-star Benedict “Doctor Strange” Cumberbatch, they could both conceivably be wearing capes.

“I would be absolutely privileged to be reintroduced into that world,” Smit-McPhee says. “There are a lot of portals and different dimensions opening up on Disney+ and the new instalments of their franchises, so there are a lot of possibilities, it’s just a matter of their strategies and who they want to bring back for the most satisfying punch.”

Smit-McPhee says he raised the subject with Cumberbatch – who was preparing to reprise his character for Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – but was swiftly shut down.

Not only did Cumberbatch stay in character as an embittered cowboy for most of the New Zealand shoot, he is also very aware of the famous Marvel cone of silence. “I thought I could go into more details with him but he is extremely dedicated to his protection of the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” says Smit-McPhee with a laugh.