Rising star Zen McGrath reveals how Melbourne lockdowns helped him play Hugh Jackman’s son

Aussie actor Zen McGrath reveals how Melbourne and other taboo subjects helped him when filming alongside Hugh Jackman.

Zen McGrath at the 2022 Newport Beach Film Festival honours program and Variety's 10 actors to watch at The Balboa Bay Club and Resort last October. Picture: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images

Rising Australian movie star Zen McGrath didn’t have to stretch his imagination too far to connect with the isolation and mental health challenges of his character in The Son.

While shooting the family drama in London in mid-2021, the Melbourne born and raised actor had just spent the past year in the most locked-down city in the world and he vividly remembers the disconnect he felt from the days of only being able to see one person for an hour a day, and only within 5km of his house.

“Me and my friends definitely spent a lot of time not being able to see each other,” McGrath says from his home in inner-city Melbourne.

“So, definitely I drew on the isolation and from my experience throughout 2020 and the start of 2021. It felt a bit cathartic to go through that and to sort of express that in a way – it felt like a really good thing to draw on.”

In The Son, McGrath plays Nicholas, the oldest child of Hugh Jackman’s high-flying corporate lawyer, Peter, who has left the family for a younger woman and their newborn baby. When it emerges that the increasingly troubled, distant and angry Nicholas has been skipping school for months, he goes to live with his father who, despite the divorce, is desperate to make up for his own father’s (Anthony Hopkins) parental shortcomings.

Australian actor Zen McGrath in a scene from the movie The Son.

Director Florian Zeller was inspired to write the film by his fascination with the patterns and dynamics that can be passed down from one generation to the next as well as the powerful forces of guilt, family and love. Zeller, who also directed Hopkins to an Oscar in The Father, says he also hopes it will “add a compassionate voice to the discourse around mental illness”.

McGrath, 20, says he found those same friends, who had gone through the same extraordinarily testing conditions during the extended Covid lockdowns, to be a useful resource in talking about mental health more broadly as he set about finding the mindset of Nicholas.

“In terms of preparing for the character, I would talk to my friends a lot,” he says.

“I think everyone has either been through something themself or know someone close to them who has been through something quite tough, maybe existential. And I think just talking to those people and being honest you can draw a lot out of that.”

Additionally, compared to the generation of the 43-year-old Zeller and 54-year-old Jackman, McGrath feels like his peers are more open to talking about what was once a taboo topic.

“I 100 per cent agree that it’s much easier to talk about it and be more open. People talk about what’s going on in their therapy sessions now like, ‘oh, yeah, my therapist said I should be doing this and this’ and I think it’s really good thing. It’s paving the way for a deeper conversation.”

Director Florian Zeller, Zen McGrath, Laura Dern, Hugh Jackman and Vanessa Kirby at The Son red carpet at the 79th Venice International Film Festival last September. Picture: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images

Despite all his preparation, however, McGrath says he still found the shoot to be tough going at times due to the sometimes harrowing nature of Nicholas’ mental unravelling. He’d landed the role over Zoom during lockdown and put his university science degree on hold to travel to London for the shoot, only meeting cast mates Jackman, Laura Dern and Vanessa Kirby days before filming started.

One particular scene, shot over two days in an eerie abandoned hospital, sees an increasingly agitated Nicholas trying to convince his parents to let him leave an institution, against the strong advice of doctors. McGrath says he was fine on the first day, and able to chat and joke with cast and crew between takes, but on day two he had to stay in character just to get through it.

“That second day, I felt like I needed to stay in that headspace to be able to maintain it throughout the whole day because it was too exhausting to try to go back into it every time,” McGrath recalls. “So you’d just see me sitting there looking at the ground trying to phase out all the sound. That day was particularly challenging because there was no levity, it was a very heavy thing.”

The son of neuroscientist mother Heidi and anaesthetist father Craig, McGrath followed in the footsteps of older brother Gully into acting and got his first break alongside younger brother Winta (also appeared in the HBO sci-fi hit Raised By Wolves) in the 2014 drama Aloft, alongside Cillian Murphy and Jennifer Connelly. Other parts followed in the US miniseries Dig as well as the Aussie family film Red Dog: True Blue and ABC comedy Utopia but he says acting alongside the heavy-hitters of The Son was a huge step up.

Actors Zen McGrath, Cillian Murphy and Winta McGrath at Aloft' premiere during 64th Berlinale International Film Festival at Berlinale Palast February, 2014 in Berlin. Picture: Athanasios Gioumpasis/Getty Images

Even though he wasn’t appearing it, Zeller invited his awe-struck young star to watch a pivotal scene between Hopkins and Jackman. McGrath says he was a little intimidated by the former (“he’s a bit scary, with his scary eyes”) but can’t speak highly enough about the latter, and admits to swiping a Photoshopped prop photo of the two of them together as a memento from the set.

“I’m glad I didn’t think about that much,” McGrath says with a laugh. “I was a little bit naive about it, which is probably a good shield but I remember feeling a bit nervous at first. But then as soon as I met Hugh and Laura they were such a lovely people. Everything you hear about Hugh – it’s all true. He’s is the nicest man in Hollywood and he made me feel so welcome and so comfortable that there was no stress there.

“There were moments when I was acting eye-to-eye with the other actors that felt very surreal. I felt super grateful to be able to work with these people who have been acting longer than I’ve been alive and doing it extraordinarily. It was seriously amazing.”

The Son is in cinemas February 9.