Patrick Brammall: ‘Australian jokes make us laugh more’

Offspring star Patrick Brammall and his partner, fellow actor Harriet Dyer, get candid about why they chose to shoot their new series Colin From Accounts on home soil.

Stellar:Your 14-month-old daughter Joni, who you welcomed via adoption last September, is mostly growing up in America. Are you doing anything to make sure she’s in touch with her Aussie heritage?

Patrick Brammall: She dressed up as Bluey for Halloween!

Harriet Dyer: She calls me Mum, and not Mom. And we play a lot of John Williamson and John Farnham. We have lamingtons in the fridge.

PB: We eat a meat pie every now and then.

Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer. Picture: Peter Brew-Bevan/Binge

S: What prompted you to set your new romantic comedy series Colin From Accounts in Sydney?

HD: Someone over here asked, “Why don’t you make it in America?” And we were like,

“Because Australian jokes make us laugh more. Australian voices make us laugh more”. We want something that Australians can look at and go, “Oh, that’s a piece of us.”

PB: Also, we’re at a time with streaming services where you can make local things and they can travel, and people will watch them. Gone are the days where you’re just importing American or British stuff into Australia and not exporting our own stuff. There are audiences for everything. So, the seed of our show, the engine of our story, you could do anywhere. But like Harry said, the characters we dreamt up are very Australian because they’re the sorts of people we know and [have] grown up with. We love the Australian vernacular as well. Obviously, we’ve moved to America now for work because you can make a better living here. But it’s not like we’re passionate about American stories.

HD: Don’t tell them that!

PB: I won’t tell [American casting agents] that. We’re passionate about Australia, the place that has informed us creatively and in every other way.

HD: It’s our little love letter to all the weird family barbecues we’ve been to and all the people we’ve worked with over the years.

S: There are some very funny scenes, including an excruciatingly embarrassing incident involving a toilet. Is any of it based on your own experiences, or are these awkward moments purely the product of your imaginations?

PB: Harriet, where did the toilet thing come from?

HD: The toilet thing happened to me while I was writing the script in a not-for-profit [hub run by the creative-arts foundation] Australians In Film in Los Angeles, called Charlie’s. It’s a place with hot desks where people come to do their writing. It was just before Christmas 2017 and the only other guy in there working was also called Harry. I was just writing away on the pilot and I thought: hmm, what happens next? Then I took a break to go to the toilet. And it didn’t flush. And I had to pull it out with a plastic bag and put it in a little styrofoam container and walk out past the other Harry like nothing had happened so I could find a bin to put it in. Then I washed my hands, sat back down at my computer and thought: well, that goes in the show. Colin From Accounts is about two people who meet after one of them hits a dog with their car.

Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer have a 14-month-old daughter. Picture: Peter Brew-Bevan/Binge

S: Is that also based on truth?

PB: That’s purely a work of fiction.

HD: Although, when I was in my 20s and I was babysitting, I pushed the pram into a pole because I was distracted by this cute personal trainer when he took his shirt

off. I’m also a fairly distracted driver. I’ve nearly run up the back of another car because something catches my eye. So, I think I was a bit obsessed with the idea that people must catch each other’s eye and cause accidents all the time.

S: So, how did you two meet?

HD: The Sydney TV and theatre scene is very small.

PB: It’s the classic actors-getting-together-with-other-actors. We met a few times before anything happened.

HD: We did steal a little bit from our lives in the sense that we’re 12 years apart [just like our characters]. And there was a time when he was 41 and I was 29 and we were like, “This is a gross age gap. We’re missing an entire decade of learning and life. What happens if we put that into a TV show?”

PB: Yeah, we exploited that with some generational gags.

S: Has the age difference ever been an issue?

HD: Yeah. We never knew whether we looked creepy together. I think I asked

one friend if it was weird. She was like, “No, it’s fine.” But in the end, I didn’t care because we liked each other.

PB: Like?

HD: Yeah, I like you. It’s a large like though.

Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer feature in this Sunday’s Stellar.

S: Harriet, many Australians fell in love with your husband after he played midwife Leo Taylor in the hit Network 10 series Offspring, until it ended in 2017. Were you one of those people?

HD: I didn’t watch it.

PB: [Laughing] You didn’t watch it? Thanks for your support.

HD: I think I was in drama school and taking myself very seriously smoking cigarettes outside theatre doors and watching as much avant-garde theatre as humanly possible.

PB: You weren’t into network TV?

HD: No, I wasn’t sitting at home with my dinner at 7pm. I was in pubs. Learning monologues and trying to get free tickets to the Sydney Theatre Company in those hallowed years that Patty was stealing hearts as Leo.

PB: I remember one of the writers from Offspring called me and said, “Look, Dr Patrick [Matt Le Nevez] has just died, so we’re going to replace him, and we’re thinking about casting you.” I was like, “Are you joking? There’s no way that I can top Matt Le Nevez.” And they explained that it was a whole different vibe and it turned out great. But for a moment I was like, “I wouldn’t have thought I could do it because Matt Le Nevez is a dreamboat.”

HD: Dreamboats come in all shapes and sizes.

PB: Thank you. And this one didn’t get wiped out by a Toyota.

Colin From Accounts premieres December 1 on Binge.

Originally published as Patrick Brammall: ‘Australian jokes make us laugh more’