Rob Mills backs Shane Crawford’s foray into theatre as good for the industry

When critics panned his stage debut Shane Crawford had a secret ally on his side, who has credited him with putting bums on seats.

Musical theatre star Rob Mills has been quietly coaching AFL legend Shane Crawford’s journey to the stage in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

Mills, a Hawks tragic, has proffered behind the scenes advice to Hawthorn great Crawford, who has a cameo role, as The Pharaoh, in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s show.

Mills, who will star as William Shakespeare in the Max Martin musical & Juliet, which opens at the Regent Theatre in February, said he made contact with Crawford before opening night, and after a bunch of savage reviews dropped.

Shane Crawford (centre) as the Pharaoh in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

“We talked a few times in the lead up to opening night,” Mills said. “He was nervous, but he’s a guy who puts everything into what he does.

“You cannot fault this man’s tenacity and dedication to anything. He’s a proper performer. He gives it everything.”

Crawford was committed to the show, Mills said, even after some critics panned his performance.

“He’s being very well supported by the company, the producers, and everyone at Joseph,” Mills said. “I love this industry — musical theatre — but the industry needs to get behind (Crawford) for a few reasons; firstly, he puts bums on seats, and secondly, the (Pharaoh) is a fun role that’s not extremely pivotal to the show.

“He’s basically the pop star of the show. (Crawford) has been a pop star on the (AFL TV program) Footy Show so many times. He’s always been that character.”

Mills went to Joseph’s opening night and rang Crawford the next day.

Crawford remained committed to the show even after some critics panned his performance.

“I said, ‘Mate, this is where the real work happens. Keep discovering the character, keep digging deeper. You’ve learned the steps, you know the lines. Now, keep going. Keep finding The Pharaoh. I also said ‘Hold the microphone closer to your mouth.’

“He was like, ‘Good tip!’”

Mills added: “I thought he was great. He has great presence and he will only get better. I think people need to get behind him.”

“I said yes to everything”

His latest role is William Shakespeare, the great writer of all time and an iconic craftsman with absolute command of language and narrative.

But for a long time Mills, 40, had no control of his own story.

“I said yes to everything,” Mills, 40, says. “And in doing so, I never grew up and made my own decisions. I needed to learn to do things for myself.”

He shot to fame, fresh out of high school and the cover band circuit, on the first-ever season of Australian Idol. It was 2003. There, he became Millsy, the people-pleasing, ever-grinning larrikin.

A record deal, with radio-friendly singles followed, but Mills’ success was almost derailed by panic attacks and, during one dark episode, suicidal thoughts.

Then there was the short tryst with US heiress and socialite Paris Hilton which, perhaps unfairly, still shadows him almost 20 years on.

Rob Mills said for a long time he had no control over his own story. Picture: Eugene Hyland

“I’m trying to put a full stop on it,” Mills told the Herald Sun’s V Weekend magazine. “For her sake, for (his fiancee, The Project co-host, Georgie) Tunny’s sake, for my sake.

“It’s 20 years later,” Mills says, exasperated. “I’m doing so many other things in my life.”

Mills will play The Bard in & Juliet, a modern day remix of Shakespeare’s tragic love story, Romeo and Juliet.

The reimagined version, penned by Schitt’s Creek writer David West Read, with music by pop king Max Martin (Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Backstreet Boys), finds Juliet waking from her deathly slumber, then uses her second chance at life to find her own voice and identity.

However, Juliet’s new journey, championed on the sidelines by Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway (played by Amy Lehpamer), puts the Bard in a bind, as he battles with his own ego and control freak tendencies to keep the doomed lovers deceased.

“It leans into those narcissistic parts that we all have,” Mills said. “I’m really looking forward to playing this character, especially because it goes against those natural instincts, especially here in Australia, to sit well in our own power and abilities. It’s only lately I’ve started to believe, ‘I am good enough.’”

Amy Lehpamer, Casey Donovan and Rob Mills will star in & Juliet. Picture: Ben Symons

Mills grew up, the youngest of three boys, in Glen Waverley and Box Hill as a talented all-rounder: A-grade student, and member of the high school footy team, cricket team, band and choir.

When Mills’ parents split, his grades faltered, but he found solace in music and performance. At 21, he was thrust into the national spotlight on Idol, alongside season one alumni Guy Sebastian, Shannon Noll, Cosima De Vito and Paulini Curuenavuli.

“I was a character in a story, someone who could be reduced into an easily digestible descriptor,” Mills wrote in his book, Putting On A Show. “I was promoted as the boy next door and there wasn’t much room for nuance.”

He later added: “I was confused and fearful from the attention I was getting. I felt powerless. I wasn’t in control.”

Mills told V Weekend: “I was the ultimate good time vibe guy. Whatever was thrown at me, it was, ‘Let’s do this.’ I mean, I’d never been on a plane before. Then, all of a sudden, I was going everywhere.”

However, after being mobbed at a meet and greet session on the Gold Coast, Mills suffered a panic attack. “I was overwhelmed, completely and utterly,” he says. “It was the attention and a sense of, ‘I didn’t sign up for this.’ I was a kid who sang at the pub.”

After retreating to his high rise hotel, other dark thoughts crept in. “I get emotional thinking about it, because I felt so alone that night,” Mills says. “I was in a dark place, I freaked out, and I ran to that f---ing balcony. I definitely thought of ending it.”

But Mills slowly talked himself off the ledge, and phoned home. “I called my brother, but I didn’t tell him what happened,” he says. “I just needed to hear a familiar voice.”

Australian Idol finalists Rob Mills and Paulini Curuenavuli.

Rob Mills and Georgie Tunny. Picture: Ian Currie

Mills says he and Noll knew Sebastian would win Idol. “From day one, Shannon and I were like, ‘He’s very, very good,’” Mills says, laughing. “Guy and I are a similar age, but there was a maturity about him. He knew who he was and what he wanted. I was in awe of that.”

Indeed, while continuing to grapple with who he was, Mills was catapulted into another level of consciousness when he met reality star and business mogul Paris Hilton.

“For some people, I have come to be defined by something fleeting that occurred in 2003,” Mills wrote in Putting On A Show. “Despite all the things I was accomplishing in my life, I was known — and in many ways, still am, if I’m being honest — for a two week fling that I’m nether proud or ashamed of.

“I was a kid in my early 20s doing what kids in their early 20s do. I was so young — as was Paris – and I was still trying to work myself out as a person.”

They were photographed together at the Melbourne Cup, and on a hotel balcony in Sydney, but Mills also revealed a sweeter, almost naive side to their brief courtship.

He ferried Hilton around town in his Toyota Camry station wagon, including “Chap Laps” — cruising up and down Chapel St — and they also visited his dad’s partner’s place in Box Hill.

“Maybe I was one of the first people to treat her like a regular person,” Mills told V Weekend. “It was an authentic connection between two 21, 22-year-olds trying to work things out. I wasn’t trying to be anything other than myself. It was like, ‘I’m not selling you anything. This is it.’”

He shudders at the memory of driving up Chapel St and pointing out Johnny Rockets, Q Bar, TGIF, and Noodle Box to the queen of Rodeo Drive.

“I definitely wasn’t out to impress,” Mills says, chuckling. “I thought the Jam Factory was cool back then, you know like, ‘Hey, and it’s got a cinema!’”

Rob Mills and Paris Hilton at the Melbourne Cup.

His introduction to media betrayal came when a magazine asked to do an at-home piece, complete with pictures of Mills jumping on his bed at the family house.

“It wasn’t a fancy house. It looked like those portable buildings you have at school,” Mills said. “They bought me sandwiches and we talked about Idol. I was asked one question about Paris, and it became, ‘Rob Mills Tells All, One Night In Paris.’

“The whole article compared my house to her house. I felt so betrayed, because I’ve always been honest with everyone,” Mills says. “It really sucked.”

The fallout from that time caused Mills to reassess everything. He had top 40 success with his debut album, but Mills slowly shifted from a pop career to television and theatre roles.

His first stage show was Grease — The Arena Spectacular, alongside John Farnham and Natalie Bassingthwaighte, in 2005.

Later, following a trip to London’s West End, Mills’ musical theatre ambitions were realised. He was in cast in Hair, with Cosima De Vito and Nikki Webster, but really made his mark in Wicked, opposite Lucy Durack, Amanda Harrison and the late Rob Guest.

He also starred in TV soap Neighbours as duplicitous schoolteacher Finn Kelly from 2017 to 2020.

His theatres credits include Ghost The Musical, Puffs, Jesus Christ Superstar and Hairspray.

“I love musical theatre because it’s a team,” Mills says. “You might be the lead in the show, you might be a swing in the show, but the show is a team.”

The cast of the Australian production of & Juliet.

When he auditioned for & Juliet, Mills revelled in the show’s often humorous and self-aware tone, and themes about identity, equality, second chances, and diverse love.

But he says West End and Broadway director Luke Sheppard helped him find the motivation for a powerful scene near the show’s end.

“A lot of this show is fun and farcical at times,” Sheppard told Mills, “but this scene is, ‘You could lose everything’ You need to find what that is.”

Mills immediately thought of losing Tunny, and nailed the moment.

Rob Mills met Georgie Tunny, via social media, after seeing her television. She had moved from Queensland to Victoria to start a sports reporting role at ABC News.

“I had been living the single life and going on lots of horrible Tinder dates,” Mills told a newspaper in 2020.

“Then one morning in 2018 I flicked on the television to ABC News Breakfast and went ‘Who is that?!’ She was beautiful and articulate. I needed to know her.”

Mills reached out to Tunny via Instagram.

“My name is Rob,” he wrote. “We have some mutual friends. It looks like you’re new to Melbourne. I know what that feels like. If you’d like someone to show you around, especially the good coffee spots, I’d like to be that person.

“I’m not a weirdo,” Mills added. “As I said, we have mutual friends.”

She left him on silent for a few days.

They met in person, three months later, at the opening night of Puffs.

Mills proposed to Tunny late last year.

“She’s good at cultivating great people around her,” he says. “She celebrates the wins, she celebrates her friends, and she celebrates herself.

“I always hated the word ‘content’ — it’s so boring. But I’m content with Tunny. She doesn’t do celebrity, she doesn’t do drama, and it’s so lovely.”

However, there was a dramatic pause when she hit the chapter in Mills’ book about exploring his sexuality.

“Society holds this weird kind of lens over it. It’s just exploring,” Mills said. “A lot of men hang on to shame and guilt about exploring, trying things. I held on to that for a long time.”

Tunny asked how his family would feel about the revelation in the book.

“It’s 2022,” he told her. “They’ll be fine.”

Mills says: “I wrote about it to normalise it. Once you take ownership of it, you control it. You control your story.

“It’s made me into the man I am today,” Mills says. “I love that. I love who I am.”

& Juliet opens at the Regent Theatre on February 26.

Tickets are available from Ticketek.