A Sunburnt Christmas: Dan Henshall and Christiaan Van Vuuren discuss the wild experience
A new festive film released this week boasts an impressive cast and quirky storyline, but one behind-the-scenes detail will shock you.
An actor known for playing Australia’s most notorious serial killer and another best known as one-half of risque comedy duo Bondi Hipsters doesn’t exactly scream ‘wholesome Christmas’.
Throw in action star Sullivan Stapleton, a couple of kids under ten and a welcome dose of tongue-in-cheek Aussie humour and you have an undeniably chaotic film offering for the festive season: A Sunburnt Christmas.
Chaotic not least because it was all pulled together in a matter of weeks amid the global pandemic.
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A Hunt For the Wilderpeople-meets-Home Alone comedy of errors set in the barren South Australian Outback, A Sunburnt Christmas sees Christiaan van Vuuren (Bondi Hipsters, Soul Mates) at the helm in his feature film directorial debut. He told news.com.au he was excited to rise to the challenges of a festive film.
“The good thing about a good Christmas movie is how it makes you feel, and the things that are explored like giving and sacrifice, but the bad thing about Christmas movies is just how frigging sappy they are,” he pointed out.
“The thing that was great about this film from the start was that it had all the best parts of a Christmas movie but it also has all those things about Australian dry humour … and a couple of sh*tbag characters,” he added.
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Speaking shortly after filming wrapped on the sprawling Adelaide Hills property – which was crawling with face-mask clad crew and thermometer gun-brandishing assistants on news.com.au’s visit to the site – he added that it was a “risky” first project, given its short turnaround.
“Shooting a film in four weeks is pretty unheard of, and cutting it in three is even more unheard of,” he explained of the project he was first approached about in April.
“In 2020, of all the years, we made a movie in under 20 weeks from start to finish. It’s pretty insane.”
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While he admits he lost some work when COVID first hit, Sydney-based father-of-two van Vuuren, 38, has managed to keep busy over the past few months.
As well as A Sunburnt Christmas, he took part in ABC’s At Home Alone Together lockdown special, was involved in a number of music videos, and made the new Bondi Hipsters special also coming out this week.
He mused that a defining moment in his past may have something to do with the number of projects for which he was approached this year.
No stranger to isolation, van Vuuren was diagnosed with drug-resistant tuberculosis in his early 20s and ordered to spend six months in hospital quarantine. This is where his career took off, going on to develop the ‘Fully Sick Rapper’ character from his hospital bed and becoming a viral YouTube sensation.
“I guess that’s why I’ve been lucky this year and remained busy, because I remain top of mind when people go ‘who can make sh*t without going anywhere and having no resources and no connection to the outside world,’” he joked.
“In times like this, I flash back to being in hospital for six months and I just think I do well creatively when I’ve got nowhere to be and nothing to do.”
He explained how his past experience in quarantine made it easier to cope with this year’s on-off lockdown measures.
“What I learnt from my own situation was, don’t have any expectations of this being over. Don’t expect it to come to an end.
“I was only supposed to be in hospital originally for two weeks and that ended up becoming six months quarantine and then another 12 months going to hospital every day once that was done.
“If you build finish lines in your mind that you’re constantly trying to (meet), for your mental health, it’s a lot harder to keep up emotionally with those finish lines when they don’t happen or when they move.”
Given the ever-changing lockdown measures employed around Australia over the past few months, the gravity of being about to work at all during COVID was not lost on any of the cast or crew for A Sunburnt Christmas, Daniel Henshall, who plays kindly criminal Daryl, recalled.
“No matter where you were on the hierarchy everyone was feeling grateful and happy to be working,” the Snowtown actor said.
It’s an unusually comic role for Henshall: a runaway criminal whose getaway Santa Claus costume causes him to be mistaken for the real deal by a family on their drought-stricken farm.
Henshall, whose performance as killer John Bunting in 2011’s Snowtown is nothing short of nightmare-inducing, said it was refreshing to play someone closer to his own personality. He did add that there was an unsavoury side to Daryl he enjoyed exploring, too.
“Playing bad guys is really interesting, because there’s always another level you can find. You can bring the humanity or a side of vulnerability that’s not necessarily expected,” he said.
“I like to really find out what went wrong with this person and why they are the way they are, and that brings a sense of vulnerability, so that’s really exciting to explore and bring to the screen.
“Having said that, I’ve done a lot of that in the last few years, so playing someone who doesn’t necessarily have malicious intent behind some of their actions is really refreshing. It’s nice to play someone who is sort of closer to me.”
Even through the phone, the affable 38-year-old couldn’t be further from his chilling portrayal of Bunting – a fact Henshall himself is aware of.
He said while it’s “gratifying” to be recognised for the iconic role, he’s still waiting for the day he’s distanced from it in the eyes of the public.
“It’s always nice to be recognised for work that you’re proud of. That film and that role scared the living sh*t out of people and rightly so, it’s a very powerful piece of cinema,” he said.
“Most people who think that way or they’ve seen the film and they meet me, they’re shocked – which is gratifying as well. Some are disappointed, they were hoping for someone maybe a little more masculine maybe with a little more gravitas or darkness and that’s definitely not me, most people know me as a pretty bubbly person.
“I hope it changes at one point, it would be nice to juxtapose that with something where people go “f**k I didn’t know that was the same person”.
“Maybe this film will introduce some people to another side to me,” he added.
The actor recently moved back to Melbourne from New York due to the pandemic.
While he said he and his wife were thrilled to return to Australia’s expanse of space and “incredible produce”, he points out that career-wise, there’s a feeling that Australia lacks a sense of vibrancy within the industry.
“We’d been (in New York) for a couple of years and things were starting to take a turn in a good direction for us – my partner is a costume designer and she was starting to get a lot more work,” he said.
“I was starting to get in the door a bit more with some of the local casting agents and make a name for myself outside of the work I did in Australia and that was feeling good.
“Being an artist in Australia is not as well regarded as being an artist in New York – there it’s seen as a profession and here people question it. So there’s a long way to go.”
He continued: “Not to rag on Australia in any way shape or form, we keep punching above our weight producing some great stuff throughout the film industry no matter what side of the camera … (but) there are so many people back who had skipped across the pond to the US or the UK or Europe who came back because of the pandemic.
“There’s a plethora of talent, and ironically the government is taking money out of the industry. Hopefully we can throw a bit more in there and get making,” he concluded.
A Sunburnt Christmas will be available to stream on Stan from Friday, December 11
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