English Patient and Lost star returns to play John Ibrahim’s rival

In a fictional TV world, the last time Naveen Andrews was in Sydney, he was boarding Oceanic Flight 815 to Los Angeles. It was a doomed journey that would become the catalyst for the hit sci-fi series Lost, with Andrew’s character – Sayid Jarrah – sticking it out for six seasons until the bitter end.

Now, 20 years later, Andrews is back in Sydney, filming Last King of the Cross, the TV series “inspired” by Sydney nightclub boss John Ibrahim’s 2017 memoir. In it, Andrews plays Ray Kinnock, a rival nightclub owner who Ibrahim wants to buy out. As Ibrahim, played by Lincoln Younes, says, “the Cross is dead”, and Oxford Street, the heart of the city’s gay scene, is now where it’s at.

Naveen Andrews plays nightclub owner Ray Kinnock in season two of Last King of the Cross. 

On the day I visit the set, an actual club on Oxford Street, drag queens and party-goers are milling about, Younes has his brown contact lenses and dark wig in place, while the real John Ibrahim keeps an eye on the playback monitor.

In the middle of this sits Andrews, whose velvet jacket and coloured nails paint a picture of Kinnock as a dapper man who is more at ease in Oxford Street than Ibrahim is.

“He’s an adversary to John,” says Andrews of Kinnock. “He doesn’t seem to want to compromise, or ameliorate situations. He’s not an easy personality to deal with, to be honest, I would have compromised right from the beginning. Why wouldn’t you? What is wrong with you?

“But the way the character is written, he seems to take a special delight in being contrary, without sufficient regard to his own safety. He’s not a fighter, but he uses his sexuality, it seems, to intimidate people and there’s even a hint of it with John.”

Claude Jabbour (left) as Sam Ibrahim and Lincoln Younes as John Ibrahim in Last King of The Cross.

Kinnock also doesn’t want to muddy Oxford Street’s waters with the kind of crowd Ibrahim had cultivated in his part of Kings Cross.

“If there’s anything that redeems Ray, it’s his love for the [area],” says Andrews. “What I think is a flaw is the fact that he’s not willing to adulterate the water with straights coming in. He’s being rather obstreperous, really.”

Where season one covered Ibrahim’s ascent from a poor Lebanese immigrant to his rise through the 1990s to become one of the city’s most well-known businessmen, a multimillionaire with a string of nightclubs and properties in King Cross’ thriving and seedy strip, season two finds Ibrahim picking up the pieces after the royal commission.

Newly returned from Ibiza, Ibrahim is trying to re-establish control of Sydney’s nightlife, while also dealing with his older brother Sam (played by Claude Jabourr), who is attempting to establish a chapter of the Black Flags motorcycle club.

Naveen Andrews and Evangeline Lilly in Lost.

Ibrahim is also being pursued by Senior Sergeant Elizabeth Doyle (Tess Haubrich) and two other new troublemakers on the scene, played by Luke Arnold and Matuse.

Even though Last King of the Cross is a story steeped in Sydney’s colourful history, it also comes with a clutch of legal warnings, emphasising that it’s a “dramatisation” and “several of the characters and events represented throughout the series are entirely fictitious”.

Ibrahim has spent the best part of his life crime adjacent. He appeared before the Wood royal commission in 1995, where it was alleged he was a “major organised crime figure” who was the “lifeblood of the drugs industry in Kings Cross”.

However, has only been convicted of assault when he was a teenager and has never been convicted of any other crime or been accused of any offences relating to his brothers’ activities.

‘I actually got to meet John [Ibrahim], and, God forgive me, but there is an admiration there, I can’t really put it another way.’

Last King of the Cross star Naveen Andrews

Sam, meanwhile, is a well-known underworld figure and former bikie boss who was deported to Lebanon in 2020 after he was released from prison for a conspiracy to supply guns.

Their younger brother Michael (played in the show by Dave Hoey) was sentenced to 30 years’ jail in 2020 over his role in a conspiracy to import 1.9 tonnes of drugs from the Netherlands.

Andrews, who is originally from Brixton in London but now lives in Los Angeles, hadn’t heard of the Ibrahim family before he accepted the role, but that didn’t deter him from saying yes.

“I’m really glad I did [say yes],” he says. “Because, you know, I actually got to meet John, and, God forgive me, but there is an admiration there, I can’t really put it another way. It’s not grudging either. It’s for someone who survived and somehow managed to come through relatively unscathed. You can’t help admiring that … it’s just a different side of the street.”

When we talk, Andrews is in his last week of filming, before flying home to the US. After starring in Lost, does he ever get worried about planes these days?

“Never,” he deadpans. “For some reason, I’m not worried about planes, even when you hear disastrous things, like bits of plane falling off. And I think when I was doing that show, people knew, I guess, who that character was when you got on board a plane, and they would make jokes about it. Passengers would say various things, but obviously with humour, and you became inured to the idea of a dramatic plane crash that wasn’t real. Let’s hope that, you know, life doesn’t imitate art.”

Last King of the Cross streams on Paramount+ from August 30.

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