Sullivan Stapleton: From 70s crim to FBI agent

Sullivan Stapleton has joined the ranks of Animal Kingdom alumni who have gone on to have flourishing careers overseas.

Sullivan Stapleton as Pommie in Cut Snake. a character he describes as ‘such a dark man and yet you find out why he is so menacing, and it was a great part to explore’.

Add Sullivan Stapleton to the Animal Kingdom generation making it big internationally.

Only last week, Stapleton’s international career was consolidated by the successful premiere of the NBC crime series Blindspot, which has already been extended to a full season after scoring the highest ratings for a premiere in the first week of the new US television season.

Stapleton, who has been gainfully employed overseas since David Michod’s 2010 crime drama, joins the other stars of Animal Kingdom’s Cody clanwho subsequently have broken through or built on US careers, including Joel Edgerton, Ben Mendelsohn, Jacki Weaver and James Frecheville.

Stapleton has starred in the action epic 300: Rise of an Empire, feature Gangster Squad and the US cable series Strike Back. But this new network TV series is something else and means Australia may not see him in a film such as Cut Snake — or Kill Me Three Times, which was released digitally and on DVD last week — anytime soon.

Stapleton stars as the confused and violent Pommie in Tony Ayres’s crime drama with a twist. The actor admits Cut Snake feels like a long time ago. “Yes, mate, it does, a really long time,” he says. But he has high expectations about how the film will be received. As he should: it is a dominant lead role and a complex character — even if the film struggled to make an impression last weekend, opening on only six screens.

Stapleton plays a crim just released from jail who is keen to hook up with a former cellmate, Sparra (Alex Russell), and return to the old game. On the surface, that is the life of violence and crime, but beneath it all Pommie harbours a desire to rekindle the relationship they had on the inside. Sparra, who has put that part of his life behind him, is not so keen. He’s about to marry his sweetheart, Paula (another Aussie returning from network television, Jessica De Gouw).

The prospect of a not-so-passionate denouement permeates the film and Stapleton laughs as he says he felt something “along those lines” might happen when he first read Blake Ayshford’s screenplay.

Pommie’s story becomes a little more layered than your bog-standard thug. “That is what drew me to it and wanted to be part of it,” the 38-year-old says.

“For one, those different layers to Pommie, (but) also to work with Tony Ayres. (Pommie) is such a dark man and yet you find out why he is so menacing, and it was a great part to explore and to go to work every day and work with such great people on something that from the start I really loved,” he adds. “It’s a nice way to work.”

Not that he had to maintain that mad energy on set. He is not that kind of actor, Stapleton says with a laugh.

“I sort of go in and out of it, the same as talking with my own voice and when they call action I can switch in and out of talking American for the show,” he says, deftly switching in and out of his American accent while speaking.

“I chop and change. To play that character of Pommie all day, that’d be draining,” he says.

Indeed, he says the conflicted side of the character “just came to me easily”.

“It was so well written, that character just jumped off the page for me,” he says. And Ayres, best known for his feature The Home Song Stories and for directing The Slap, “allowed me to explore that”.

“He’s a very open director, allowing us to develop these characters and see where it takes us.”

Stapleton looks the part. The transformation from the physically “ripped” Greek general Themistokles in the fantasy 300: Rise of an Empire to the heavy but menacing 1970s crim in Cut Snake is striking and spot-on. “It’s that funny thing, in the 70s … men didn’t have full six-packs and chiselled pecs — it was a different shape, especially men who’ve been in and out of prison,” he says. “That was a definite choice for me.”

Now the choices appear to be about day-to-day discipline. He’s sitting on his couch in New York poring over the next day’s scripts for Blindspot as we speak, and the machinations of a weekly US drama are daunting. Certainly more so, he says, than the roving circus nature of the military intelligence drama Strike Back.

“You get thrown in the deep end of the pool and you’re just treading water and trying to put your feet on the ground,” he says. “That’s just how it is. It’s a huge machine to be part of, then you get into the day to day and try and settle in and obviously do the best work that I can, and hopefully the ratings go well. But it is a great family to be part of and the schedule of work is pretty full on.”

His lead FBI agent character features every day and he has 22 episodes lined up until March next year. And, as US network series now have it, he’s signed for six years, all things going well.

“It’s actually great to be part of a job they’re all so excited about, and so am I, and be able to settle into a city,” he says. “Up to now I’ve been a gypsy for the last five to six years. It’s great to lock into this and put your head down and hopefully do some good work and explore this city.”

Cut Snake is in limited release. Blindspot premieres on Seven next month.