Steen Raskopoulos, actor/comedian, 37: Q&A

The show’s star Steen Raskopoulos says the local version of the Ricky Gervais comedy classic had to be ‘properly Australian’. What can viewers expect from the most anticipated release of the year?

New role: Steen Raskopoulos

Your role as Nick Fletcher in the Australian version of The Office has been a long time coming, hasn’t it? I first auditioned in November 2021. I didn’t hear anything back until the first week of February the following year, and I was asked to come in and do some chemistry testing. My wife [British comedian Sara Pascoe] was due to give birth to our first son on the 8th and the only other day [the show’s producers] could do was the 9th. So the day after my son was born, I left the hospital at 11am, did chemistry tests, and went straight back to the hospital.

Well, thank God you got the role. Imagine if I didn’t! I think my wife would’ve lost it.

Australia is very good at exporting comedy for other people to eventually ruin – just like the US version of Kath & Kim. How do you think we’ll fare importing it? I think with this show, for it to be successful, we had to make it properly Australian. We couldn’t just make a copy or do similar stuff, and so there’s a whole Melbourne Cup episode and there’s Australian culture and politics, which I think is so important for it to succeed here and internationally.

Ricky Gervais has said he is keen to see how a show created 20 years ago is remade in a modern context. How do you grapple with what audiences find funny or offensive? If you’re speaking for shock value, to upset an audience, that’s not necessarily going to be good. In terms of challenging people’s ideas and notions and commenting on a lot of things happening socially, I think it’s important to bring light and use humour. I was surprised with this show, though, because there’s a few episodes where things do get pushed – and I’m excited for people’s reactions.

Have you ever had an office job? Never. I worked at my family’s commercial laundry business from the age of 12 to 19 – Dad used to wake us up at 4.30am during the school holidays and that was my break, but no office job.

In 2018 your one-man stage show Stay laid bare your experience with depression. Six years on, is there anything that stays with you from that performance? That show served a certain purpose and lived in a certain space at the time, and it was important for me to do. I don’t reflect on it much anymore. Even when I’m listening to music and some of the sounds I used for the show come up in my shuffle I’ll just skip it straight away because I can’t listen to it – it was such a hard show to perform. But it’s a good thing; I’ve made my peace with it in a nice way.

How did you handle the responsibility of portraying mental illness on stage? If what I’m saying does affect someone, which it definitely did with a lot of my friends, then I want it to be in a way that encourages them to have way better chats and relationships with the people around them. Often men are taught to just suck things up and move on. Why wouldn’t you spit it out? That’s what I’ve always tried to push for – vulnerability is so important, especially in comedy. I guess I go with the mentality that it’s better to spit it out than to suck it up.

Offstage and off-screen, what makes you laugh? My kids [Theodore, two, and Albie, one]. You can do the dumbest things and it makes them laugh so hard. They’re the easiest audience.

The Office premieres on Amazon Prime on Friday, October 18.