Starting a revolution

When We Rise, a new US TV series set to air on SBS starring Guy Pearce and Rachel Griffiths, will chart the real-life story of the LGBT men and women behind the US civil rights movement. Pearce tells DANIELLE McGRANE what it’s been like working on such a

When Guy Pearce and his castmates were making When We Rise, “President Trump” was still just a possibility looming on the horizon.

It was a particularly interesting time to be shooting a show about LGBT rights, being an unsteady time politically for any minority or oppressed community.

But the real blow came right in the middle of filming when 49 people were killed in the Orlando gay nightclub shooting.

“When something like this happens which was clearly aimed at the LGBT community, it was really devastating. People were almost wandering around in a daze and it felt like it was wrong to go back to work. It had that feel about it,” Pearce said.

The resonance of this massacre was felt by the cast and crew who were working on this show that documents the real-life struggles of the LGBT men and women who helped pioneer one of the last legs of the US civil rights movement.

And it added even more weight to the role the Australian actor took on as LGBT rights activist Cleve Jones, who co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 1983 and founded The NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.

“Most of the things I do aren’t just entertainment-based. I like to delve into things that make you turn things over and look at the flip side of things psychologically or politically” he said.

The show was written and created by Dustin Lance Black, who won an Oscar in 2009 for his screenplay for Milk, the film about the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California, Harvey Milk.

Pearce says most of the reallife people who the characters were based on are still alive and were there on set, and having Jones on set was great.

“It’s very moving because you see him standing behind the monitor with a tear in his eye because he’s being taken back to that time, and of course we’re touching on probably the most dramatic stuff in his and other’s lives,” he said.

“Cleve would come up to me occasionally and give me a big silent hug,” Pearce said.

“That happened a number of times and I felt really like, ‘OK, he accepts what I’m doing’.”

Before making this series, Pearce said he was ignorant to the struggle and the fight that people faced in the US to get to the 2015 Supreme Court ruling in favour of same-sex marriage.

“As far as the coal-face battleground of what people have actually had to deal with, particularly when it comes to real violence and people being ostracised, every time you hear one of those stories you just think, ‘Oh Jesus Christ’,” he said.

According to Pearce, many of the activists, including Jones, are frustrated at the younger generation who sometimes take for granted what they have worked so hard to achieve.

“They don’t realise the work that has been done to even be able to have a gay nightclub on a public street,” Pearce said.

“The work needs to be continued otherwise the other side will take over again. And obviously with people ople like Trump … they’re just settingetting things back so far, it’s so depressing. Complacency really ly is the enemy and it’s the same for any cause.”

He has a feelingeling that When We Rise will resonate with many ny people, and has the potential to affect lives, but t he’s not sure how effective ective it will be in the current political climate. te.

“This is really ally important but the difficulty is how will it actually end up being important? t? Will it be held up as some sort of torch? Or will Trump hold itt up as ‘this is despicable’,” cable’,” he said. “Who knows how it will actually transpire.”

When We Rise From Wednesday on SBS On Demand, starts 8.30pm Saturday, March 11 on SBS