Life, death and a fitting End
AFTER READING THE SCRIPT, STRAIGHT-TALKING ACTOR BRENDAN COWELL KNEW THE DRAMA DEALING WITH A DARK TOPIC WAS FOR HIM
Brendan Cowell doesn’t fear difficult conversations. He relishes them. Something the actor enjoyed most about five years in London is people there don’t shy away from an argument. Australians, he says, still cringe at the thought of disagreement and avoid discussing controversial topics.
“I don’t know if Australia is the best at arguing with relish,” he says. “I very much enjoy living in London because somebody who disagrees with you is more likely to sit next to you, because they don’t see eye-to-eye with you. There’s nothing personal about it. Here we tend to take everything very personally.”
He walks this talk, pushing himself and his audience outside the comfort zone — from his groundbreaking work in Foxtel’s Love My Way through to stage performances where he’s laid himself bare emotionally and physically. It’s also why Cowell knew as soon as he read the script for Foxtel’s new drama, The End, this was a show for him.
Not only was the series being filmed on home soil with a cast of acclaimed actors — including Dame Harriet Walter, Noni Hazlehurst and Frances O’Connor — but it was one that would get people talking about the challenging topic of euthanasia.
Written by screenwriter Samantha Strauss, The End follows a suicidal grandmother (Walter) as she relocates from England to the Gold Coast to be near her daughter (O’Connor).
“Death, pain and embarrassment are probably the three great human fears,” he says. “I don’t want to think about the people I love dying. I can barely even talk about it now. But it is real, and assisted death is a huge issue. We’ve gotten so good at science we can keep people alive forever now. And that is not a good thing. And I’m not talking about the weight it puts on the medical industry and hospitals.
“Choosing your end is something that we should look to, absolutely! When my collie couldn’t run after a stick and couldn’t enjoy a poo in the park or any of the stuff that makes you a dog, we were more than ready to give him the green needle. But when it comes to humans, even if they are a museum piece, and they can’t talk or see us, or they don’t even know who we are, we say: ‘Let’s keep them there’. And that’s got more to do with our needs than it does for them.”
The pandemic has made death a regular topic of conversation around the world, but not necessarily in a constructive way, according to Cowell.
“It’s strange because when there’s a tragedy and people die, we seem to hear about them and their stories. If they died in a helicopter crash, we read about the schoolteacher or the kid. Or we read about the fireman who went into the fire. But with COVID, it’s just so anonymous. I find that sad. There’s just numbers.”
Travelling between the UK, New Zealand and Australia for work in the past year, Cowell has seen different responses to the pandemic. In England, where hundreds die every day, fear of the virus is heightened and he believes people mostly accept the restrictions with good humour.
“But in Sydney people are still complaining that they have to wear a little piece of fabric over their face to go shopping or that they can’t have their glass of rose in the park,” he scoffs. “You feel like saying, ‘Can you just go to London for a few months? Or America? Or Mexico?’ Because we actually have it pretty good.”
Cowell certainly has had it pretty good career wise. In addition to playing O’Connor’s white-collar criminal husband in The End, he appeared in Game of Thrones.
“It was a thrill,” he says of playing Harrag on GoT. “You roll up on the beach and Jon
Snow (Kit Harington) comes down the stairs and you’re like; ‘That’s Jon Snow!’ And it freaks you out. But then you put on that big heavy grey coat that’s been worn down with pigeon poo and honey and they bloody up your face and all of a sudden you’re like,
‘Yeah I am in
Game of
Thrones!’
He says the cast was a
“tight unit” but accepting and warm. “They were like a real family because when it started very few were known and then they became too famous for words. I did not envy their position as we travelled around
Europe. It was hard for them to do the basic things without hysteria.”
That hysteria could soon follow Cowell, with a starring role in the Avatar sequels.
Cowell praises director
James Cameron, who has a tough reputation, as a “playful man” and brilliant listener. “I’ve worked with four or five directors who have been pretty relentless, and I would work with all of them again. I don’t think I’ve ever been more relaxed on a film, even though it’s the biggest film, and by far the biggest thing I’ve ever done, with a guy that’s made some of the most brilliant cinema history. I mean the guy who made Terminator, True Lies, Titanic, Avatar is not exactly prone to a flop.”
Though Avatar could launch a Hollywood career, he won’t be rushing to live in LA, saying he prefers London. “I actually couldn’t think of anything worse. It would be hell.”
Choosing your end is something that we should look to, absolutely!