Rake’s still feeling the love
Russell Dykstra tells Steve Kilgallon why Rake‘s reprieve was the right call.
People would stop Russell Dykstra on the street and ask him, implore him – are they going to make any more of Rake?
Dykstra didn’t know, but he rather hoped so. The incisive Aussie legal comedy-drama returns to New Zealand TV this Tuesday on the pay-TV channel Rialto.
There was a long interlude between season three, which ended with Dykstra’s character Barney and his old mate Cleaver Greene (Richard Roxburgh) ascending into the clouds in a runaway hot-air balloon, and the fourth.
Roxburgh, Andrew Knight and Peter Duncan – the trio who write and produce the show – had originally considered three seasons enough, but were swayed by public opinion to write another.
‘‘I honestly didn’t think it was [going again],’’ recalls Dykstra (Barney, we can reveal, survives his ordeal).
‘‘I thought that was going to be the end of it. The talk on set was that we had had a great time, and its been a great experience, we’ve all loved it. Naturally, you’re sad when you have to put a project to bed that you enjoy doing so much that has good writing and good characters.’’
He enjoyed the reprieve and with the run just ending in Australia, Dykstra is pleased that they read the wind right.
‘‘It would’ve been incredibly sad to pull something from the ashes and find nobody else really cared, that would’ve been a little but embarrassing, but no . . . it’s certainly really loved here and it is growing in popularity.’’
For the uninitiated, Rake follows the chaotic life of the vulpine Greene, a brilliant but dissolute QC with a hunger for women, wine and hard drugs.
Dykstra plays his instructing solicitor and best friend, a relationship which has survived even the test of Cleaver seducing Barney’s wife.
That the show has now run for so long has enabled, he thinks, an ability to cut a lot of exposition and focus on the story, driving Rake away from an episodic formula based around Cleaver’s court cases, to a more characterdriven drama.
That dramatic edge means Rake has managed to often predict real life in its venal tales of judicial, political and police corruption.
‘‘It’s funny how often things end up on the screen before they actually happen politically,’’ Dykstra says. ‘‘It’s surprising for us but also for other people generally, who must think ‘how the hell did they know that was going to happen’?’’
Dykstra may now be most recognised for Barney, but he has a CV laden with creditable theatre work and well-received films such as Clubland and Oranges and Sunshine.
He grew up in Brisbane, studying a drama degree in Queensland and began working on the stage, but during a spell in Troilus and Cressida opposite Geoffrey Rush and Isobel Anderson, he was persuaded by the pair to go overseas.
He studied at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris and under former Lecoq tutor Phillipe Dollier in London.
He says it changed his acting, and drove him to create his own work. ‘‘There’s nothing more terrifying, but also as rewarding, as having to develop something and put it out there and say this is mine and it all falls on my shoulders – you don’t like the acting, that’s me, you don’t like the content, that’s all me too’’.
He admits he’s neither writing nor acting right now – he’s holidaying on the Sunshine Coast when we talk – and isn’t sure of his next gig. He doesn’t seem too perturbed.
That leaves time for his passion: beekeeping, something he stumbled upon one day when he was in the city filming Rake, went for a walk to a local farmers’ market during a break and got chatting to a stallholder. He lost one hive to a beetle infestation, but his other is producing honey good enough to impress his local beekeeping association.
Meanwhile, he says, he’s become accustomed to being accosted about Rake – from friends catching up on earlier seasons and warning him to not give any spoilers to those demanding more episodes.
Rake Tuesday, 8.30pm, Rialto.