Light relief for those feeling frayed around the edges
REPRISING his role as Newcastle MP Chris George in the second season of Frayed, George Houvardas was again reminded why he’s never aspired to be a politician. “I’m too hot tempered, I wouldn’t be able to hear the s... they say in parliament these days,” he says. “I’d tell them to get f...ed.”
Frayed, the black comedy created and written by Sarah Kendall who also stars as the lead character Sammy, is set in the ’80s and Houvardas misses the characters who were in politics back then. “There’s no social media – you think about the Paul Keatings and Bob Hawkes and they just said it how it was,” he says. “And then they went to the pub and had a schooner with their constituents and heard the people. Now in society we have everything at our fingertips and you’d think it would bring you closer, but we’ve never been further apart. Covid as well has made everyone more separated and more into their phones.
“I just hope when we come out of this we remember how to speak to people and read people’s emotions. As humans we are three dimensional, that’s the one thing the politicians have lost. They’re just very two-dimensional.”
In this second instalment of the ABC comedy – which also stars Kerry Armstrong,
Ben Mingay, Doris Younane and Matt Passmore – Chris George, the wealthy and corrupt MP who uses his power to get around the system, has big plans for Newcastle and is campaigning for gaming lounges to inject much needed money into the city, but it’s hit a nerve with locals. “He’s dodgy as f..., and he is taking cash on the side 1000 per cent, but his heart is in the right place,” Houvardas says. “He wants to drag Newcastle out of the big hole we are in.”
He’s one of the few clean-shaven characters on the show, Houvardas laughs at the irony. “I can grow the best moustache and pretty quickly,” the hirsute 39-year-old says. “Sarah said, ‘no way, if you have a moustache you will look too dodgy and no one will vote for you’. I was like ‘fair point, I’ll take that’.”
Houvardas – who recently stepped back into the shoes of his best known alter ego Carbo for Amazon Prime’s Back to the Rafters – has warmed to ’80s fashion. Born in 1982, he sported hypercolour T-shirts, but wasn’t convinced that the double breasted suits of his dad’s era were for him. Now, he owns one.
“I love everything above the waist – I’m not a massive fan of the baggy pants,” he shares.
“But, they’re comfortable as hell. I love the hair, I love the music. I love the shoulder pads – you can get fat and look totally fit.”
Apart from Frayed, Houvardas has appeared in a handful of roles since wrapping Rafters in 2013, taking time to focus on his Sydney restaurant, Piato. He says it’s been tough and akin to groundhog day these last few months in lockdown. “I’ve been keeping myself busy and love the acting as well,” Houvardas shares.
“I’ve been painting and renovating and writing. Trying not think about it.”
He was glad the cast managed a wrap party after the second season which was shot between London and Newcastle earlier this year. It had been two years between the debut season and this second series, which Houvardas exclaims is even better than the first. He’s got his fingers crossed it will be a much shorter wait if a third instalment is commissioned.