A dramatic turn
DANCER TODD MC KENNEY IS TRYING OUT HIS ACTING CHOPS IN A NEW SERIES
I thought as soon as the lights went on, and they said action, that I might break into a tap dance, which wouldn’t really be appropriate for this show
Whether he’s tearing up the stage in the musical Hairspray or tearing strips off Dancing With the Stars contestants, you can always count on Todd McKenney to create some serious drama.
Now, for the first time in his glittering career, McKenney is getting serious about drama in the gripping ABC series Significant Others. Playing an uncharacteristically quiet role in a show devoid of razzle dazzle saw McKenney well and truly out of his comfort zone after 40-odd years in musical theatre. So much so, that he asked the director to pull him up whenever his performance got too big and stagey.
“My fear that I was going to try and hit the back wall,” he says of a theatre performer’s ability to project their voice over the hum of a packed theatre.
“I thought as soon as the lights went on, and they said action, that I might break into a tap dance, which wouldn’t really be appropriate for this show.”
That is, of course, a deliberate understatement. Significant Others is a slow-burn mystery about estranged siblings – Claire, Ursula and Den – who are brought together after their sister, Sarah, goes missing on an early morning swim in Sydney Harbour. Claire, Ursula and Den must put their differences aside to care for Sarah’s two terrified teenage kids.
McKenney plays Wayne, the dependable fiance of professional dancer, Den (Kenneth Moraleda). It is Wayne who remains calm as everyone else around him goes to pieces in the aftermath of Sarah’s disappearance.
“As a gay man in Australia, it’s so often we are asked to play cliched gay characters in things; and for me, particularly as my main persona in the entertainment world involves jazz hands, spirit fingers and sequins or whatever that character was on Dancing With the Stars,” he says.
“But the character of Wayne – and I hope this is portrayed – actually has the type of gay life that I live. It felt like a very genuinely written role that reflects how I perceive my gay role. Or my life and in the gay world.
“I don’t wear flamboyant clothes and I don’t mince. I have that wit that a lot of people associate with that gay persona, but this role felt like a really real version of my gay life. And that’s what I love to play. It felt real to me.”
Of course, given his background and experience on the dance floor, McKenney is bemused that he’s not the dancer in this show.
“But at 57, with arthritic feet, I was thrilled with that,” he laughs.
“Everyone on set kept asking: ‘How come you’re not the dancer?’ and I’d just say: ‘I don’t know, but I am loving it’ because watching him have to warm up and go to rehearsals on his day off and then turn up when you are really sore the next day was a real relief that it was not me.”
At no stage during Moraleda’s dance scenes, did McKenney feel tempted to draw on his years as a Dancing With the Stars judge to offer him any constructive criticism. And it may have been his last chance to sit in judgment as he’s not yet certain whether Dancing With the Stars will return for another spin in 2023. And if it does, he understands that the producers may want to reboot the franchise yet again.
“I’ve never gotten sick of it,” he says of being on the judging panel with Helen Richey, Mark Wilson and Paul Mercurio.
“I’d never thumb my nose at it. So, if they offered for me to do it again, I would. But if I was to put my producer’s hat on one of the ways to freshen the show could be to freshen up the judging panel. I get that.”
Apart from the odd mamba or jive at a wedding, McKenney doesn’t dance much at all any more due to his arthritis.
It’s one of the reasons he was so delighted to have his career take this unexpected left turn into acting. “It doesn’t rely on my body holding up the way that dancing does,” he says of acting.
McKenney has learned a lot from watching his far more experienced co-stars; acclaimed actors Rachael Blake (Lantana), Jacqueline McKenzie (Romper Stomper) and Alison Bell (The Letdown). And he jokes that being on set with them was faster and less expensive than going to NIDA.
“It’s really great to be learning again and learning in an environment that you really love,” he says. “At my age after resting on my sequined laurels for so long it’s unexpected and welcomed.”
McKenney had been performing in the adults only musical comedy The Lyin’ Queen at the Sydney Opera House when series creator Tommy Murphy came backstage to talk to him about joining Significant Others.
“Obviously I was familiar with his work because of Holding the Man,” McKenney says of the acclaimed screenwriter and playwright Murphy.
“So, I was really thrilled because often it’s hard for me to get people to take me seriously as an actor, in a dramatic sense, because I have painted myself into musical theatre for so long, and I like musical theatre, but I’ve always wanted to do drama and so I jumped at it.” Significant Others, 8.30pm, Sunday, ABC