‘Nice guy’ actor Erik Thomson talks about his change of image in The Luminaries.
With the final of The Luminaries set to screen this week, actor Erik Thomson talks to Sarah Nealon about his role in the drama and what viewers can expect from the show’s conclusion.
Viewers are more used to seeing him playing caring dads in shows like 800 Words and Packed To The Rafters. But there is another side to Erik Thomson.
The Australian-based New Zealand actor is now on screen as The Luminaries’ Dick Mannering, a gun-wielding pimp who is not to be trusted. It’s a role Thomson relished. “I loved it because it was such a long way away from me and characters like George Turner (800 Words) and Dave Rafter (Packed To The Rafters) and stuff,” he says. “They’re just sort of manifestations of yourself really and in a lot of ways, obviously, you play them pretty close to home. Whereas someone like Dick Mannering, he’s about as far away from me as you get – you know, different accent, a bit of body padding, some facial hair and historic costumes.”
The Luminaries is set in the South Island in the 1860s gold rush. The show centres around recent immigrant Anna (Eve Hewson), who becomes trapped in prostitution and ends up a user of illicit substances. Thomson’s character Dick befriends Anna but his intentions are not exactly good. “If you wanted to judge him through modern eyes, he was exploiting young women and, you know, his actions are actually quite despicable from a sort of moral judgmental point of view,” says Thomson. “I suppose from his perspective, and a lot of people of the period, you’re just making a living and you’re providing a service. “So what I didn’t want to do was just to play him like an evil, moustache-twirling villain. “I really wanted him to have a kind of colour and I suppose charisma and a theatrical attractiveness to him because people don’t fall under the spell of men like him unless those men have some kind of attractive qualities. That’s the way I wanted to come at it.” The Luminaries is an intense six-part drama, based on Eleanor Catton’s novel, which is coming to end this week.
Viewers will no doubt be hoping that Anna’s fortunes change and she ends up in the arms of fellow immigrant Emery Staines (Himesh Patel), whom she first encountered on a ship.
As to what people can expect from the drama’s final episode, Thomson says, “The Luminaries, like the book, is one of those stories that’s satisfying in that it’s a puzzle. It pieces together slowly.
“It just keeps you, hopefully, intrigued and guessing and trying to work out the puzzle and work out how it all fits together.
“So the thing with episode six is all the strands that have been set up in episodes one to five, they start to come together and the final, most important pieces of a jigsaw puzzle get put in place.
“Hopefully, the audience will be really satisfied – like you are when you sit back and you’ve completed a complex jigsaw puzzle.
“The great thing about this show and the story and the way it was constructed by Eleanor Catton is that it engages you intellectually and you have to follow all the strands.”
Thomson, who lives in South Australia with his family, did this interview while on holiday with friends in the Outback.
When Covid-19 hit Australia and people were being asked to stay home, Thomson was filming Back To The Rafters, the reboot of Packed To The Rafters, the drama in which he and fellow Kiwi Rebecca Gibney play husband and wife Dave and Julie Rafter.
“We were four episodes into a six-episode series,” he says. “We’ve got three more weeks work to go back to, hopefully in September, to finish that first series off.
“I was about to start a new thing but everything closed down basically. I’ve been given the winter off. But hopefully I’ll start working again in August.
“It all happened very quickly and like New Zealand, and everywhere in the world, it was just a case of staying safe and, you know, spending time indoors with family.
“We were pretty lucky in South Australia ... we didn’t go into the extent of lockdown that Victoria and New South Wales did.
“We’ve had great results. We haven’t had any new cases for about a month ... We were able to do a bit of surfing and mountain biking and get out into nature. But it’s been an interesting few months.”