Harry Greenwood Interview (Gallipoli 2015)
Welcome to Impulse Gamer Harry… So tell us how you became involved in Gallipoli the TV series?
It was kind of a long audition process that at first was kind of a cattle call and it seemed that everyone I knew called up for the initial audition. Then there’s a long wait that you get use to as an actor between the first and second audition. At the second audition, Glendyn (Ivin), the director was there which I think didn’t go that well and then another wait and finally I was cast in the show. After that, that’s when all the research began.
What kind of research did you do before you started filming, especially into getting the character you were about to play?
I think it’s really important to do that because the series has a strong historical foundation. The majority of the research I did was on the book by Les Carlyon which the TV series is based on which was a great reference. I also read a lot of diary entries that really gave a great sense of what it was like in the day which was not just the fighting. It was also the mundane things like being in the trenches, making breakfast and going to the toilet that really helps inform you about the character which made Bevan a more realistic character.
Some of the scenes were quite physical as well, did you do much training for that aspect of the show?
We didn’t do much training as they said make sure everyone arrives in a good physical condition and then we had about a week of boot camp which wasn’t that intense but more how to use the rifles, march and learn to salute. We were kind of just dropped into it from week one and the first few weeks was just filming the first episode which was all the running and the most training that we ever had.
When you first put on your period uniform and commenced filming with everyone else dressed in similar clothes, did you feel like you went back in time?
That definitely does happen and like you said, you’re surrounded by all these props, the scenery itself is very striking and the soldiers who are all dressed the same, so you kind of lose that kind of self and your just a number in some way until the general comes. You feel like a piece on a chess board.
So Harry, What was your favourite memory or experience in being in the TV series?
We were filming for about five months and there was a lot of waiting around with the other three main actors, Kodi [Smit-McPhee], Tom [Budge] and Sam [Parsonson] so more than anything, I think it was just hanging out with those guys. So it was that sort of invaluable stuff in terms of the show to create both on screen and off screen relationships where you can kind of trust and play with those other actors.
I mean for the majority of the time and as Dayton [McCarthy] the Military Advisor said, war was 90% waiting around and 10% fighting so that’s what we were doing on set as actors. We were throwing rocks around, trying to hit targets with these little stones, making jokes and laughing. I think that was the reality for the soldiers a lot of the time and of course with the added element of that ever present sense of death and destruction obviously. So yeah, I think hanging out with the other actors was the highlight.
So did that bond with the other actors help with the debriefing after an emotional day of shooting as some of the scenes are quite powerful?
Definitely, it always keeps you real. For me as an actor, I can always switch off and on between scenes but certainly the playing around with the other actors does help. I think that these scenes actually grounds you opposed to taking you out of it as it reminds you what it may have been like for them because some elements were very similar.
What about the most challenging aspect?
I guess when you’re in those more tougher scenes, you do as much research as you can and your always surrounded by the sets, props and costumes and that creates a fantastical vivid world where you can hopefully go with and bring your emotions to the level that is required but certainly you’re never going to be able to recreate that scenario where people are dying around you… you know it’s acting so you got to try and trick your brain. So that’s probably the hardest thing and I think we’ve managed to capture that horror of what the situation was. Certainly I’ve never faced anyone killed next to me so it’s hard to go the full hog.
Can you tell us a little about your character Bevan Johnson in Gallipoli?
I think Bevan more than any other character in the four main characters is the most for the war cause. He really sees it as a great opportunity to go on an adventure but also to go overseas to defend the motherland because at this time in Australia, there was a real sense of identity that we had from England which was our identity then. So Bevan is very much in that vein, a staunch monarchist as most of them were but he really sees it as his duty to go over and protect and defend the motherland.
Over the course of the series he has further to fall perhaps when he is faced with the brutality of the frontline, the mundanity and that pervading sense of death as he sees his friends die around him. I think that his journey for the war is diminished as it goes on as he sees some of the decisions that are made from the generals and also the deaths that surround him and he realises that it’s not all that’s cracked up to be.
It was a slow realisation over the course of the series that war is not what it was made up to be before they left. That’s what happened, it was sold as this adventure where you get to see the world and for these guys they never left Australia before, let alone their own neighbourhood. So it was an exciting prospect but it’s not exciting when you’re faced with death.
You’ve managed to capture the essence of war with your portrayal of Bevan. So how do feel with the finished production?
That’s something I’m really proud of because often war is portrayed as full of glory and not a celebration but a victory. There is a lot of this feeling surrounding the representation of war so what we wanted to do from the beginning and I think we have managed to do this was create a world that is very real, full of mistakes, clumsiness and things not always going to plan which is what it was like. So I think we captured that essence.
In the first episode, there is a scene where there is a young soldier who has this blank expression as he walks slowly down the cliff face back to the beach and he’s stopped by one of the generals and says come back up with me and he ignores him and continues down. So it’s that sense of things that these were normal people that were suddenly placed in an extraordinary situation and creating that sense, that real life clumsy sense of what war was like is something that we’ve managed to do.
Given that Gallipoli has finished now Harry, what else do you have planned for 2015?
I recently got back from overseas so I’m kind of settling back into Sydney and I’m doing a play down in Melbourne and Sydney in a couple of months and after that, who knows as that’s the actors life. You got to keep auditioning and keep hoping something else will happen so that’s where I’m at.
Thanks for your time today Harry and all the best for the rest 2015.
Thank you so much.
Gallipoli is now available on DVD & Blu-ray
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