Damon Herriman realised the producers were about to kill him when they were unable to meet his eyes. It didn't help that he'd given them loyal service for five years as a cowardly, murdering, drug-dealing, brothel-owning hillbilly redneck with delusions of grandeur, and built up a loyal fanbase among Americans who didn't even know he was Australian. In fact, it was the love he'd inspired in viewers that sealed his fate.
Justified is a black comedy based on stories by Elmore Leonard, recounting the efforts of Marshall Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) to imprison a smooth criminal named Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins). Since episode one, Herriman's Dewey Crowe has been a constant nuisance to Raylan and Boyd.
Herriman ran into the three producers of Justified in August last year when he turned up to record a DVD commentary for an episode from season five. He had just returned from Australia, where he'd played manager Chris Murphy in INXS; Never Tear Us Apart. His agent had told him he was wanted for season six of Justified, which would be the final series, but he had not received a script. He bounced up to the producers to express his excitement.
"I said 'Can you tell me what happens?' and you could immediately tell from their faces that something wasn't good," Herriman told me. "They were being funny about it. They all looked at each other and said: 'Are you going to tell him?'
"I was like 'Oh no. I die, don't I?' They said 'Yeah, you do'. It felt really sad. I'm like 'I can't believe Dewey's gonna die!' and they said they needed a way to set up the season whereby the audience turns on Boyd. The audience love Boyd and so they figured one of the only ways they could start that ball rolling was to have Boyd kill someone that the audience likes. Dewey is a character that the audience is fond of and if, completely out of the blue, Boyd was to shoot Dewey, it would start the season in the direction of having mixed feelings about Boyd.
"Not long after that, I read the script, and I loved it. It had a bit of everything in terms of some of the dark stuff, some of the funny stuff, everything that they'd ever written for Dewey."
In the episode shown in Australia last Wednesday, Dewey died spectacularly, with his brains splattered all over a noticeboard. It demonstrated Boyd's ruthlessness, and puts his sweetheart Ava in mortal danger for the rest of the series – if Raylan doesn't stop him first.
On the day Herriman filmed that scene, the producers brought out a cake on which was inscribed "Dewey, the anus is on you" (a line from season five). And then he was free to pursue other opportunities – which rapidly manifested themselves. He played a homeless schizophrenic in a miniseries called Flesh and Bone, set in a New York ballet school, and then became a detective in a drama called Battle Creek, co-created by Vince Gilligan (of Breaking Bad) and David Shore (of House). It starts in the US on March 1, and will be shown here on Seven.
While he waits to see if he'll be called back to do a second season of Battle Creek, Herriman is in Australia filming a (so far nameless) comedy written and directed by Abe Forsythe. I asked who had been his favourite characters in a career so diverse it has earned him the label "The Chameleon". His reply: "The character I played in the Australian film 100 Bloody Acres – that was amazing. Playing Chris Murphy in INXS was a great challenge too. Someone very alpha who wears nice suits was a nice change from playing the low status southern-inbred type character, which I've done a bit of lately.
"But I guess if I had to pick one it's pretty hard to go past Dewey Crowe. That's a gift role for an actor in terms of the writing of the show, the dialogue, the situations he gets put into. It would be nice for me if he were still alive, but a lot less interesting. He'd had his nine lives and he'd stuffed up one too many times. They had to finish now. That's the wise thing. You end up with six great seasons and it will always be something that people can watch and look upon fondly."
Justified continues on the pay channel FX on Wednesday at 3.30pm and 8.30 pm.
A warm Anzac welcome
Three years ago John Edwards, the legendary producer of such Australian classics as Offspring, Puberty Blues, Beaconsfield and Party Tricks, sent a polite note to all the TV networks suggesting they really ought to do something in 2015 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Australian landings at Gallipoli – "our nation's foundation story". Then he began a round of visits to TV executives, pitching the kind of drama series he had in mind.
He was received with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but when he walked into the lobby of Channel Nine, he was flabbergasted. The lobby walls were plastered with full-colour posters showing a mist-shrouded soldier and proclaiming: "Gallipoli – the television event of the century". Edwards was saluted by two diggers in full battledress (1915 style) and conducted to the office of Nine's head of programming, Michael Healy, where he was served Anzac biscuits and Billy Tea. Then Healy entered and said: "Is it clear that we want it?" As far as Edwards was concerned, that knocked Seven, Ten, Foxtel and the ABC out of the race.
Edwards told that story last week at a media preview of Gallipoli, the eight-part series that starts on Nine in February (and opens a three-month struggle between the networks for the Anzac high ground). One of the first lines of dialogue is destined to join "Tell 'im 'e's dreamin" and "You're terrible, Muriel" among the immortal quotes of our popular culture. As the troops run across the beach towards the cliffs, an Australian officer is heard to say, "Where's the gentle slope?"
Familiar faces?
Channel Ten got upset earlier this month when this column suggested the kind of person who would rush to be a contestant on I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here would probably be vain, foolish or desperate. I thought Ten would have trouble recruiting individuals who met the definition of "celebrity" offered by Julian Cress, co-creator of The Block: "Someone whose name or face would be recognised by 90 per cent of Australians who watch commercial television."
It's been reported that A and B-listers who have so far turned down a fee of $60,000 a week include Shane Warne, Sophie Monk, Derryn Hinch, Patti Newton and Ros Reines. But Ten has started releasing clues about the "big name celebrities" they will unveil when the show starts on February 1. They include "a world famous television actress" (possibly Melissa Joan Hart, from the '90s sitcom Sabrina The Teenage Witch), "a hot young comedian" (possibly Joel Creasey, who featured in the ABC documentary The Gaycrashers last year), "a legendary Test cricketer" (possibly Andrew Symonds) and "a member of television royalty" (possibly Mark Holden, Ian "Dicko" Dickson, Grant Denyer, Kerri-Anne Kennerley and/or Richard Reid).
I asked Tribal Mind readers to express their hopes and fears on who might join the show. Sally Spencer wrote: "Like you, I thought they're gonna struggle to find any real 'celebrities' to go on this show. And I doubt that I'm wrong. So my picks for some potential 'D' list celebrities that might be desperate enough are: Brynne Edelsten; Gabi Grecko; Pauline Hanson; Warwick Capper; or any WAGS of any cricketers, golfers etc etc; or anyone who was on Big Brother … don't watch it, so no idea of any names."
And in similar vein, Christine Pearce suggested: "One of Geoffrey Edelsten's former girlfriends/wives/cast-offs – dressed inappropriately for the jungle, being self-centred, demanding, unreasonable, unlikeable, etc; Some ex-footballer – who is either trying to redeem themselves (for some off-field indiscretion) or is trying to win public favour to get back to football; Some ex-Neighbours/Summer Bay bimbo – trying to resurrect their (long-dead) TV career – who will show their boobs, lack of empathy, etc from the 1st episode; Some ex-tennis player – who showed potential as a junior, frittered away their talent on bimbos/booze/drugs, etc; Some ex-politician – who will show leadership skills, understanding, empathy and will win the show being an 'all-round' good person (I KNOW you will NEVER find such a creature); Bindi Irwin - who will actually gain weight during the show eating animals with their skin-on such as leopards, lions, tigers, etc; A 'Dr Phil' type – who will try to understand the other contestants, psychoanalyse their behaviour and then 'go mad' before the end of the series and be committed to an institution for life; A 'Hannibal Lecter' type – who will eat the losing contestant each week – thus saving the public from ever having to see that person on TV again."
I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here starts on Ten on February 1.
