One of Australia’s most-celebrated producers sees his latest project launch on the ABC this Sunday. Les Norton from Roadshow Rough Diamond is the first FTA TV series from producer John Edwards’ new production company he launched in 2016 with his son Dan.
The 10-part series is based on the Les Norton novels written by Robert G Barrett about a country bloke who lands a job as a bouncer in Kings Cross in the 1980s.
The production company Roadshow Rough Diamond is the first time father and son John and Dan Edwards have worked together.
“Officially, that is,” explained Dan to Mediaweek.
“I did some freebies as a child for things like ‘boy on the beach’ and ‘kid that jumped off train’ on Police Rescue.
“Other than that we have kept [our careers] quite separate.
“The closest we have come to working together is when I was at Southern Star when I was two floors below working in sales for Cathy Payne.”
While John’s career has seen his productions for other businesses win over 70 Logies, AFI/AACTA and ASTRA awards, Dan has spent two decades working in mainly program distribution including time with ITV Studios Global Entertainment and Endemol Worldwide.
John told Mediaweek that coming from different production backgrounds means sometimes they have different roles and sometimes they don’t. “Even though Dan’s background is in the marketing and sales of programs, he has been creatively quite central in the three projects we have done to date.” John added there is a constant process of defining their roles that varies depending on what is happening at any one time at Rough Diamond.
The new production company also made the Logie-winning Romper Stomper for Stan and the still unseen Australian Gangster for Seven, which can’t yet be screened for legal reasons.
Usually Rough Diamond develops its own projects, but Les Norton is an exception to that rule. John explained: “The project was originally developed by an American company and the ABC wanted to have an Australian producer working on it and we were brought. At that stage there was one pilot script and some ideas about the cast.
“We then developed the remaining scripts together with the ABC and set up the financing structure.
“Just before going into production there were some problems with financing and the rights ended up coming back to us. We then worked out a way of proceeding with the ABC with the support of Screen Australia and Create NSW.”
All the way through this process, series creator and head writer Morgan O’Neill has been attached to Les Norton. “He was originally adapting from the source material – the Rob Barrett novels – and Morgan remains central to all things Les.”
So involved is Morgan O’Neill that as Mediaweek spoke in one room to John and Dan, O’Neill was in the next room plotting out a potential season two.
The casting for the series all hinges on Les Norton, and Dan explained the decision to award the role to newcomer Alex Bertrand.
“Some people we were looking at had big, established American careers. We had just worked with Alex and Australian Gangster. [The series made with Gregor Jordan, which Dan said will be shown one day, but not now due to legal reasons.] Alex is in all but six minutes of four hours of Australian Gangster. He not only delivered that, but was an absolute phenomenon. For this role, Alex had to shake out his gangster and get into a new role to be Les.
“With a bit of faith from all involved we went with Alex and he has surpassed everyone’s expectation of how good he is in the role.”
The biggest get in the cast is perhaps luring Rebel Wilson. “She was always in our imagination,” admitted John. “But it took a long time to secure her. We had to schedule her time with us in a fairly complex way to make it happen.”
Dan: “With Rebel she took the character somewhere we didn’t expect. We first went after Rebel for another role that we thought we could shoot in a few succinct weeks. She read the first couple of scripts and said she was more interested in playing the brothel madam. She flagged that in the writer’s room and we ended up making that character younger by about 30 years than what was initially imagined.”
The other name above the title is David Wenham who was not too long ago part of Rough Diamond’s Romper Stomper cast.
John: “We already had a very good relationship with David and we presented him with the character of Price. David lives in Kings Cross and he became quickly attracted to the idea of it.
“You need to surround a newcomer like Alex with good people and he and Justin Rosniak are sensational. He and Kate Box are sensational and he and Hunter Page-Lochard are sensational.”
John told Mediaweek the actual club that the Kelly Club was based on was in Kellett Street in Kings Cross. “That location we use for the club entrance and the street fight in episode one is in Kellett Lane which is adjacent to it. We filmed in the Cross as much as possible.”
The series is set in 1985 and the Edwards revealed the convincing period street scenes are a blend of archival footage and original material.
Dan: “We had a terrific designer in Sam Hobbs and his team went above and beyond in changing street signs and shop fronts and trying to get the right electronic signage.
“The main challenge for us when we were shooting was that Kings Cross these days is absolutely empty between 10pm and midnight and in 1985 it was heaving, just getting going at midnight.”
Working with John and Dan behind the camera are plenty of stars. Key mongst them is director Jocelyn Moorhouse.
“She had one experiment with television and she was attracted to this after reading the material and then embraced it and jumped on board.”
While Morgan O’Neill worked on much of the scripting, also contributing was Christopher Lee. “We have worked together for more than 30 years,” said John. “Chris wrote the pilot episode of Police Rescue and he co-wrote the pilot episode of The Secret Life Of Us. He also wrote Howzat! and Paper Giants.
“Morgan wrote several episodes, Chris wrote two and two younger women writers – Shanti Gudgeon and Jessica Tuckwell – wrote one each. We hopefully will hear from then again in season two.”
Malcolm Knox, also a columnist for The SMH and a novelist, wrote an episode as did Wentworth writer Samantha Winston.
John noted that the ABC’s head of drama Sally Riley has been a great fan of Barrett’s books and backed the project. “She has been very supportive of how we have recreated the Robert G Barrett world.”
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Top Photo: David Wenham, Alex Bertrand and Rebel Wilson in Les Norton