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Tales of a Hollywood dissident, with Matthew Marsden
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Australiana is now Fire at Will - your safe space for dangerous conversations.
Politics is downstream from culture. To change politics, one must first change culture. The left intrinsically understands this in a way that the right simply does not. The arts have been captured by a toxic mixture of identity politics, social justice ideology, and cancel culture.
Matthew Marsden has seen this ideological takeover firsthand. He rose to fame from his role on the iconic British TV series Coronation Street, and has subsequently starred in a long list of Hollywood films, including Black Hawk Down, Resident Evil: Extinction, Rambo and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
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Transcript
Introduction of Politics and Culture
00:00:14
Speaker
G'day and welcome to Australiana from The Spectator Australia. I'm Will Kingston. Andrew Breitbart memorably said that politics is downstream from culture. To change the politics, one must first change culture. The Left intrinsically understands this in a way that the Right simply does not.
00:00:35
Speaker
The arts have been, quite deliberately, captured by a toxic mixture of identity politics, social justice ideology, and accounts of culture. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences now has representation and inclusion standards to be eligible for an Oscar. Netflix cares little for historical accuracy, but a great deal for racial equity. And Disney's modern movie-making philosophy was best summarized by South Park
00:01:05
Speaker
put a chick in it, make her lame and gay.
Matthew Marsden's Hollywood Experience
00:01:09
Speaker
My guest today has seen this ideological takeover firsthand. Matthew Marsden rose to fame from his role on the iconic British TV series Coronation Street, and has subsequently starred in a long list of Hollywood films, including Black Hawk Down, Resident Evil Extinction, Rambo, and Transformers Revenge of the Fallen. Matt, welcome to Australiana. Thank you for having me.
00:01:34
Speaker
The movies that I mentioned were released before 2010. And that year an article came out that changed the course of your career. Tell me about that article and what followed. Right. So, um, I was down in, oh, first I got approached by some filmmakers who said, listen, we do not have any kind of credibility in the industry just yet. And we're trying to.
00:02:02
Speaker
raise money for family-friendly movies, would you come down with us and we're going to go and do a pitch to a bunch of investors? I'll help anyone. I've got some kids, not as many as I have right now, but I've got some kids. How many kids do you have right now? I have nine right now.
00:02:19
Speaker
I don't know if I'm going to make it to double figures, but who knows, right? But I have nine. And so I said, yeah, I'll go down. And I didn't really think much of it. Investment is investment. People do it all the time.
00:02:32
Speaker
And I went down to Austin and it was a group called the CMP. Didn't really know much about it. And we went in and did a little pitch. And as I came out, I got kind of accosted by a reporter who asked me, hey, what are you doing here? I was like, man, trying to raise.
00:02:50
Speaker
money for family friendly movies and and they said do you gonna be doing speeches and i'm like well you know was an active use speeches all the time right here in front of people all the time discussing things and you can call it. Speech interview whatever you wanna whatever you like.
00:03:06
Speaker
And next thing I know, I had this article that was clearly a hit piece in the Huffington Post and that was it. I mean, that was the beginning of the end. I was kind of like the OG cancelled person because all of a sudden
00:03:21
Speaker
or the phone stopped ringing, which was weird because you get to a certain level as an actor with a certain resume, this is it, I'm going to work forever. You get your first break and then you climb that ladder.
Challenges and Subjectiveness in Casting
00:03:35
Speaker
And I've done these huge movies.
00:03:37
Speaker
And then that was it. The phones stopped ringing. I didn't get any offers for a year until I got Atlas Shrugged, which was a bunch of libertarians that came in and were like, okay, we'd love you to come in and play James Taggart. I was like, okay. And then you can clearly see, as you said, well, my career, the size of the movies that I've done and the prestige of the movies I've done, they went up, up, up, up, up, and then 2010, then they started going down, down, down, down, down, down, down.
00:04:03
Speaker
And that's when I realized that you can't have a difference of opinion anymore in Hollywood. And they've been doing it on the sly I think for some time, because what people don't realize is if you have a casting director, if you have a director that wants you and you're in a movie, which is great when you're making these films, they see you and they're like, okay, I want him because he's the right fit.
00:04:24
Speaker
But then if you have to go through a casting director, which on the lower levels, that's what you have to do, the casting director just doesn't have to put you up for the film. And then the movie director doesn't have any idea that you're free. So all of a sudden you stop getting work. And it might be not only just that, but you might get a casting director that will put you up for it. You go in front of the directors and they love you. And next thing you know, they Google you. And the first thing that comes up is actor hides right wing views.
00:04:54
Speaker
and then they just don't hire you.
00:04:56
Speaker
Right? Because the way that those things are couched in the article, it's very negative. And what's funny about that particular article, if you look underneath at the comments, everyone was like, hang on a second. Wasn't this guy just meeting someone for work? That's the funny thing. It was just, you know, I think clearly I was, although I was targeted, I think I was also collateral damage because they were going after other people as well. But that was it. Then you lose your momentum. And what they say in Hollywood is you're not hot anymore.
00:05:26
Speaker
You don't have any heat behind you anymore and that just slows down momentum and you collapse and that's it. It's over.
00:05:35
Speaker
I think the vast majority, not the vast majority, the majority of people probably have broadly the same ideology as you or the same worldview as you give or take. Hollywood obviously is a very, very different kettle of fish. How has Hollywood been captured by what I think is quite an extreme ideology, which has sidelined people who have even moderately divergent views.
00:06:03
Speaker
Well, I think a lot of the time the squeaky wheel gets the oil, right? So the people that kind of scream loudest get the attention. It's kind of the opposite of what we were taught when we were growing up, right? You don't want to be that guy. But I think that, look, I have a whole theory on what has happened in Hollywood. I think that, look, if you're a journalist,
00:06:27
Speaker
It's objective, I think, whether or not you're a good writer, right? If your grammar is bad, then your grammar is bad. You're not going to progress in your career. If you're an engineer, certainly. If you don't do things the right way, then people die. So there's this objective standard of quality.
00:06:46
Speaker
okay, that you're not gonna be rise to the top of your career for the most part. I think like journalism has kind of devolved recently, as you know, right? I mean, nobody really cares about objectivity anymore. But I think that the great thing about America is also its biggest curse in the sense that you can walk down the street and become a movie star. You can go and you can be the right person at the right time and become a giant star.
00:07:15
Speaker
Well, what I would suggest to you, Will, to think about is this, is that if you are compromised to get where you want to get, right? You don't have that integrity. You don't have that kind of, I pulled myself from a bootstraps and I made it, right? Because I worked hard and there's an objective level of quality to what I do, whether that be,
00:07:40
Speaker
You've got to pass an exam to become an engineer or you have to do, you know, get these qualifications to become a scientist. It's very different in Hollywood because what matters is how much money you can bring in to get the movie made.
Virtue Signaling and Fear of Cancellation
00:07:56
Speaker
So imagine you walking off the street.
00:07:59
Speaker
and you somehow get a rise in your career, maybe it's legitimate, maybe it's not. We've all heard about the casting couch. What comes with that is a massive amount of guilt, huge amount of guilt. So what do people who are guilty normally do? Well, they either virtue signal or they feel like they owe something to, because they can look out, right? They can look out, these actors can look out and go,
00:08:28
Speaker
There was that much between me and that guy. The guy that's still waiting tables could quite easily be me. So they end up overcompensating for their success. So they're like, oh, well, we have to help the minorities. We have to help these disenfranchised group of people. And what that does is that kind of pushes them more and more and more to the left.
00:08:53
Speaker
Whereas people like us are like, well, listen, I grew up in a council estate in the UK with a single parent, paid my own way for everything, worked multiple jobs, worked as a butcher, worked in concrete. It was the first person in my family to go to college.
00:09:09
Speaker
I don't feel like I need to virtue signal to anybody. And I think that anyone is able to do that, right? These are the principles that we rely on. That is, you know, I don't think that you're any less of a person because you're a minority. I think that, you know, that those are the least interesting things about you. You are able to overcome anything if you really work hard enough. So I think that what has happened is there's this movement
00:09:36
Speaker
Further and further left i mean hollywood's always been left rights always been kind of left cuz you're in the arts but i think there's a lot to do this subjectiveness to whether or not someone is good at it i mean how many times do we look at actors now
00:09:50
Speaker
I have no idea why they're there. I have no idea. They're not good enough. These movies aren't good enough. Why are they getting made? And I think it all goes back to being in that position. And certainly with a lot of the big studios, they're making like 130, 140, you know, these CEOs are making $140 million a year. And so they're looking, they're like, well, you know, I'm a mainly white guy.
00:10:18
Speaker
All right, white men, I've got to help these guys out. And it never used to be like that. Even when the stories used to be further left, you still had to be really good at what you did to get where you were going, because at the end of the day, they were capitalists and they wanted to make money.
00:10:35
Speaker
Now, they're they're realizing it. There's no desire for the product that they're putting out because they're putting a product out to such a little tiny group of people that they all meet, you know, at the farmer's market on a Sunday in L.A. And it's not they're not catering to the people that
00:10:55
Speaker
pay their wages. This is what I really struggle with. And I look at the Disney new movies that are coming out and nine of the last 10 Disney movies have bombed at the box office. Everyone says, Oh, they're going work. And you can make that argument, but these are not unintelligent business people. Like, you know, if you get to be a senior executive at Disney, you've got to be pretty good at what you do. I imagine, but at the same time.
00:11:20
Speaker
They're releasing these movies, which have a clear agenda, which people obviously don't like apart from that slither that you just mentioned. What I don't understand is why they continuing to do this when obviously it's not commercially viable.
00:11:37
Speaker
Well, they're terrified. The people at the top that have actually worked their way up are terrified of being cancelled. They look around. This is one of the arguments that I made about what happened with me, because what happened with me in 2010 actually went through the industry. It had a ripple effect and everyone was like, I'm not saying anything. I'm not saying anything. You saw that? The guy just turned up to something and he's done.
00:12:01
Speaker
On this podcast, we've spoken to several people who have been cancelled. I spoke to Lawrence Fox a few months ago, and what he said is far more aggressive than anything you have said. You haven't said anything controversial. You've just listened to people who have different views.
00:12:21
Speaker
Well, I think people don't really understand what time it is. I think that with Larsa, who I love, by the way, I think Lawrence is terrific. It's easier to put the finger at him because of the things that he said has been considered to be more inflammatory than what I initially did, which was turn up to something, which shouldn't really be controversial at all. But the point is that it doesn't matter where you are on that scale.
00:12:49
Speaker
Right? People have to truly understand where the cancel culture is right now. And it's anything that goes against the Borg, right? It's anything that is contrary to the groupthink that is going on around the world right now, because they're trying to really clamp down on freedom of thought. We've seen that all over the world. We saw it in the UK with a woman standing outside on the street praying, and the cops came up to her and said, what are you doing?
00:13:19
Speaker
my head and they're like, you can't do that. I think it's very, very dangerous. And what it did for me was it really woke me up to what was going on. And it's like anything, you know, if you get if you're going to go and buy BMW, say, and you're looking at BMWs, when you go out later that day, you see BMWs everywhere, right? They're everywhere.
00:13:40
Speaker
And you didn't notice them before. And that's what happened to me in that instance. I went out, that happened to me, and I started seeing all these like, to coin a phrase from them, these like little microaggressions, you know, they were going around and there'd be this little pop here and a pop there of people. But really, he was gaining a head of steam.
00:14:00
Speaker
And then when it came to turning around and saying, hang on, a man is a man and a woman is a woman. Now, that's like a nuclear bomb going off now, which 10 years ago, people would have laughed at you if you said that that would be controversial. And like you said, I don't think anything that I really say is that controversial. I've become a little bit more bold and I've taken more bold stances in recent times because I think, listen, we are really heading for tyranny.
00:14:29
Speaker
I saw it back then, but I was like, okay, I'm not going to whine about it. I'm just going to pick myself up and carry on and do what I've got to do, but I want to go back to what you said about the why it's happening. There's multiple tales that I could tell you. I don't want to say specifics because I really like to maintain the anonymity of the person that I was speaking to, but you've had instances
00:14:54
Speaker
In these big companies, I know that producers who are very, very good at what they do, big long track record of producing quality products. I had one of them come up to me and say, I've got to talk to you because I feel like I'm losing my mind. They were told that there was a specific role within that production they were doing that needed to be filled by an African-American.
00:15:19
Speaker
And it just so happened that there weren't any African-American people for that particular role, right? Because it's like anything, if you're going to change things, if you want to bring people into roles that they didn't normally gravitate towards,
00:15:35
Speaker
It takes time. And mostly, like we've seen in Europe, where they've done this massive push to push women into certain jobs, they've gone back to doing the jobs that they wanted to do for anyway. Where there's been the most freedom, they've gravitated back to the jobs in care, teachers, all that kind of stuff.
00:15:55
Speaker
And so this person went out and they were like, I don't know what I'm going to do because they've told me I've got to hire an African American for this role. There's like one that's of the quality that I need. And that person's getting all this work. They're getting all the money in the world to go and do these jobs, to do these different jobs
Diversity and Hollywood's Disconnect
00:16:13
Speaker
as in different productions. So they're backed up for like two or three years, hopping from one production to the next. And so the powers that be said, okay, well, promote the accountant.
00:16:25
Speaker
And this person was like, what are you talking about? Like just because the accountant is black, I've got to promote them. And they said, well, you know, they're using numbers because it was a budgetary job. They use numbers. It's totally different, right? It's completely, it's like saying, you know, I'm a doctor. Well, you know, you're a doctor, so can you come into my teeth? You know, well, actually they're too, they might,
00:16:50
Speaker
be dealing with the body, but they're clearly two different disciplines. And so what that does is it elevated that person because you're not going to turn down 50 grand more a year or however much it is. The person takes a job and they fail. So then they get fired or
00:17:08
Speaker
They keep pushing. Certainly, you're seeing this with a lot of the writing that's going on with Madam Webb. It's all female heads of department, all women, and it's just failed because they might ever have someone of
00:17:23
Speaker
a certain quality, but you shouldn't be going for just that. I hate to say this, but in those instances, you do need that little bit of diversity. You do need diversity of thought. What's happening is there's an echo chamber that is built. You've got people that are like, I don't want to fire them because I'm going to get a lawsuit.
00:17:44
Speaker
right? Because you've just hired someone, you just elevated someone that's a minority. So if I fire them now, am I looking at a lawsuit? Am I looking at a payout? So they keep them on. And then what has happened with Disney, especially, is people out there like they might not, not everyone knows well how to eloquently communicate why a film is bad. But they know it when they see right, because we've, we've had years and years of great movies. So
00:18:14
Speaker
What Disney has done now is then turned onto the consumer and said, no, no, no, you guys are racist. You're bigots because you don't like this. And he's like, what are you doing? But it was the only, they couldn't go anywhere else. Where else could they go? Look inward and say, well, hang on a minute, this isn't working. And I'll tell you this, Disney, it's going to take years for that ship to turn around. They've got stuff that is in the pipeline and they're still putting stuff out that is bad.
00:18:43
Speaker
And there's no lack of quality, as you know, there's no lack of great journalists. I think sometimes there's a lack of people that have courage, but there's no lack of talent out there. They could correct that in a heartbeat if they wanted to, but they don't want it.
00:19:00
Speaker
I spoke to the former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia a few months ago and he said that the only cure for cancel culture is courage culture. That holds true. I've heard you talk before about the way that particular agendas are changing Hollywood.
00:19:16
Speaker
That's also happening in a context where technology channels, the way that people access entertainment is also changing. When you entered the industry in the US, you were in the $75 million movie bracket. That's kind of where you were talking. And you said there was still this layer below $25 million movies, which were relatively successful at the time. And this is all changed. Talk to me about the changing dynamics of, for want of a better phrase, the commercial structure of how Hollywood works.
00:19:45
Speaker
and how that plays into this story? Right on. Well, yeah. When I first came over in 2000, you had like the upper tier of movie, which was, you know, that was the first one I did, which was Black Hawk Downers kind of spoiled. So that was in the 80, 75, 80, $90 million round. And that was always going to be a tent pole movie. And all you have to do is look at all the actors that are in that.
00:20:09
Speaker
It's a Ridley Scott movie produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. I looked at the cast before we came on. It's the most unbelievable cast for a movie I think I've ever seen.
Financial Dynamics and Casting Strategies
00:20:19
Speaker
It's extraordinary. Yeah, it's crazy. But what they did was they went out, Jerry Bruckheimer and Ridley went out and they went, who are the biggest up and coming talents in Hollywood? Who are the guys that we feel like are on their way up that have certain resume already and can pull something like this off? And they just
00:20:39
Speaker
cast us so i mean it really was amazing but yeah there was another strata of of movies that were around like the 25 million dollar range and when i when i got offered my first one of those i was like i don't want to do that it's like 25 million dollars like now you'd bite someone's arm off to go and do a 25 million dollar movie but but because they understood that it catered for a certain group of people so there was a level of quality there
00:21:07
Speaker
But they also understood the market. So, for example, when I did Anaconda, I actually didn't want to do that film, even though, again, it was one of those that Hollywood had just done. They'd done Anaconda, the first one, it had like Ice Cube, J Lo, Jon Voight, Owen Wilson, all these great actors in it. So there was a pressure to do, to find the same group.
00:21:30
Speaker
in the next film so there was a bit of people don't understand is every now and then like a movie come on there be a little bit of hype about it i do not do i do not want to do a snake movie right i don't know what is twenty five million dollars and when you doing a movie like that what they do is they compensate you well but doing a movie that maybe you might perceive is being.
00:21:52
Speaker
lower quality as in it's not an epic film. Come off Blackpink and you've done a movie that's won two Oscars. You want to stay in that in that elevated range. And the way they compensated that is by giving you more money or having you go to a really great place.
Cultural Impact of Films
00:22:10
Speaker
So I got both of those. It was Fiji for four months or five months and and they paid me well for it. So I was like, OK, but I've got two of the movies lined up after.
00:22:22
Speaker
And they're all around that the other one was actually a bigger budget one but they're all you know in that realm. So they would do a lot of horror films for example because they knew that if you if you made a ten million twenty million dollar horror movie could make hundred million dollars.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah, they are. It's a really good genre to go into if you are a first-time filmmaker or, I mean, Blumhouse have made an entire business out of it by going and putting these movies out and they make a ton of money. They actually do it by they put quite a few out and then one will hit and it will pay everything else off, which is, by the way, a lot of people don't know this about the studios and this is why they're able to put propaganda out there, is if you have a film coming out that's going to make a billion dollars, then
00:23:10
Speaker
they know in their mind that they're going to lose money on a bunch of others. So they will put out movies that, because sometimes you look at films, you're like, who wants to watch this? I don't understand who this is for. And this has gone back over the last 20 years. You're like, hang on a minute. But they make a statement. And what Stallone said to me when we were doing Rambo, he turned to me and he goes, remember, this is forever. And I keep trying to tell people about this, about the culture is if you put a movie out there, it is there forever. And that can be used over and over and over as propaganda.
00:23:55
Speaker
Yeah, so I was on a boat, if you've seen the movie, I was on the boat and I was just about to do my take and I hear this voice like, remember this forever. It's probably the worst stone impression ever. And I sat there and I'm like, oh, you did not say that to me before my take.
00:24:00
Speaker
and we haven't quite clued up to that.
00:24:17
Speaker
I grew up watching his films. Rocky was one of the reasons why I was inspired that I could achieve anything, especially if I came to the United States. So Rocky was a real seminal movie for me. And of course, Rambo loved those films. And there I am on set. And that movie I was meant to take over the franchise after that film. That's a whole other conversation. But he said that to me.
00:24:43
Speaker
And his attention to detail and his work ethic is unbelievable. There's a part where, I don't want to ruin it for people who haven't seen the film, but they should see it. There's a part where they've got a guy and he's getting eaten by pigs. And Stallone's there, it's pouring down with rain. Well, we've got the machines going, so it's like torrential. There's mud everywhere. And he's directing these guys to
00:25:09
Speaker
To move the piggies the piggies and i mean these piggies are giant right to move the pig into a certain angle and he jumps out of the seat goes down his knee deep in big. Crap and mud and moves the pig himself. Right and this is the biggest one of the biggest movie stars of all time and he just has an incredible work ethic and it all started.
00:25:32
Speaker
Back and I just I just did and what I went through my kids and watched the Rocky movies We got to Rocky for we haven't done five and six. Yeah, don't worry about Rocky five. Seriously.
Stallone's Influence and Role Preparation
00:25:42
Speaker
I know It's funny about that because I'll talk about those in a minute But I went back and watched the first one and the first one is a brilliantly written and acted and directed film. I think that we Because we love those films so much that you miss the nuance
00:26:01
Speaker
in the performance, in the writing. There's so many great themes in it. I mean, even from the part where, you know, if you can remember the film, you know, he's the henchman and they say, go over and break that guy's thumb, go break his thumb. And he can't do it. He doesn't do it. And at that moment, it shows you the heart that Rocky has just. But also the fact that the studio said, we quite like the script, but you're a no-name and we want someone else to be the lead. And he said, no, I feel I am this character.
00:26:32
Speaker
And now when I look back at that moment, I can't imagine anyone else having the physical presence to be able to break someone's thumb, but also the humanity to say, I can't do this. Yeah. He's a terrific actor because he built his body so much. And he's, you know, I said to him on set, I'm like, you're compared to Mr. Olympia, dude. Like that's crazy. You won an Oscar. You've been the biggest movie star in the world. And, and your body was compared to Mr. Olympia. You know what?
00:27:02
Speaker
If you go back and watch the first Rocky and then watch Rocky Balboa, the performance is utterly astounding. I mean, he still plays that character. He gets the essence of the character. The script
00:27:18
Speaker
was absolutely tone perfect. I mean, I think that movie is a brilliant, brilliant film. It's like an indie film. It's like an old-style indie film, really, when you look at it. And I asked him when I was on set, I said, do you feel, because when he was doing the other Rockies, they just got so big, right? Just giant budgets, massive production.
00:27:39
Speaker
I said, do you feel like the restriction in budget, I mean, it was still like $20 million. It's not like a $25 million, it was still a small, not a small budget. But I said, do you feel like the restriction in the budget helped you? And he said, yes, it did, because he became more creative.
00:28:00
Speaker
Right, he became as a filmmaker. And he did that just before we did Rambo. And again, most people the Rambo that I did, say that that's second after the first one after first blood, which is really high praise. But yeah, I mean, he's a
00:28:19
Speaker
he's an amazing he has an amazing mind and i think that part of part of the success right part of the downfall in his success if you like is that you played someone like rock is meant to be kind of punchy so well that people think that that's him and he's not i mean he's super smart when when i first met him and we were going in and we're talking about the character that i was playing and
00:28:43
Speaker
He was talking to me about the power of an arrow, the per square inch force that an arrow puts, you know, you can shoot it through this and that. And then we started talking about caliber of guns and just super, super well educated guy, like very, very smart and super talented. Yeah, he's amazing. Your first big film after Coronation Street was with Michael Caine. Yeah. How do you reflect on that experience?
00:29:12
Speaker
So I saw what happened with that was I saw that they were making this film called Shiner and Michael Caine was playing like the patriarch and they were looking for a younger guy that was a boxer to play his son. And so I actually started training way before I even went in for the movie. I knew that it was green lit. So I called a friend of mine up, Richie Woodall, who was the super middleweight WBC, super middleweight champion of the world. And I said,
00:29:38
Speaker
Can i come train with you so literally i'd go to a power station in talford every day and train with him by my power stations.
00:29:48
Speaker
It wasn't a gym, it was a literal power station. A literal power station with a room in it that had a boxing ring. That's where you used to train, like as gritty as you get. And so we go there and then afterwards we train and then we go and train where the guys who had been grafting all day in the power station would shower and we'd go and have showers there.
00:30:14
Speaker
Glamorous so anyway then i went into the audition and the director john irving said to me can you box and i said put me in the ring with anyone else you considering. I'll fight them and then you know we'll go from there and so anyway i got the role he came to what to the real power station and he watch me fight and it's okay you're in and i remember it was a very.
00:30:41
Speaker
This is a great moment where I've got to tell you this. So I meet with Michael and I'm like, you know, everybody has heard that voice, especially like for us, right? Like Aussies and Brits and Kiwis and people in that realm. He's a legend. I mean, he's a legend anyway, but especially for us.
00:30:56
Speaker
I think of the trip and it's Coogan and Brydon trying to work out what is the best Michael Caine impersonation they're trying to do at the time of his life and how deep and nasal his voice gets. Yeah, we all know that. It's so true. So I'm there.
00:31:12
Speaker
And so the first time this happened on me team, and I'm like, this is Michael Caine. This is Michael Caine. It's the Italian job. It's like Alfie. It's like, what is going on at Zulu? What is going on in my life right now? And so you start going, all right, I've done it. I've moved. I've made that step up. Now I'm in with the big boys. And we do a press conference. And this guy got off us. It's so funny. He goes, Michael, jaws for the revenge.
00:31:42
Speaker
What about your art? And I'm sitting there going, oh no, oh no. And he gets up and he goes, do now.
00:31:50
Speaker
I look at the Picasso that I have on my wall that I bought from George for the revenge. And I say, that's my art. That's not the greatest response ever. And then later on, we had to do a table reading for the people who don't know, you know, you get all the actors around the table and you get the script and you just want to hear it. And I'm sitting there and I'm, you know, because you're always like, I'm waiting for my lines, right? Like, I'm waiting for mine. I don't want to mess it up.
00:32:17
Speaker
And I hear this, like, Juneau, that, that, that, that, that. And I'm like, that guy said, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, no, it doesn't sound like him. That is Michael Caine. And he was.
00:32:28
Speaker
Amazing. I did a scene. My first scene with him was on the top of a building in London, and he came up to me and he goes, can you do your lines first? Because, you know, when you're doing a scene, some actors like to go first, right? They're like, I've got it on my head. I want to get it out. And others say, you know, I want to warm up. So you do your scene and then come to me. A bit like opening batsman. Some people like to take the first ball and some people like to be at the non-striker's end.
00:32:56
Speaker
Right, right. You know, it's personal preference. And especially if you're the lead in a film, a lot of times you want to get a bit of time because you've just done like three scenes and you're coming into the new scene, you want to warm up into it. So I'm like, okay. And so I do my scene, right? And he's like, he's reading the lines, he's got the sides because you get these, when you do a big film like that, you get the sides that you normally get in the script, which are like A4 sides, that you get these little ones like that.
00:33:23
Speaker
And so you can shove him in your pocket. And so he's like, he's running the lines. I'm like, okay, I understand he's, he's there. He's going through the motions for me. I've got to, you know, and this happens quite often. This, I mean, he still gave me what I needed for the scene, but sometimes you'll do a scene with an actor and they'll be like, so, uh, okay. And they're not interested because they're only interested when it comes around on them. But he wasn't like that. He was engaged. He gave me what he needed, but clearly he was, he was ramping up, right? He was ramping up.
00:33:53
Speaker
And I was like, OK, I mean, I'm holding my own with Michael Caine, right? So then they turned the camera around and went the other way and he goes, OK, and they go rolling or that's turnover and then action. And all of a sudden, well, he became 12 feet tall. Right. And to this day, I don't know what he did, but I ended up going.
00:34:17
Speaker
this is like oh oh oh i've got a line and i totally forgot my lines because i was watching him he was that good he was that good
00:34:26
Speaker
And so that was a watershed moment for me doing that film. And of course, you know, being opposite Michael Caine and I started getting, you know, because people started saying, hang on a second, like this guy can actually really act. And that's when I got the managers come over from LA, like they flew in. I was also auditioning at that point for Star Wars. So they'd heard about this guy that had come into method and, you know, to his training and living with boxers and doing this scene, this thing with Michael Caine.
00:34:56
Speaker
And then, of course, he went off and he won the Oscar for Cider House Rules that year, which didn't do me any harm. You kind of get a little bit of that stardust, right? And then that was it. I came over and I got Black Hawk Down. That was it. And I thought, why didn't I go to America early if it was that easy?
00:35:14
Speaker
I've nerded out on movies for a bit too long in this interview and we will get back to your next movie, Protocol 7, which is what I've heard awesome. Before we do, you now are one of the very few people who has the courage to be able to just say what they think on social media and in the public discourse.
00:35:35
Speaker
I'm fascinated because that in this day and age takes guts, right?
Staying True to Beliefs vs. Commercial Risks
00:35:42
Speaker
Like it's easy to kind of parrot a particular line. Why do you say what you think when it potentially comes at a commercial and personal cost? It certainly comes from a commercial cost, comes at a commercial cost. I think that the personal cost is if I don't do it.
00:36:02
Speaker
That's where the real cost is for me as a man, as a father. How can I look my kids in the eye and tell them I didn't do all that I could do to preserve their liberty? And there comes a moment where you realize that it doesn't matter what you have, like it doesn't matter. It will be taken from you.
00:36:25
Speaker
I think that early experience that I had in 2010 made me really understand what the game is and what they're willing to do. I couldn't look my kids in the eye. On my deathbed, I want to look there. I don't care about them saying anything, oh, dad, you did well in your life. I want them to look at me and say, dad, you're a good man. You did what was right when it was difficult to do that.
00:36:55
Speaker
I'll come from nothing, Will, if I go back to nothing, okay? They can't take my, well, so they can't, they'll try, but they're trying to do that, right? They're trying to do that with the indoctrination in schools. Take away, you kids. So to me, I looked and I said, you know what? There comes a point where
00:37:14
Speaker
you get to stand up and be counted. And I've said it before, we're not storming the beaches at Normandy, but this is a moment where we can show who we really are and stand up for what is right. And it's a very, there are not many times in, I mean, certainly not in my lifetime,
00:37:36
Speaker
that we've had that we can take a stance for something that is so clearly right. And so I was like, you know what, this is it. This is a hill I'm going to die on because I can see it's progressively getting worse and worse and worse. And I understand other people don't have that kind of courage. I mean, a lot of people think that they'll lose a lot of money.
00:37:59
Speaker
If they do that, I'm like, if that's your God, then good luck to you because you're going to lose it anyway. Last in the gulag is still in the gulag will. It just means that I get to choose which bunk I get first. I really don't think that people truly understand. I think if you move from one country to another country, as you've done, as I've done, you kind of go, hang on a minute. I didn't realize. I mean, certainly for the UK, I was like,
00:38:26
Speaker
I wasn't free in the UK. I wasn't free, really. I'd got these kind of parameters in my brain that had been pushed on to me my whole life. And then when I came to America, I started saying, hang on a minute, like,
00:38:42
Speaker
I can say that and I can do that and that's okay. As long as you're not doing X, Y, Z, you can express it. That's the whole backbone of America and what makes it so great. When you see that eroding, you see it being intentionally taken away from people, that's the moment where you got to go, hang on a minute.
00:39:05
Speaker
The thing I came out most about, and I'm not really going to talk about it because I don't know if that will get you banned from wherever you are. I don't know what this goes out on. I'm like, there's no way that you are going to force me to make a decision about my own body. That is not going to happen, and certainly not about my kids.
00:39:25
Speaker
And so that was that was the thing that I really came out about, I think strongest. And then the reaction, it was really bizarre to me, show me kind of like this, this board like group think. And like you said, it's I don't think anything that I was saying that I've said, if I said it 10 years ago, or even seven years ago, people go, okay, seems reasonable. All right.
00:39:47
Speaker
now it's like the windows moved so far that we're in a really really dangerous place super dangerous place and a lot of people think if i just carry on with my life it's not gonna affect me it is gonna affect you it is gonna affect you.
00:40:03
Speaker
And so, I don't know, I see that early counselling as a bit of a blessing for me to see where all those BMWs are, right? And see them over and over and over again. And you see it with Lauser and Calvin and Winston. And you're like, hang on a minute. He just said, what happened to Winston was horrible.
00:40:24
Speaker
And that's why you've also got to understand that never back down. Never, ever back down because it doesn't work. It doesn't work. You just got to be like, no, this is it. And yeah, so that was my take. And I think what's kind of frustrating is when I get DMs from actors that are like, hey, man, that's great. You carry on. You're doing so great. I'm like, yeah, and you're making 100 grand.
00:40:51
Speaker
an episode on your TV show, I'm not saying anything. And in public, yeah. Yeah, you're not saying anything. And, you know, I have nine kids to feed, like, don't even get a call to be on your show, right? Don't even get, that is what worries me. And I'm so disappointed in is the lack of courage from so-called tough guys. It's, they're so weak and such frauds. And I think,
00:41:19
Speaker
I think that certainly rock stars, you know, those rockers that were all against the man and really they're totally for the man. And all that was, I think that was the benefit of the past few years. A lot of frauds got exposed. And I think that one of the biggest issues that I find, I'm sure that you get this as well, set of people, are you engaged?
00:41:45
Speaker
Are you supporting the people? Because it's not guaranteed that we're always going to be here, Will. It's not. They're going to keep going. We're seeing this in politics until they destroy you. And the only way to fight against that is in numbers. It's people coming together and coalescing behind an idea. And that idea is liberty and freedom.
00:42:07
Speaker
You have moved to the United States. You are a Brit. I used to live in the UK. I love the UK. London is still my favorite city. I have an enduring faith.
00:42:20
Speaker
in Britain, but I am terrified and sad by what I see on the news every week. I am worried about the way that unchecked and ill-thought-out immigration has played out. I've heard you talk about multiculturalism. Multiculturalism for some people is like this kind of sacred cow, and if you argue against it, you're a racist.
00:42:46
Speaker
Let's talk about this because when I look after October 7th and I look at thousands of people walking over London Bridge and I go, this is not London, I know. How do you reflect on the country that you obviously love, you were born in? How do you reflect on this country now when you look at the news and you think about it?
00:43:08
Speaker
Well, part of it started... Well, one thing that I can really point to that really started concerning me was when you were told that you couldn't fly the flag,
Unity, Multiculturalism, and National Identity
00:43:24
Speaker
right? Because the flag, whether it be the St. George's Cross or the Union flag,
00:43:29
Speaker
that it was racist. It was somehow racist. And these things were being sown back in the 90s. My own clue as a policeman in the UK flew the St. George's Cross for the soccer games.
00:43:45
Speaker
And he got told to take it down because it might offend people. And that was really in stark contrast to me flying to America just after 9-11 and just seeing flags everywhere. And I just thought, this is amazing. Everyone's united behind the common ideal. And the representation of that was the flag.
00:44:04
Speaker
And Americans knew that that is a symbol that really, really matters. It's a unifying symbol. Whereas multiculturalism has never worked in anywhere that it has been tried. It doesn't. It fractures people into their own little silos. And I think throughout the early 2000s, certainly the late 90s, you started seeing signs go up in different languages. Huge mistake. Huge, huge, huge mistake.
00:44:33
Speaker
along with that, you got, you know, a few again, it's these few squeaky wheels that came out and started talking about how bad the country was. And, you know, kind of like comb through history to any of the bad things that England might have done, and decided to make that the focus of it rather than kind of stopping the Nazis is kind of a big thing.
00:44:57
Speaker
And the same thing bled over into the USA. People tend to look at slavery, which was very, very, very bad. We all know that, but they don't look at the fact that within a short period of time, they changed that. Specifically, it was the British that stopped slavery. My heart broke over the weekend when I saw 20-odd police officers around the Churchill statue in front of Westminster. My heart broke.
00:45:25
Speaker
No, no, I mean, it's it's disgraceful, you know, and think about what would have happened if we didn't have Churchill, the way the world would look right now. And again, I think that there's a lot of a lot of this kind of missing. I think as as conservatives, you look and you say, look, we are we understand that we're broken. Certainly, if you're a Christian or or, you know, religion anyway, you know, we understand that we need something bigger than us because we're not perfect.
00:45:53
Speaker
Right. And that is inherent in every single human being. So you don't look to make people gods. Right. They're not like infallible people that had nothing wrong with them. But you look and say, well, what was great about them? What did they do that was extraordinary despite all these other things? And I think that we look at the UK and we see what was happening. Again, rose tinted glasses looking back as well.
00:46:19
Speaker
We kind of tend to look at things in a modern day set through a modern day lens back at the situation back then and forget that they were in that at that period of time and had to make decisions that were relevant to them right there and then. And you're right. I mean.
00:46:36
Speaker
England stop slavery i mean that they were the ones that said i hang on a second we gonna dedicate the wrong navy to going out there and we're gonna stop it so i mean that that on it just on its face is absurd and then you look at the united states as well where.
00:46:51
Speaker
they rectified slavery by people going to war. I mean, they fought a war again. I mean, it wasn't just that, right? I know a lot of people say that, but they fought a war to change that. And the United States has been evolving and changing and rectifying mistakes as it goes along. And there's not one, I think there's this notion that there's some kind of utopian country out there that has never done anything wrong.
00:47:19
Speaker
I mean, there's more slavery now, I believe, than there ever was in history. And the majority of that is in Africa, right there. I mean, all you got to do, I saw a guy who was from Sudan, and he'd been enslaved in Sudan. And what they did to him, his fellow countryman was horrendous. So that's still going on right now. And I think that what has happened is that, again, we go back to that kind of guilt, right? Like,
00:47:47
Speaker
I've made a lot, a lot of it comes from affluence, right? You never really get working class people going, well, I feel guilty about the privilege that I have, right? They go, hang on a minute. No, we're all in this together. And what we've had in recent years, I think from coming out of the war,
00:48:03
Speaker
And certainly the UK becoming more and more affluent. Certain groups of society there have felt very guilty about what happened to minorities. So they've gone back and they've said, oh, you know, we've got to do this, we've got to do that, we've got to help them here, we've got to help them now. And yeah, they can have their little culture because, you know, their culture is so great, you know, it's so great and looking at bad eyes.
00:48:26
Speaker
And it comes from education, right? It comes from a complete lack of education objectivity on the way that the world is and the way that the world was. And so what has happened is you've got these silos of people that are being taught by white liberals that actually England's a bad place and we did a lot of bad things and therefore they should feel aggrieved and they shouldn't look at the fact that they came into the country and they were handed freedom
00:48:54
Speaker
I mean, even if you go to India, there's a caste system. If you go to Saudi Arabia, you can't wear a cross. There's no religious freedom. So you look at all these places that they lionize and think are great. Well, you wouldn't go back there at all. Yet what they're doing is they're pushing England and the UK to be more like those places that they left, which is an insane mindset. But the problem is that they're not being told that they're British.
00:49:24
Speaker
Like, I refuse, you know, I said it earlier on, I never normally say I hate the phrase African-American.
00:49:31
Speaker
I mean, a British Indian. No, you're British or you're American. I think what's her name said it recently. Raven said, no, no, no. And I don't know if you saw that interview with Oprah. She said, I'm an American. That's what I am. And that's why I say, you know, don't call my kids. My kids are Maltese English. Don't call them that. They're Americans. That's it. And if we united behind that,
00:49:56
Speaker
And that common goal that we're all together and we don't have separate languages, we don't have these separate kind of... You can still be happy about where you come from, right? And still say what a great place it is. But when you're in England, you got to, you know, be lockstep with what it means to be English.
00:50:19
Speaker
Otherwise, you get chaos. And this is why we're getting warring factions. I mean, apart from the Balfour Declaration, when they went in there and they did what they did back then, why are there thousands and thousands of people marching for Palestine? You don't have enough problems in your own country? Oh, that's because they don't see it as their own country. They don't.
00:50:42
Speaker
And that's a massive problem. And we have it here as well. We have it in the US as well with unfettered immigration is destroying this country. The country has not got better from illegal immigration because, as you know, we come over here and we say, OK, with the first act, the first act that we're going to do is not be here illegally. We're not going to break the law.
00:51:03
Speaker
in the country that we want to be in. And, you know, people say to me, well, you know, it's funny because when my kids were at the other school in California, they did what's called Grandparents Day. And unfortunately, you know, my grandparents, the kids' grandparents are over in the UK or in Malta. But this Grandparents Day, every year they have a different theme because there's such a lot of people that were coming from different countries, right, to the melting pot.
00:51:30
Speaker
And they did Great Britain. And one of the teachers came up and said to my kids, it's not a joke. They said, does your dad have a union? It's a union flag, right? People call it a union flag, but it's a union flag. Like, does your dad have like a British flag? And my kids went, no, he only has an American flag in the house.
00:51:50
Speaker
And that's just the way it is. I mean, that's just the way that I approach things. And, you know, I believe that I'm very lucky to be in this country. I'm now an American, but then I wasn't. I'm going to respect the laws of the country and the culture of the country. And I'm not going to keep going on about, you know, the way it was over there, because if it was that great for me, I mean, I love England, I do.
00:52:16
Speaker
But I choose to be here. So that is my approach. And I think if more people did that, then we'd have less division. And certainly, you don't want to glorify cultures where they're doing barbaric things to people. I think that this is a very, very dangerous road to go down. And I keep saying it recently that the more and more I see that stuff that you're talking about, acid attacks,
00:52:41
Speaker
on a killings, England's done. If they do not do something drastic, then this is going to be the norm. And that's not good. Matt, I've watched several of your movies. You are a wonderful actor, but it is not entirely the reason I respect you immensely. It is because you have the courage of your convictions in the way that very few people in your industry do. Thank you for coming on Australia. Thank you for having me.
00:53:11
Speaker
Thank you very much for listening to this episode of Australiana. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review. And if you really enjoyed the show, head to spectator.com.au forward slash join. Sign up for a digital subscription today and you'll get your first month absolutely free.