Andy Anderson

The Wentworth Star

You must have heard about the Green Room! Well, the Green Room had more drama and comedy than what was on the screen. There's a sort of pecking order with a 'Who's the boss that week'. It was great! It was a magical Green Room, shit it was funny! It was a weird experience, now I know how a young woman must feel, being in an office full of men!

We met up with Andy in his apartment overlooking a brilliant harbour view, watching the ferries jetting past the Sydney Opera House. This is an ideal location for such an easy-going person - Hi Andy, what attracted you to the role of Rick Manning?
I think my agent at the time said, 'Do you want to do a part on Prisoner?' I asked him what Prisoner was about and it sounded interesting, so I said, 'I'll have a go at that!' Prisoner was my fourth role in Australia, Radio Waves was my first TV role, he was an acid casualty DJ. But I started off as a Rock 'n' Roll singer actually.

Is that how you found your way into acting?
Yeah, I was in a band called The Missing Link, in the 60's in Australia. I started in New Zealand playing in various bands and ended up coming across here. I have a couple of the albums, it's a collectors item I found, isn't it marvellous! I then played in various bands in Sydney and then went back to New Zealand to play at the Cheetah Room with all the R and R soldiers when they were over in New Zealand in a band called Southern Comfort. I came back to Melbourne in the 70's and joined the band called Running, Jumping, Standing Still. Then I say Hair, the first rock show and got a part in that, and that was the beginning for my acting!

How long does it take to write something like a movie script?
I've spent five months, but it hasn't been constant because I have just finished a job in GP, it's going to air on May 9th. I'm playing a suspected child molester with an anger problem (Laughter). Yeah, this one is a troublesome soul. I had to really stretch to get something with guts, which is what the director was pushing.

Most of the male screws are nasty, how does your character of Rick Manning rate?
I think if you put anyone in a charge position, like this guy in GP, he's a psych nurse, you have to be careful when you're in a position of power. I think the humanity can go out of you and you end up taking out your hostility on the people you're working with. I think that happened a couple of times with Prick Manning! (Laughter) He was a pretty kindly chap but at times he used to get carried away with the power and I imagine you'd have to be careful of that. Overall he was a reasonable guy but a bit ineffectual, but I think Rick had the prisoners' interests at heart.

Did you ever get tired of being in the Green Room?
I enjoyed playing scrabble with Brian. The waiting time on Prisoner was a lot less than Fire. One time we waited a whole day, to be filmed! We had a very good second assistant / continuity lady, Jane Lindsay. Scotty, we used to call her, on Prisoner. She was excellent at arranging everybody. She's the best I've worked with. She's in NZ now!

Where in NZ do you hail from Andy?
I'm a Nae Nae boy, Lower Hutt, which is just out of Wellington. John Clark (Fred Dagg) comes from there also! 'Home of the Stars' (Laughter)! I first met Rebecca Gibney, from Halifax fp fame, in Wellington. She did a couple of shows there, then zipped off to Sydney.

Is Rick one of your more memorable roles?
They're all different. He was a straight down the line character. It's sometimes more fun to play someone over the top like the Pirate King or Repo in Fire, or someone who's a real slime. There's more meat in doing that type of role. Rick's music was 60's, very bright unlike mine.

What's the funniest thing that happened to you on the Prisoner set?
Brian (Stan Dobson) and I would sit in the Green Room corner and play Scrabble and one day one of the actresses came in and threw a tantrum. She was shouting down the phone, at her agent. 'Fuck this and you fucking ...' She then slammed down the phone and stormed out! Elspeth was quite shocked by this and came up and said, 'I'm really sorry about the language,' in a whisper. (Laughter) It was so weird that a woman was apologising to a man, for a woman's language! Brian replied, 'Oh, that's alright.' Brian's a well spoken older gentleman and Elspeth felt responsible. Elspeth was the peacekeeper amongst them all. She's a lovely lady. It was quite amusing to get the feeling of being on the other side of the fence. You'd feel a hand on your arse, 'Oh, sexual harassment at work!' I also remember my last scene. I had to walk down the hallway and cry, leaving Wentworth behind. I thought, I'll go for it. I'll go for the tears but Anne Phelan was up the other end of the hallway and as I was walking down, she shouted 'Yoooh Hoo' and gives me a big flash, so I missed out on the tears that day!! She's just a treasure of a woman!!

Who did you hang out with besides Brian?
I shared a bit of my time with Elspeth, Betty and a lot with Maggie and Tina. I used to go around to Tina's place and have a sing along. She was in Prisoner for about nine months.

Are you based in Australia permanently?
Yes, I've been in Sydney since Christmas. Before that I was in Brisbane for six months, doing Fire, Melbourne for six months in Bob Morrison, and New Zealand before that doing Marlin Bay which I did with Ilona Rogers (Zara Moonbeam), which is on Foxtel. It's an adventure series and I played a helicopter pilot, who was also a fly-by-night helicopter/tourist operator, in a town which had a casino, and big business coming in fighting the little people. Sort of like what's happening here with the logging! I wrote three of those episodes. I've also done a one man show between all of that, and wrote a movie script, the background of it being about motorcycles.

Did you enjoy working with the dog in Bob Morrison?
WC Fields was right! Don't work with dogs or kids! (Laughter) No, seriously, the dog was very professional. It went to his head in the end. I can't remember his name, but he wanted meat on the bone, on a special plate and most of all, he wanted close ups! He got all the best fucking lines too, but he was great! Lassie, would be eight or nine dogs. One doing the cute stuff etc etc. This dog did the bloody lot! He was a real treasure, a multi talented little critter. When you shoot a sitcom, it's in front of a live audience but because the dog was likely to run and piss in the front row (Laughter) or bite somebody, we had to have it prefilmed!

How would you describe your Prisoner Work schedule compared to Fire's?
They were reasonably long hours but not as tough as Fire's. Like a lot of Australian productions, we were up against action packed shows from the US the ones that are paying millions per episode. Fire was an incredible job but it was hard work to get there. Pace, pace, pace the whole time. Working with fire is different, very hard to film. You never know which way the wind is going to go. Luckily we were in a perfect place in Brisbane. Prisoner was long hours but that's what you get when you get $10,000 a week. You've got to expect that! (Laughter) I'll leave it at that!

What do you do when you're not working?
I'm starting to write and I was trying to get a band together. I wrote between my last job and Fire. I've written a synopsis for a historical piece set in Sydney and in Whangaroa, North Island, New Zealand. It's about early meetings between the convict ships and the Maoris. It's a fascinating story. One other is a fairy tale, I just keep writing. If I just sat down by the phone I'd go crazy! We had a band made up from cast members of Fire. Wayne Pygram, Spit, he's a mad drummer! Andrew McKaige was on guitar and Liddy (Bella Albrecht, Sharon Smart) would get up and sing songs. We also grabbed some of the crew that were players and we just used to rage. We called ourselves the Total Fire Band, and we played at the launch of the show and the break up party. It blew the cobwebs away. You always miss music if you're a Rock 'n' Roller, so that was a good buzz.

Does film interest you at all?
Yeah, they don't seem as interested in me as I am with them (Laughter). You really have to be available for film. Bill Hunter just doesn't work. He waits. I prefer to keep working so I'm not readily available. There's not a lot that I've looked at and said, 'I'd love to do that,' but there's one role that I would have loved to have done, Terence Stamp's role in Priscilla Queen of the Desert! Oh, what a dream role! Terence did such a good job and I'm not saying I could have done it better but I would have had a version of that. Priscilla was a magic show. I've just loved some of the Aussie films I've seen lately, The Sum of Us, Romper Stomper and Bad Boy Bubby. The first twenty minutes I didn't think I could take it but I loved it. Muriel's Wedding, right back to Waiting, with Noni Hazelhurst, brilliant. I just loved them because they're surprisingly very original.

Are brilliant things happening in the NZ film industry?
Yeah, Heavenly Creatures and Once Were Warriors. They creamed it with Once Were Warriors! It's very true to life and it addresses the subject of domestic violence which is found all over the world and needs addressing. They didn't back away from it as maybe the English might have. There must have been a lot of people in that cinema cringing. Ladybird, Ladybird would have made a great Prisoner story! It was about a woman and the Social Welfare Dept taking her kids away from her. Heartbreaking!

Does an actor lose his/her privacy being on TV so often?
Your privacy's gone if you're in any of this. Sometimes it's very hard to deal with. If you don't like it get off the box. Some of the public are really sweet, but others can be arseholes! They don't know your name, they just know the show, 'Fire, Prisoner! Hey you, Prisoner!'

What do you have planned for your future?
I'd like to get onto the other side of the cameras. At least I'm not saying, 'I want to play Macbeth or Hamlet!' They can have it!

Finally, your trip to Cannes.
It's to promote Fire, to see if they can sell it around the world. Georgie Parker must have been busy (Laughter), so they asked me to go, I've never been to Europe but everyone says the south of France is lovely this time of year ...