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City Homicide: articlesLone starHe's broken through the colour barriers on Australian TV, but actor Aaron Pedersen has bigger personal and political ambitions. Melinda Houston reports. Three words Aaron Pedersen really likes: "mainstream", "commercial" and "espionage". "Ess-pion-aaarrge. I just love that word!" he laughs. "I don't mind of bit of James Bond, he's all right. And what do you reckon? Reckon I'd make a good James Bond? The first black James Bond?" Taken by the idea, the actor currently better known as Detective Senior Sergeant Duncan Freeman in Seven's City Homicide rolls with it. "But would that work? If Bond went away as Daniel Craig and came back as me? I could say: The eyes? They're contacts. And the tan? Solarium. Twenty-ticket deal at a solarium." Jimmy Bond, blackfella Bond, master of ess-pion-aaarrge. Maybe not. But Aaron Pedersen, conqueror of mainstream commercial television? Crazy but true. For 10 years now, Pedersen has been a quiet, one-man revolution in Australian TV. In the late 1990s, he was cast in Wildside as lawyer Vince Cellini, the unlikely son of Italian parents ; a few years later, he was Detective Senior Constable Mick Reilly in Water Rats. He was a doctor in the ABC's MDA, a solicitor in the groundbreaking SBS series The Circuit. And when the Arrernte-Arabana man slipped on a designer suit to take on the role of City Homicide's Freeman (in a cast otherwise exclusively blond), Pedersen saw it as just another shot fired in a long battle. "I know a lot of indigenous people get a lot of power out of the fact that I am on a commercial network," Pedersen says. "They can say to their kids - see that? I look like him, you look like him. It's possible. They can see a little bit of their soul there." While for many actors the dream is to create "art" (and hang the popular acclaim), for Pedersen the dream is to reach as many people as is humanly possible. And there's no better way to do that than through successful, mainstream commercial television. "I've tried to remain really consistent with the things I've chosen to do," he says, "and when I ask myself, 'How can I help this industry change?' I think that's by participating on a mainstream level. In City Homicide, people are connecting with me as Australian, as a human being, and that's the first hurdle. They're not seeing me any differently." He is still, however, waiting to see indigenous actors in other shows. Ideally, lots of them. "I know the thing that really is a bit of an issue in this country is contact with Aboriginal people," he says. "And I think with television, that can be the first point of contact. I know when I go out, walking in the streets and things like that, you realise that you are on a bit of a journey when you get private school kids saying hello to you. That's their contact with Aboriginal people. And that's why I think TV needs to be braver, and needs to change." So passionate is Pedersen on the subject that's he's opened quiet negotiations with the actors' union, the MEAA, to explore getting a bit of affirmative action in Australian TV. "I believe we need to get to a level where every Australian show has to have an indigenous person in it," he says. "And a mainstream role. Not an indigenous role. A human role. And from within that you get the indigenous experience." Writer John Hugginson, one of the creators of City Homicide, says that while they wrote the character of Duncan Freeman as a little broody and mysterious, Pedersen brings an extra dimension to the character. "We always saw him as the kind of character who was a little bit quiet about his past. Just goes about his business. But Aaron kind of gives us an edge," Hugginson says. Obviously, Pedersen would love to see more "colour-blind casting", and if it takes legislation to get there, so be it. His own career started with a bit of positive discrimination when he was taken into the ABC as a cadet journalist under its equal opportunity program. "I didn't like the fact that I was given special treatment. I didn't like that at all," he says. "But I think there was a part of me, inside my head, that said, 'Well, you took my land. The least you can do is give me a bloody job.' Then once you're there, the onus is on you to make some inroads." He's certainly done that. And while it's still very much a solo journey, he clings to the belief that one person can make a difference, whether that's Rosa Parkes, Barack Obama or a boy from the Alice. "I have to truly believe that the industry is changing. I have to. Even when I don't see it changing. I have to believe the undercurrents are there." He recently navigated those undercurrents working on the SBS series The Circuit. "There were indigenous writers attached to it, indigenous directors, indigenous crew, indigenous actors. And then you watch the story and you get an indigenous perspective. That's a big shift for Australian television." In fact, one of those indigenous directors was Pedersen himself, who had his first taste of action behind the cameras directing the final episode of the second series. "That was interesting," he laughs. "I played the lead, I was directing myself. I didn't listen to myself at all. I was giving myself directions, but I was just ignoring myself. I was like, 'Who's that? First-time director. What would he know?' " Pedersen found he rather enjoyed the change of roles. "I was actually surprised. It suited my brain for some reason." So that's another credit that can sit alongside the many acting and presenting roles on his CV, and his one public turn as a scriptwriter, on the very personal documentary My Brother Vinnie. "That was daunting. Very daunting," he says of the short film that explored his relationship as carer and brother to Vinnie, who suffers from cerebral palsy and a mild intellectual disability. My Brother Vinnie won best short documentary at the 2006 Melbourne International Film Festival before screening on SBS. Pedersen senior's writing is very good. Pedersen junior's enthusiastic and utterly unself-conscious performance is outstanding. "My brother just shines, doesn't he?" Pedersen grins. "He just kills it. And he runs me down all the time. 'You're not famous! I am! I'm more famous than you, bro.' Even before it was out he'd be saying to people in the supermarket, 'Have you seen My Brother Vinnie? Yeah, I'm in it! That's me!' " Brother Vinnie now divides his time between home with Mum Frances, Pedersen's mother-in-law, and the home Pedersen shares with his partner, producer Sarah Bond. "He comes and stays with us, he stays with Mum, we give her a break, he drives us nuts. It works well." The film was also a low-key meditation on a too-typical story of life for young indigenous people: the fractured families, alcohol, violence. Pedersen spent his early years in and out of care before deciding, at the age of 13, to make himself a ward of the state so he could stay with his foster parents, Brian and Sandra Hansen, and finish his schooling. It was also around this time he made a conscious commitment to care for Vinnie, a commitment that's still one of the cornerstones of his life. That was a lot for a 13-year-old to shoulder. "But love is never a duty," Pedersen says. And in many ways the responsibility of caring for Vinnie gave him a focus and a reason to keep his head screwed on when so many young men in that position - black or white - would have run completely off the rails. These days, thanks to that small extended family, he's able to be much more of a brother and much less of a carer to Vinnie. And without being neurotic about it, the lessons of discipline and self-control he learnt at that early age continue to stand him in good stead. Director Richard Frankland, long-time friend and collaborator (Pedersen even played Frankland in the latter's powerful play about deaths in custody, Conversations with the Dead), sees in Pedersen a good man carrying a huge burden. Frankland understands better than most the kind of pressures a successful Aboriginal person endures: discrimination, ignorance and hostility in mainstream Australia, on top of the pressures of a public profile, all heaped on the ordinary business of paying the mortgage and caring for your family. That Pedersen seems to do it so effortlessly points to extraordinary strength of character. "He's not a victim. He's not a survivor," Frankland says. "What he is, is a warrior." And it's not really surprising that for Pedersen, the personal is always, inevitably political, whether that's the work he chooses, the conversations he has, even the footy team he follows.As the footy season approaches, Pedersen's thinking of switching his allegiance from the Bombers to the Tigers, because that's where Kevin Sheedy is these days. "I've always thought Sheeds has been an inspiration. He's had a big influence on indigenous people. And for me it was always really inspiring to see indigenous people playing the game - and they were always playing for Essendon," Pedersen says. "But now Sheeds is with the Tigers ... Essendon supporters are going to be hassling me over this. I should have just said I barrack for Kevin Sheedy." And while Pedersen appreciates all the good things Melbourne has to offer - the multicultural potpourri of sport, art, food, festivals - he rarely participates in any of them. "I like my own time. I like my own space. I love breathing space. Maybe that's a desert thing," he says. Time out means spending time with his brother, or just lying on the sofa watching the cricket. "I'm not fussy about what I do - I don't need to get away to be free. I don't need to go somewhere to feel like I've escaped. I can escape in here," he says, tapping his temple. He is also sometimes reluctant to go out because, as a high-profile black man, even the simple things can be fraught. "It can be really draining," he says. "I've found myself talking with people where I think their opinion is just wrong and it becomes a bit of an effort just to have a conversation with someone." Being a role model and a one-man revolution can be very tiring. And that too is something Pedersen's very conscious of - personally and politically. "I have been feeling my responsibilities lately. And I'm sort of conscious of that because there is a high burnout among young indigenous men and women, just because of the amount of work they have to do. To bridge all the gaps. We die young, there's high burnout. I've never been carefree. I've never felt like I've had time just to do nothing. And I actually really like just doing nothing." Frankland says that if Pedersen decided to suddenly give it all up, he'd completely understand: "It would be his choice to say, 'Well, I'm going to add 10 years to my life by not taking on these pressures'." And while Pedersen's not quite ready to give it all up, he's certainly assessing his options. "I can't see myself acting for the rest of my life," he says. "It's too emotionally draining. You go into different elements of your life, you draw on stuff. Sometimes I feel like I'm being eroded away. The Circuit's no barrel of laughs. And City Homicide - it's morbid, man. It's so morbid!" Which is perhaps why, at least in part, Duncan Freeman experiences a slight change in direction this year. Hugginson says that while Pedersen brings a rich, complicated personal background to the character, he brings something else, too - something that's evident in conversation with him. A great deal of charm. "We want him to be a little more philosophical about things, taking things in his stride a bit more," says Hugginson. "And maybe smiling a bit more. Seeing the joke. Because you always are struck by it when Aaron smiles or cracks a joke. He can be very funny." Sometimes, of course, you just have to laugh. It's probably his sense of humour as much as anything that has kept Pedersen sane. And he's not giving up on the acting quite yet. "Because at the end of the day, I'd prefer to have something to chip away at and something to attach my heart to," Pedersen says, "rather than just be superficial and see the industry for its red carpets and flashbulbs. I know there's a reason I do what I do. I'm part of a baton race, I've got that baton at the moment and I'm trying to run the best race I can." City Homicide, Sunday 8.30pm, Channel Seven.
By Melinda Houston |
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