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‘I wanted in’, says Gallipoli’s Matt Nable.

3 years ago Matt Nable told John Edwards & David Gygnell he wanted to be part of Gallipoli.

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Matt Nable didn’t really mind what role he played, he just knew he wanted to be part of Gallipoli.

When he told producer John Edwards and Nine CEO David Gygnell, the boss said he would make it happen.

“I said to them ‘I really want to be a part of this.’ I was doing the Underbelly: Badness launch and I sat with Dave and John Edwards and I said ‘I’m in.’

“Gynge was like, ‘I’ll make this happen.’ But I’m very lucky that they had faith in me to do it. Never did I feel like I was entitled to anything, I just made it clear that I wanted to do it,” he told TV Tonight.

“But I have a military background. I was living in army barracks until I was 15. My father served 20 years in the Australian Army. He was the head of the Physical Training Unit. My grandfather served in the Air Force in New Guinea. My great uncle served in the machine gun battalion in New Guinea, so I grew up around horribly-affected men.

“This is really important to me, to be a part of and I’m extraordinarily passionate about doing it the right way.”

He got his wish, playing tough-as-nails Sergeant Harry Perceval.

“My job initially is to make sure the troops are moving forward. So I work in tandem with Captain Taylor (Jeremy Linday Taylor) who leads from the front, as it was back then,” he explains.

“I’m 41 which is quite old for a sergeant, and he would have served as a militia because we didn’t have a regular army in the Boer War. But Jeremy’s character and I find ourselves back in a situation of conflict.

“He’s an amalgam of people. Not an archetype, but the sergeant was responsible for things that were unequivocal. That’s what you had to do and you had to be a certain personality type to take on that role.”

“They were boys without a leader”

Despite being a fictional character, Nable was determined to be as authentic as he could in depicting a first world war sergeant. Based on Les Carlyon’s historical book, the production drew on the expertise of military adviser Dayton McCarthy, Ph.D.

“He told us about the amount of casualties, NCOSs and officers that were killed on the frontline. On that initial day there was a lot of ambiguity about what was to happen. There were men hiding in gullies and men sitting on the beach because they were rudderless. And that part of Gallipoli is (never) shown,” Nable explains.

“But they were boys without a leader and it was akin to being a young boy without his father.

“So it’s incumbent on us (older actors) to make sure it’s imparted onto the younger actors.

“It is the most important story to represent authentically and I’ve felt passionate about this for a very long time.”

Gallipoli screens a double episode tonight at 9pm on Nine.

2 Responses

  1. After a laborious start, Gallipoli is turning out to be a quality series after all. The fourth and fifth episodes build upon the character development in the earlier episodes, the editing and direction appear to have improved markedly, and the show is looking far less “soapy”. If this change of tone was deliberate then the directors deserve congratulations. Assuming the trend to improvement continues to the last episode then the series will become a highly regarded piece of work.

    Ironically, all those viewers who have dropped out of the ratings have simultaneously missed the best part of the series, and contributed significantly to it’s watchability, as it now attracts far less advertisements due to it’s lower ratings. Having two episodes back to back is a bonus: thanks for that channel nine.

  2. I have heard a lot on radio how disappointed Nine are at the ratings of Gallipoli. I think its no wonder. The promotion of the series made it sound like “Home & Away In WWI”. Two men loving the same woman? That’s nothing like a WWI drama. I wasn’t at all interested in that kind of soap opera. I dont watch the other soaps and I wont watch one set in Gallipoli either. Especially when there is so much to tell about the Gallipoli story anyway. It doesnt need rubbbish like a soap opera plot

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