Australian Story: June 10

Australian Story‘s “The War Pup” revisits Quaden Bayles who has embarked on a new career ambition after acting in Mad Max: Furiosa.

After next Monday the show will take a break to return later.

When Quaden Bayles was nine, he was bullied and trolled for having dwarfism. But he also caught the eye of Mad Max director George Miller, and now at 13, has emerged triumphant.

It was a moment of connection that changed the trajectory of a “little Murri boy from Brisbane” who thought he “wouldn’t really make it”.

“But one day I just had this one thing and my whole life just changed like that. It’s just crazy,” Quaden Bayles says.

When Australian Story first met Quaden in 2020, the then nine-year-old was at his lowest ebb.

Captured on video by his distressed mother, Quaden sat curled into his car seat, a sobbing, hysterical mess, crushed by the latest round of school yard ridicule over his dwarfism.

He didn’t think life could get any worse.

But then came the trolls, and the threats, and the violence as conspiracy theories mounted about who Quaden really was and whether he was just after money.

But as Australian Story revisits Quaden and his family in Queensland, the now 13-year-old shares that a lot of good also came out of that viral video.

“It’s really hard for me to look at it and watch, but I’m happy that we got it out there,” Quaden says.

One of the millions to view the video was another Queenslander named George Miller who’d witnessed bullying when he was a school student.

Miller, now a legendary Hollywood film director best known for Mad Max, couldn’t forget what he’d seen.

“[The video] had a big impact on me. Something in Quaden really resonated,” Miller says.

A zoom meeting followed and Quaden was cast in not one but two George Miller films.

“I didn’t really know what Mad Max was. And then one day I … told my brother, I’m in the Mad Max movie bruh. You know what that is? And bruh he was, like, going off,” Quaden says.

“The video changed me a lot, but what changed me the most was the acting. One day, I’ll be a Hollywood star.”

8pm Monday on ABC.