Writer Loves Acting Out Sex Scenes

Illawarra Mercury

Thursday February 22, 2007

GLEN HUMPHRIES

LOVE MY WAY

Third-season premiere

February 26, 8.30pm

Showtime

Being both an actor and a writer on the popular Showtime series Love My Way has its advantages for Brendan Cowell.

For one it means he can write in a load of sex scenes for his character, the restless Tom Jackson.

"You can't really get away with too much with the writers, and the show's plotted to within an inch of its life," Cowell says.

"But I do manage to get a hell of a lot of sex action in the third series. Claudia (Karvan - who plays Frankie in the series), at the launch last week, she said, 'Brendan wrote almost half of this series so every woman's offering him a hand job in almost every scene' and that's pretty true.

"But I would argue the Tom character had to have a lot of sex because all the other characters are coupled up and normal so you need somebody to fire up the episode. I was willing to put up my hand to pull down my pants."

The sex scenes aren't there to shock - Cowell says that's one thing the writers never want to do. For them, everything the characters do has to have the echo of reality. And it's that echo that makes it resonate with so many people - as well as win a swag of awards.

It's also an echo that comes from the writers' own real-life experiences.

"The plotting room was a very, very personal place," he says.

"Often we'd talk of stories under the guise of 'this happened to a good friend of mine' In the telling you could see that it happened to somebody a little bit closer than that. It wasn't all literal biography, it was also things we'd felt and seen.

"I think that's why the show is lifelike; the stories weren't contrived for the purposes of television narrative, they came from a real place. We always wanted to represent stories as they are in life and how issues between relationships can continue and bubble on.

People don't necessarily learn from their mistakes, some things aren't wrapped up, and even if they are they can burst open in a couple of years. That's what we wanted to illuminate."

It was through the "personal place" of the writing room that Cowell ended up appearing in the show. He'd been part of the writing team - and was only one of two men in the group.

"I became, by default, a spokesman for Tom's character because I guess I'd had Tom-like experiences and the Tom voice," he says with a laugh.

"John Edwards, the producer, used to laugh at me, saying 'stop auditioning'. I'd do impressions of what Tom would say and do and people would laugh.

"In the room people would ask Frankie questions and look at Claudia and when they'd talk about Tom everyone would look at me. So I kind of became Tom in the writing room.

"In the end, John said, 'You've got to bloody audition for this role, we can't just give it to you'. I said, 'What do you mean?' He says, 'Come on, you've been auditioning all year, you know'."

So he auditioned with the other actors and got the thumbs-up.

And he's been laughing ever since. While the other writers and the producers talk each year of ending the series (there's already talk of the third series being the last), Cowell's still having the time of his life.

"I love it, it's the best job I've ever had," he says. "It's one of the best things that's ever happened to me in my life. I love working on it.

"I was shocked by everyone's 'oh I'm done with it, I'm over it. I was like, 'why? How can you be over it? It's so good. It helps me pay off my house and people think I'm cool when I do it. So come on, I need this in my life'.

"I still feel the same. If Six Feet Under can do six series and The Sopranos can do seven, why can't we?"

That said, Cowell does realise the show can't go on forever, that it does have its dramatic limitations.

"There's only so much that can happen to a group of people who live in houses," he says.

© 2007 Illawarra Mercury

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