by Dov Kornits
“This was something that really appealed to me, because I’d never done it before, and not because I was so desperate to act with myself,” laughs Ben O’Toole when we ask about him playing two roles in Bloody Hell. “The idea of being in a scene with somebody that isn’t there … The amount of work I was going to have to do to pull something like this off really appealed to me.”
The main role is Rex, who early on in the film makes a decision that impacts his whole life, making him both a hero and a villain. The other role is Rex’s ID, his super-ego, which makes for interesting conversation as the character gets into some very precarious situations.
“The biggest hurdle, I think, is just time,” says O’Toole when we ask how they pulled it off. “Every setup that we would do as one character, you’ve got to mirror that set up for the opposite character. And when it’s one actor, you can’t really multi-cam, you can’t have an A and a B camera operating, it’s just got to be the one lock-off. And of course, they’re both in two very physically different states, and there’s a wardrobe change, a makeup change, so time’s probably the biggest obstacle, but it was a lot of fun.”
Acting opposite O’Toole in these scenes was Joshua Brennan (Skinford). “The producers and director asked me if there was somebody I worked particularly well with, that I would like to be the other part of me.”
Brennan went to drama school with O’Toole and they were good mates. “I asked him straight away, ‘you hate to take a bit of time off, but you’d be doing a massive solid’,” O’Toole tells us. “Josh agreed, and thank god he did; the fear is that you can lose spontaneity. It could feel a bit like it’s just rehearsed, so having Josh there was really such a breath of fresh air, and I actually learned a lot from him. Some of the choices he was making, I was like, ‘Oh, okay, I’m stealing that. That was really good’. Ultimately, those two characters are something him and I created together. I can’t take all the credit.”
O’Toole was in LA shooting a pilot when he was alerted to Bloody Hell’s screenplay and that the producers wanted to talk to him about it. “I had a read, and I fell in love with it straight away,” the actors says today. “I thought it was really funny. Primarily, I thought it was actually really unique. It was a breath of fresh air on an old torture, horror, kind of, kidnapped style story.”
Upon returning to Australia, O’Toole met with producer Brett Thornquest and was offered the part. “At that point, we didn’t know which director we were going to be working with, but then when Alister [Grierson, Sanctum, Kokoda] jumped on board, him and I started having conversations quite regularly, and we both approved of each other.”
Was O’Toole worried that he may get typecast, coming off the back of the lead role in another genre film, Nekrotronic? “Look, I’d be lying if I said that hadn’t gone through my mind,” he admits. “But at the end of the day as well, it’s a story that I loved, and it presented itself with the challenges that I felt were appropriate for me to become a better actor. And I think at the end of the day, an opportunity is what you make it. And this was a really cool story.
“These things might look quite similar on the surface, but they’re actually very, very different films as well. This one’s much more of a psychological comedy thriller rather than the sort of sci-fi element that Nekrotronic had.
“I mean, look, I’m splitting hairs here, but I also love watching these types of movies. If I never took pleasure in making them, I think I’d be a bit of a hypocrite.”
Born in Cairns, but growing up in Brisbane, Ben O’Toole headed west to study acting at the highly respected Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), before relocating to Sydney. “There was a community here of actors that had come before me, and I found myself amongst those. I sort of graduated into a family here, which was quite comforting.”
With two lead roles in a row in films that will be released internationally, O’Toole was on the cusp of breaking big, but then, COVID. “There’s definitely ‘woe is me, I was on this trajectory’, but on the flipside, the reason I’m not working is the same reason the person next to me isn’t working. We’re all in the same boat. It’s going to sound cheesy, but I’ve got my health, nobody I know has been affected by it. Outside of the financial repercussions and jobs and having to stay at home, we’re all just counting our blessings.”
Bloody Hell is in cinemas now.
Read our interview with Ben’s Bloody Hell co-star Meg Fraser
