by Dov Kornits
“I hope it’s an Andy Serkis kind of turn,” says actor Ben Prendergast about his latest performance, in Leigh Whannell’s highly anticipated Wolf Man. “I’ve brought all my experience into trying to terrify the audience as much as possible and build a unique monster.
“But it’s not about me, it’s about whether it will resonate with what is ostensibly a very human story.
“It’s one of those thrillers that has the scares, but it is also prescient and touching. And that’s testament to Julia Garner and Christopher Abbott and Matilda Firth who plays Ginger, the daughter. Leigh has said, ‘they’re allergic to inauthenticity’. They just come take after take, scene after scene, and they’re diving into pretty horrendous territory.”
As you can probably tell already, with only a couple of weeks before the film’s global release, Prendergast isn’t able to fully disclose what he portrays in Wolf Man.
“You can see from the trailer that there’s a family and they drive into Oregon. You can see there’s an accident. And pretty much from that accident they’re being hunted, and I can’t say who I am or what I am, but I’m definitely hunting them…
“I’d done my own stunts over the years. I’ve always been pretty active, still pretty fit, but it’s not a werewolf, it’s a wolf man. And so, we worked a lot in terms of creating a unique character. Obviously, Leigh understands the tropes of horror, but he really wanted to find something unique and audacious and bold.
“It’s quite funny to see the talk on the internet in terms of what they think it is. There was the Hollywood Horror Nights ‘leak’ of the monster character. That’s way off in terms of how actually scary the monster is because let’s face it, there’s a reason why you never see the monster in these trailers, or you only get hints of it, because it’s that implied threat that is the scariest thing. And then in terms of the film itself, the things that we were working with was movement, disease and affliction and things that aren’t necessarily scary werewolf stuff, but just sick…
“It’s a really intimidating threatening presence that we tried to build. And the other thing I can say is that there was weeks and weeks and weeks and months of stunt training and of conditioning and of back and forth between Chris Abbott and movement coaches and Steve McQuillan, the stunt guy, and myself and Leigh right up until we were shooting.
“I’m in the makeup chair for six hours,” Ben continues. “I look like an actual monster. I’m already six foot, 85 plus kilos…. for me, all of this helps because it makes it much easier to act when it’s not necessarily Ben upfront… I used to miss out on a ton of Australian roles because it’d be for an Australian TV show and I’d be in full broad Australian accent. And I just felt like it was way too close to me, and I’d become extremely self-conscious.”
Melbourne born and raised, Ben Prendergast arrived in Los Angeles in 2016. “Originally, it was just about seeking work. I didn’t go over with anything concrete, which is kind of crazy. It was more about moving away from Australia. I’d spent 10 years in theater and had done a bit of film and TV, but I just wasn’t finding the momentum.”
Luckily, Prendergast got a good agent in LA off the back of his commercials work in Australia. “Eventually, I booked a Star Wars Resistance gig because I was a voice match for Domhnall Gleeson for General Hux. And then, did a game called Apex Legends, which is still going strong. And then booked God of War, which was the first major performance capture stuff. It’s a mix between theater and film, the way it all pans out. That got me a bit of a profile in that performance capture/creature space as well, which is where we find ourselves now.”
We ask whether Ben knew Leigh Whannell from Melbourne? “There was a film in 2008 that he was in, The Dying Breed, with a friend of mine, Nathan Phillips. We went to dinner with Leigh at the Supper Inn in Chinatown in Melbourne, and we just hit it off. It was one of those weird things. I didn’t speak to him afterwards and even when I went to the Wolf Man audition, I walked in the room and I was like, ‘Hey Leigh, we actually had dinner years and years ago’. And he’s like … he was lying … ‘I think I recognise you’. No, you don’t! But we had a shorthand really quickly in terms of how we would work together on set, the conversations we’d have around what I was doing…”
Winding back to his days in Melbourne, Ben recalls his beginnings at VCA and 16th Street Actors Studio, and the Meisner method. “But my main training ground was on that stage working with the best text and great directors and actors.”
He was also involved in actor-driven theatre Red Stitch. “I’m still an ensemble member, did plays with them, it gave me the confidence to go, ‘well, I can work as a lead in things, and I can hold down a show. It’s just, who’s going to take the risk on me?’
“In 2012, Tommy [Thomas Schlamme], the foundation director for The West Wing came down and he shot this pilot in country Victoria called The Frontier. I booked a role on that, and the pilot didn’t go, it was too expensive a show, but that would’ve been my start… But that was proof to me that people like that take risks on people like me who at the time hadn’t done anything really big…
“I also booked a small role on Predestination, and then Lou Mitchell, the casting director, called and she’s like, ‘Ben, you’re the same size as Ethan Hawke. You want to be his performance double for the end of the film’.
“That’s me and Ethan going toe to toe at the end of the film. It was one of the best experiences. Every time I met someone with a profile like that, and felt like I was comfortable working with them, I was really drawn to moving to America and having a crack.
“My bread and butter’s going to be in video games,” Ben concludes. “Film is great when it comes along. I was absolutely chuffed to book Wolf Man. A career is a series of lucky breaks and that was one of them for me because no one was in town, and I walked into the callback and there was only a handful of people… My audition tape was wild, how I got into a callback off that audition tape, I will never know…”
Wolf Man is in cinemas 16 January 2025
