by Dov Kornits
“It was make or break,” confesses Nathan Clark Sapsford, whilst in Sydney where he’s temporarily based over the summer, catching up with friends and family, and promoting the release of his biggest role in a film yet, as David Locke in Alastair Newton Brown’s neo noir Here Be Dragons.
An MTV and Video Hits VJ, and a regular on the social scene in the Noughties, Sapsford pulled the handbreak on being a presenter, a ‘personality’, retraining as an actor. “There was something inside that I needed to address,” he thought. “I really felt unfulfilled, and it was like, ‘if I keep doing this, I’m going to be hosting a game show’.
“There was a childlike joy,” he says of acting. “It’s a difficult thing to maintain in this business. All of my friends that devote their life to some art form or another, we all harbour this pure love and joy for it and for telling stories.”
Moving to the US in 2009 to pursue his newfound passion, Sapsford returned to Australia a decade later when his mother was ill. Whilst here, he met screenwriter John Collee (Master & Commander), who introduced him to Alastair Newton Brown, an exciting new voice mentored by Collee at the time.
In between caring for his mother’s needs, Sapsford hit the boards, appearing in a theatre production of Erika Sheffer’s Russian Transport. “Alastair came to see that, and it was the best thing that could have happened because I was playing one of the leads, a very charismatic, completely black-hearted man; I relished that role.
“I was so overwhelmed with information and emotion dealing with my mum, and it bubbled out into a creative outlet with Alastair. We would scheme and talk, and then one day it was like, ‘why don’t we do something together?’
“He’d written a script, and it was a bit of blind faith, with our own ambitions converging together. I really thought that there was something in this story, and it was scary for me to play this guy. This is a huge role. I always seem to get attracted to things when it feels like there’s a task ahead.”
That huge role was David Locke, the enigmatic lead in Here Be Dragons, a story set in Serbia, both in the past and in the present. Interestingly, the film’s plot has nothing to do with Australia.
“I knew nothing about the region, just from watching the news during the Yugoslav Wars when I was a kid,” admits Sapsford. “It was a really ambitious project in terms of the themes, in terms of doing it somewhere where you don’t speak the language, people you don’t know.”
Luckily, Newton Brown had grown up with Marc Windon, a respected cinematographer that had relocated to Serbia, and who was crucial with the logistics behind the scenes.
“My role as a producer was like being the right hand to Alastair, the first person he would show on the outside,” says Sapsford. “After the shoot, I’d gone back to the States, and I could get guidance with what we were doing with successful friends of mine, people in music and post production.”
But the biggest contribution that Sapsford would make was with his performance as the enigmatic David Locke, a brooding former soldier, now intent on righting the wrongs of the past by tracking down a reportedly dead war criminal.
“I’ve always been attracted to people who say less and do more,” says Sapsford when we ask how he managed to put in such a convincing and magnetic performance. “I’m not a detective, I’m not a war crimes investigator, but I always look for secrets for the characters that I play, and I don’t tell anyone what they are. It’s just something that would drive the character along,” he reveals.
At one stage in the film, Locke experiences a vivid nightmare. We ask Sapsford if PTSD is something that was a key to unlocking the character. “Well, he drinks like a maniac; he smokes like a maniac. I think that’s a reaction to all the things he has experienced. And with that dream sequence, in my mind, he has this dream every day… Oh, and I don’t think that he was a smoker until that lighter gets thrown to him…”
A perfect way to end our chat, as this symbolic Zippo plays a crucial part in the film; not quite as indispensable as Nathan Clark Sapsford, but like his performance, it will stay with you long after the credits roll.
Here Be Dragons is available on DVD and Digital from 21 February 2024. Find out more, here.
