It might seem a long way to go from playing the resident lothario on HBO’s award-winning television series True Blood to furry marsupial, but it’s all in a day’s work for Ryan Kwanten. Based in Hollywood, the former Sydney-sider is also remembered by Australian and UK audiences as Home and Away’s Vinnie Patterson.
Now he has returned to an Australian production as the voice of everyone’s favourite koala, in a glossy new CGI feature film by Flying Bark Productions.
“When you are playing a character like Blinky Bill, you have to come in with such energy and vim and vigour and really be prepared to go to improvisational places,” Kwanten says over the phone.
“You have to trust that the directors and the writers have your best interests at heart because a man alone with a microphone … I must have looked completely crazy in that sound booth doing all the noises of Blinky.
“Like many Australians, Kwanten grew up reading the original children’s books written by Dorothy Wall. “We were never big TV kids. Mum tried to keep us out of the house and we were left in the backyard and in the neighbourhood to explore and use our imagination. When it came to bedtime, telling a story like Blinky’s adventures was the best way to get three rambunctious kids to bed.”
Blinky Bill’s adventurous spirit appealed to Kwanten then and still does now. The film gave him an opportunity to return to Australia – “the place where my heart still is” – and to rediscover his roots. “I’ve always been adventurous, don’t get me wrong. But [Blinky] really forced me to embrace it in a much more natural and beautiful way.
“I went on a bit of a man-in-search-of-himself road trip after playing Blinky, just myself in a car and going from national park to national park and sleeping outside – it was very inspiring.”
At the core of the movie is a familial bond as Blinky leaves home and heads off into the wild to forge new friendships, brave adversary and encounter a quirky cast of characters as he searches for his missing dad. “I have a very strong affection for my dad, so that was sort of an easy part to play,” says Kwanten.
“I got to hear what Richard Roxburgh had done with the voice of my father and that was so good. It’s so amazing to think of the cast of Aussies that they got to do this film.”
The film credits read like a register of Australian acting greats: Roxburgh is joined by Deborah Mailman as Blinky’s mum, David Wenham plays Jacko the wacky frill-necked lizard, Toni Collette has a lot of fun voice acting emus Cheryl and Beryl, Barry Humphries is Wombo the imaginative Wombat and Robin McLeavy plays Blinky’s new friend Nutsy. And a Brit pops up; Rufus Sewell as the villainous feral cat Sir Claude.
Kwanten praises Fin Edquist’s screenplay that’s both joyous and often funny, filled with Australianisms such as “what in the blue blazes”, “stubborn as a box o’ rocks” and “hang on a bilby’s whisker”. Kwanten says, “Within half a page of reading the script, I thought wow, this is a really interesting vivacious voice they are giving Australian animation.
“The more I kept reading the more I kept being bowled over by the Aussie colloquialisms – some words I hadn’t heard it a while!” he says.
Lording over Blinky’s hometown of Greenpatch is a goanna called Wilberforce Cranklepot, played with relish by Barry Otto. “Closing our borders to the foreign menace!” Cranklepot cries, exhorting the community to “embrace your inner reptile”. Nothing if not topical, although Kwanten deftly avoids being drawn into a political discussion.
Kwanten says his parents loved the film and it’s great “that generation gets just as much a kick out of it as the kiddies”. “You look at a show like The Simpsons that manages to skirt the line between adult and child humour really kind of expertly, and Blinky has the ability to be able to do that too.”
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Blinky Bill the Movie is currently showing in Australian cinemas and due for release on 13 October in the UK
