Photography: Brent Leideritz
Martin Dingle Wall and Ria Vandervis from Channel 9’s hit show COPS L.A.C. were in Adelaide this week on a whirlwind publicity tour. While they were in town, Glam Adelaide took the actors to the Old Adelaide Gaol for an insiders tour (how could we resist throwing the COPS stars behind bars!), and we got the opportunity to interview them about the show and their experiences. Full Gaol tour photos to come.
(K – Kelly Noble, Glam Adelaide, R – Ria Vandervis, COPS L.A.C., M – Martin Dingle Wall, COPS L.A.C.)
K: Ria, to kick things off, we had to ask… as you’ve appeared in both Power Rangers and COPS L.A.C, can you tell us what similarities are there between the two shows?
R: Well, not very many. Although in the preparation for it I suppose there was a lot of physical stuff I had to do for Power Rangers, there was two weeks of intensive fight training and that sort of stuff.
K: So you’re not naturally a Power Rangers sort of girl?
R: Well I’m sort of a tomboy, really, so it kind of comes a little naturally, but yeah –
M: You had a wig in Power Rangers, didn’t you? And you use a wig when you’re undercover?
R: That’s true! There is a similarity.
M: They were also both a high ranking show!
R: And I have to work with monsters! In Power Rangers I was a villain, in this show I’m not a villain.
Photography: Brent Leideritz
M: In this show she’s just moody.
K: Speaking of wigs Martin, tell us about The Mac?
M: It’s actually hilarious, it’s something the stunt department told me about, because this guy Jimmy who plays my stunt double, he’s actually a male model, it’s just stupid –
R: He’s like a Ken doll, he’s just gorgeous.
M: Yeah, he’s an overly handsome, SAS trained, ex-soldier.
R: He’s Batman at Movieworld.
K: Really?
M: Yeah. Incidentally, the stunties call us actors “talkies” – we come in and just talk. He actually cut his hair, he had sandy brown hair just before the gig, and they were like “What have you done?! You were perfect!” So they had to weave him a wig of human hair and obviously, when he’s in fight sequences, the hair will flop around like normal hair does but it can’t hold its position somewhat. So he’ll do these fight sequences with a bouffant so big it looks like a white man afro – like MacGuyver. So the stunties named it “the Mac” and no one knew why. I was like “Why’s it called the Mac?” and they were like “Like MacGuyver, dude.”
K: You’ve both been in Underbelly, as have a lot of your cast members –
M: Well a lot of Australian actors, working or otherwise, have been in Underbelly. Some were high profiled and some were second fiddle – but most actors who are currently working had the good fortune of going through the Underbelly phenomenon. Not unlike how most, from Australia, at some point or another went through the Home and Away school. It’s the stomping ground. It seems overbearing, but it’s just the last great Australian phenomenon in the last decade or more was the phenomenon of Underbelly. That’s why it’s like “You’re all from Underbelly”, actually it’s more like we’re all from Underbelly.
K: Aren’t they going to run out of actors though? I mean if –
M: Well actually there was speculation about that, a statement was made that upset a lot of the drama schools saying “Do we have more work than we do reliable actors?” but it depends who you speak to. There are some very qualified directors who would tend to agree. As an actor I was surprised to hear that, but they’re like “Mate, you want to pay an actor who can turn up and deliver, and that’s not in abundance. The really good ones have left the country or are going to leave and that’s the grind of this industry.”
K: So, on the show you get to use props – here comes the handcuff question – has anyone taken anything home after filming’s finished, that you know of?
R: No, because you should see our armourer who looks after the guns and the knives. If you so much as scratch it, the look on her face is like she’s going to throttle you. In March we were shooting this scene, and it’s written in the script that Kelly’s character runs over and gets this guy down on the ground and she’s got to kick his gun away, so she goes and kicks this real gun, and the look on everyone’s face is just aghast. I looked at her and just kind of gasped, then went to draw my gun – and dropped it as well.
K: So do you think you’d be any good as actual cops?
R: No, I think it’s given me an appreciation for how bloody difficult their job is.
M: You know you’ve got to be a certain type to pursue policing, in some sense you have to be very civil minded or you have to have a hero’s impulse to actually put on the hat, put on the badge, put on the gun. Sure, this is Australia, it’s not New York City – but then you see these shows like Underbelly and realise we did have a massive underworld and the cops are up against that. Cocaine’s flourishing in the Eastern suburbs and those guys have got handguns, they’re got trigger tempers because they’ve got cocaine. It’s not the same as working at Blockbuster or being the managing director of a PR firm, these guys have got guns, they’re dealing with people with no control, they’ve got indulged personality disorders and they’re criminals by trade – so there’s a hero element to that in the real life sense.
Photography: Brent Leideritz
K: So do you actually have cops working alongside you, giving advice and that sort of stuff?
R: Yeah, we’ve got a wonderful woman who is our police advisor on set, especially when we’re out on location and doing raids or whatever. In the preparation for the role we got to meet lots of real life police officers all through the ranks.
M: You’ve also got to be aware, as you said, there are different sorts of ranks of policing, there’s also different styles of policing, there are paperwork cops, there are office cops, there are head office cops, there are street cops. There are very different mental approaches to the trade of being a cop. You can meet one guy who’s done 35 years in the force and drawn his gun twice and says “Yeah, I turn off after hours.” Then you meet another cop who’s got his gun in his hand every second day, if not five times a day, and he’s like “How do you switch off?” Therein lies the actor’s luxury, on how you want to build your character, what approach do you want your character to adopt?
K: Do you think your show is more realistic than other cop shows out there?
M: I would say not, in as much as real standard cop shows show the front line of action and defence and what policing is. COPS L.A.C.’s approach was we’ve got enough of the textbook screeching cars and S.W.A.T. teams and that – and while we need elements of that because this is a cop show – it’s actually going to be more about you guys. The audience gets their cop fix, but it’s actually more about the development of the people and their relationships. We’ve got three buddy teams, two, two and two, so that’s six young blood cops and how they relate, survive, conflict and deal and assess and break down and all the rest. How they do their job. That’s what this show’s about, how they do their job.
K: If people want to tune in to watch COPS L.A.C., when can they see it?
R: 8.30pm on Thursdays on Channel Nine.
Check out COPS L.A.C on Facebook or visit their page on NineMSN.
About the Old Adelaide Gaol
Adelaide Gaol is one of South Australia’s oldest and most intriguing public buildings. Designed by the first architect of South Australia’s free colony, George Strickland Kingston, the Gaol operated from 1841 to 1988. It housed approximately 300,000 prisoners in its 147 working years, making it one of Australia’s longest continuously operational prison facilities.
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