An Interview with Mark Coles Smith from ‘Mystery Road: Origin’

Mark Coles Smith is an accomplished international actor that has appeared in both feature films and television shows. Currently, he stars as the younger iteration of Jay Swan in Mystery Road: Origin on Acorn TV, and we here at NTG were lucky to sit down with Mark to discuss the show and his approach to playing such an iconic character.
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John Betancourt: What was it that attracted you to this role?

Mark Coles Smith: I think there was so much to like about this undertaking. I think the first thing that attracted me to the project was the fact that I was a fan of a franchise already and good friends with Aaron and, and just really inspired by the work that he had done in establishing the role and character of Jay Swan and that whole world in both the films and the two TV seasons. And so, when Dylan and Bunya Productions came to me and said, “Hey, we want to do a prequel.” I kind of… sort of my brain exploded a little bit. And I was kind of like, “Well, I can't… I can't do that. That's, that's too much to like, to sort of take on.” And I spent some time with Dylan, and we were sort of, we discussed what we wanted to do with an Origin franchise. And what part of Jay’s story we wanted to tell. So, I mean, that, I think, to answer your question, what attracted me was the opportunity to tell a part of Jay’s story that had never been told before, and to go to a part of his life that had never been seen before, and to finally kind of gain a bit of an understanding about who he was, and who he becomes. And to see those first formative experiences that start to lead him down the mysterious road of becoming the stoic, you know, Regal detective, you know, sunburned detective of the Australian Outback, you know, the journey of how he started to head in the direction of becoming, you know, the iconic Aussie character that we know and love.

John Betancourt: Which leads me to my next question. Because you talked about the iconic nature of Jay, and I’d love to know what attracted you as an actor to this part of Jay’s life?

Mark Coles Smith: I love that there was going to be a chance to, to see him with less of his armor, to see him as a younger man, perhaps more naïve. To see him as someone that has all the natural gifts and capacity for becoming a good detective and a member of law enforcement. But also, morally, you know, and philosophically, the attempt to become a man of high degree, while sort of balancing two worlds, the cultural landscape of… of sort of modern Australia with the cultural expectations of, of indigenous law and customs, and, and colonialism. And so, all of that sort of super complicated and, and politically charged and socially fraught, but when it's distilled down to the individual and emotional level it's really interesting stuff. So to see Jay meeting Mary for the first time, the beginning of the love story, to see him returning home after being away and learning a little bit perhaps, of why he left and that you know, in some ways, he kind of ran away from home and when this, when Origin picks up, he's returning home and he's trying to rebuild the relationships that he ran away from. And so, the thing that attracted me in particular to telling this part of Jay’s story was we're gonna get to see his vulnerability a bit more, we're gonna we're going to get to see his naivety and his uncertainty.

And so, I think I was really excited with the balancing act of him, on his way into sort of superhero status as this kind of, you know, dominant, capable, masculine man, but also as someone that's hurting. He still has a longing in his heart for, for his family and for his father and for his brother and for his mother. There were vulnerabilities possible I think with a younger Jay, that just start to get maybe harder or harder to express as he becomes the traumatized and, and cynical, you know, older man that he ends up.

John Betancourt: Which brings up another good point from an acting standpoint. In that, how did you as an actor get into the mindset to play a guy whose endgame we’ve already seen? And second to that, how did you bring forth that naivety but also that drive that he harbors?

Mark Coles Smith: Yeah, yeah, it's a little bit of sorcery. You're kind of reverse engineering. So, it has, in some ways, it's really useful. Because you know where you're going, and you know, what qualities, you know what direction you're heading. As far as the quality and the nature of who he is, as a person, you know where you're going, and you know what's emerging. And I think the vulnerability, it's interesting, it's like, the older Jay is my destination. And the younger Jay… is actually me. The younger Jay… is me. That was like, in a way, in my head, like, my way of kind of giving something to that role. I just put my heart into young Jay and let everything that I felt for him with what he was going through, similar under the surface, yeah. So, I tried to add, yeah, I tried to make it as personal as possible, and to really, really care about him. As we went on that journey, which was a grueling shoot, you know, 13 weeks in total in Calgary, super remote part of Australia. And just my first time, six days a week, 13-hour days, like bang, bang, bang, you know, it's just, it's just a whole other thing. Once you’re… once you're number one on the call sheet.

John Betancourt: Now that’s amazing, I’ll have to go back and watch this again since that adds news depth to this. Now to shift gears a bit and get a touch more personal, what does it mean to you to be such an important part of this iconic franchise?

Mark Coles Smith: It's an honor, it's a privilege. All I cared about was doing it properly. And I didn't know whether we had until I saw it, and I knew in the first 15 minutes. It was so weird, but I was like, in the first 15 minutes of episode one I went, “We did it.” This belongs to the franchise. And it's also its own thing. There's this kind of distinct at times even like, like a subtle quirkiness to Origin which is really like of the 90s for remote rural Australia and there's sort of the paint peeling off the walls and you know, there's a framed picture of, of Prime Minister John Howard over on the police wall and stuff, like there's really, there's all these really kind of cute sort of tongue in cheek absurdities to everything bubbling under the surface. Which makes the town of Jardine I think really rich and, and Dylan and I, Dylan, our director, we worked very closely together and we were we were constantly alive in the process of reinventing and re-contextualizing the tone of scenes but also the dialogue even as we were moving through. Like there's stuff that happens, there's a lot of stuff that happens in Mystery Road: Origin that was literally just like it came out of being there on the day. And it was really to do with the town of Jardine and having locals on board as extras and you know, like, there was a scene where I turned up and there's a lead up through and it's in the first two weeks, I think of shooting episode one. And I turned up and there’s this local extra there. And he hadn't been told that he had lines. And all he has to do is walk me to my motel room and, and he's got some lines and he's stressing out and he's chain smoking.

And, you know, he's telling me he's been in cavalry for 50 years. And I just said, “Look, don't stress, like we've got a bit of time just to work, 20 minutes, whatever”. And so, “We'll just, we'll just keep running, we’ll feel it out. And you'll get it, it'll be fine.” And he just, he just was chasing his tail and running himself into a spiral. And I said, “Well just take a breather”, and he takes us breather. And he sits back. And he starts telling me about this pub next door that has the best bacon and egg rolls he's ever had. And I leaned in, I said, “Tell me that story. As you take me to the motel room.” He's like, “About the bacon and egg? “Yes, it's perfect. Just tell me that story. It's a true story.” And so, Origin is full of that sort of stuff all the way through where it's, yeah, there's the language and culture of Kalgoorlie and that region coming through in the script and in the filmmaking process, which is just such a joy to watch, you know, when you're sitting back, and you get to see it all.

John Betancourt: What are you hoping audiences take away from this season when the dust has settled?

Mark Coles Smith: What I'd love is for an audience to take away a greater understanding of Jay and a deeper connection to both Jay and Mary, at the end of the season, I think the best thing for audiences is is to go on this journey and to strengthen their connection to the world of Mystery Road, and to the characters inside. Particularly Jay and Mary, and to hope for the best for those characters. Because, yeah, it's sort of like, we end on so much hope and so much possibility. And so, the question now becomes, what happens? And not only what happens, but what happened? Because we've seen it. We've seen those films, and we've seen where their relationship is. And we've seen the level of vulnerability and tragedy that is unspoken in the air that hangs between those two characters. And in the full story of Jay and Mary, we've yet to reveal what all of that really is.

John Betancourt: What are you most proud of when it comes to your work on season one?

Mark Coles Smith: What am I most proud of? Oh I'm, I'm proud of everyone that I worked with. I'm most proud of my colleagues and the team. The crew that I've worked with were the legacy. Two thirds of the whole crew on set were legacy from the previous two seasons. And so, they'd all worked with Aaron on the TV shows. And in the first week, I was pretty nervous in the first week, coming into big boots to fill, all of that stuff. But in the first week, I came onto set. And I think on the second or third day there were already whispers going around in the crew department going, “It's Jay. It's young Jay.” And then that got back to me. Okay, cool. Cool. I'm in the pocket. I'm in the ballpark. We're good, good. Just keep going now. And what I ended up becoming really proud of is, yeah, Dylan River, our director, Tyson Perkins, our DOP, match video camera operator, and then the rest of the cast, like incredibly potent female ensemble cast, that we just knocked it out of the park and really set the bar you know? Not a weak link. It was really, really a joy to work on this project. And like I said, like, there's so much that can go wrong, trying to make a TV show or movie, you know, you got so little time and you've got so much vision and you've got so much ambition for what might be possible. And there's all these creative constraints and it's… so many ways that it can go wrong. And when it doesn't, in the end… it becomes the sum of all its parts. I think that's the thing that's worth being proud about.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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