“I was so fuckin’ nervous when I first watched it, but I thought the film was great,” Matt Colwell tells FilmInk of first witnessing his acting debut in the feature film, Is This The Real World. It’s this kind of statement that makes Colwell – who is better known to the Australian populace at large as top-selling hip hop artist, 360 – so instantly endearing. Though a brash, cocky presence on stage, there’s nothing overbearingly macho about Colwell: he’s candid and honest when it comes to his fears and doubts (which he’s expressed on popular tracks like “Boys Like You” and “Child”), and doesn’t feign any kind of swagger during his highly entertaining chat with FilmInk. Unlike some rappers, there’s no sense of manufactured cool about Matt Colwell. His comes naturally.
In Is This The Real World – the richly impressive debut feature from writer/director, Martin McKenna – Colwell takes on the supporting role of the wild and funny Jimmy, the older tearaway brother to Sean Keenan’s Mark, a teen suddenly trapped in a world of hurt. The role fits the heavily tattooed Colwell like a glove: he gets to crack wise and dance on the edge, but he also has moments of deep emotion, particularly in his scenes with Aussie legends, Susie Porter (who plays his mother, Anna) and Julia Blake (as his Gamma). It’s the perfect debut role, engineered to steal scenes, but not carry too much weight. A breakout artist in the field of local hip hop since 2011 – when his second album, Falling & Flying, lit up the ARIA charts, and copped rave reviews – Is This The Real World marked Colwell’s first actual lure into the world of acting. “Acting is something that I’ve always wanted to do, but I was never sure if I’d be able to do it,” he says. “Martin McKenna was really laidback about everything. He reached out through my agent, and we met, and we were down to do it right from the beginning. It was very, very interesting. I’d never auditioned for anything before, and nobody had contacted me prior to this.”
Colwell, however, was no stranger to cameras and film sets, having appeared in a fistful of highly inventive music videos, including the hilarious “Mamma Mia”, in which he good naturedly extracts more than a little urine out of Bec and Lleyton Hewitt. “I’d done a few music videos – which is obviously not even remotely similar to acting in a film – so I did at least feel comfortable in front of the camera,” Colwell says. “That was the one head-start that I had. Usually when you put a camera in front of someone, they tend to go into their shell a bit, and they can become a bit self-conscious. But because of the music videos that I’d done, I was kind of comfortable around cameras.”
Matt Colwell in Is This The Real World
Martin McKenna helped with Colwell’s ease around his cameras by allowing the neophyte actor to improvise his way through his scenes, providing him with a strong guideline and emotional markers, but allowing Colwell to craft his own dialogue. “He said, ‘Just go for it. Follow this guideline, but if you feel something, just go with it every time.’ So it was a lot of fun,” Colwell says. “There’s a scene in the kitchen with me and Susie Porter where I’m arguing about her being an alcoholic and shit, and that was different every time. It was a lot of fun. It actually reminded me of going up and rap battling someone. You have to come up with shit on the spot when you’re battling someone, but obviously you have to insult the guy that you’re battling. You’re making stuff up as you go along, so it was a little bit similar in that way. Martin said that he wanted Jimmy to be like me, but a bit more of a crazy cunt, I guess. We didn’t do too much work beforehand, but he just said, ‘Be yourself, be funny, talk shit, and see how it goes.’”
How did Colwell’s more traditionally trained and backgrounded actors respond to his fully sanctioned freewheeling approach to the scenes? What was it like working with such seasoned pros? “They were great, but I was intimidated at first,” he admits. “They were so natural, and everything just came out so perfectly every single time. But when I did my few scenes with Julia Blake, I think that she was a bit thrown, because she doesn’t come from a background of improvisation. She didn’t take to it as much as the others, but they were great. Susie was particularly up for it. She was really happy for me to say whatever, and to just wing it every time. She thought it was hilarious, and she loved it. For someone who’s new to this, and who’s trying to get into this world, Martin and the cast were just perfect. Everyone was laidback and easy to get along with as well. The crew operated smoothly too, and they were cool with me just being myself.”
At the time of the film’s shoot way back in 2013, Colwell being himself was a little different from him being himself now. Though now clean and sober for sixteen months, the rapper has spoken publicly and candidly about his battles with addiction, and his earlier life of hard partying formed the bedrock for much of his early recorded material. When Is This The Real World was being shot, Colwell was up to his eyeballs in it. “They wanted me to look like a bit of a druggy, and I said, ‘I can definitely go with that,’” he laughs. “At the time, I was drinking and partying, and using a lot of drugs and shit, so I thought, ‘Yeah, I can definitely do that.’ It was like Method Acting. For a lot of the shoot, I was off my face. I wasn’t off my brain, but I was just on something the entire time. I was very aware though…I was on stuff that would make you very talkative and shit like that. It wasn’t anything where I was slurring my words or anything like that.”
Matt Colwell, Sean Keenan, Elise MacDougall and Susie Porter in Is This The Real World
FilmInk is genuinely surprised by this revelation: despite Colwell’s Jimmy being a wild man, his performance is controlled and focused, and in the emotional moments, he hits all the right notes. “It actually helps me,” Colwell admits of his usage during the shoot. “Whenever I’ve done live TV or even just performing on stage and stuff, I used to find that I was in a lot better form the less sleep that I’d had and the more stuff that I’d been doing over the last couple of days. I’ve never been one to get super messy though; I’ve never slurred my words or anything like that. It’s not like I was drinking all the time. It was more like I was on the second night of a three-night bender or something like that. I was just rocking up, but I was feeling great.”
With Martin McKenna ingeniously playing to Colwell’s strengths – his natural charisma and sense of presence, his edgy good looks, and his gift for improvisation – the 29-year-old rapper is fully aware that not every potential film experience will be like Is This The Real World. “I’ll be very interested to see how I’d go on a film where they’re a bit more precious about the script, and where I wasn’t encouraged to improvise,” Colwell admits. “Acting is definitely something that I want to do. I’ve signed up with an agency, and we’re gonna give it a real go. It’s not my main priority though…it’s more of a side interest for me. But as an art form, it’s something that I’d love to learn and really get down pat. I watch a lot of movies, and I really admire what actors do. For this movie, I was doing stuff that was second nature to me, and I was just being myself. If I had to do something that was out of my comfort zone, I might struggle a bit. If I had to be super aggressive or something like that, or play a psychopath, I’d really struggle with that. I need to learn how to take myself out of my comfort zone. It’s mainly about seeing what kind of jobs I get offered. If I do get anything too crazy, I’ll definitely work with an acting coach.”
A fan of Jake Gyllenhaal (“He’s amazing. I love him in Prisoners…he’s such an odd character”), Matthew McConaughey (“He used to be in all these cheeseball romantic movies, but now every movie that he does is incredible. Interstellar is one of my favourite movies”), and the British rapper, Plan B (an increasingly accomplished actor who has also branched out into writing and directing), Colwell certainly has the right role models. “I would love to be able to do what they do, but I think that might be way off in the future,” he says. “I love the way that they put their bodies on the line to really nail it.”
Matt Colwell will be in the house for the very special FilmInk Presents screening and Q&A of Is This The Real World in Melbourne on Sunday May 29 at 7:45pm at ACMI. There will also be a screening in Sydney on Monday May 30 at 7:00pm at The Ritz Cinema, Randwick, with a Q&A session with writer/director, Martin McKenna, and actor, Sean Keenan. For more information, click here.
