The man who would be king

The first time actor Stephen Curry read the script for the new telemovie The King about the life of TV legend Graham Kennedy, there was one scene he thought was a little too melodramatic to work.

In the scene, Kennedy has just finished work at Melbourne’s Channel Nine studios, and he is being chatted up by one of the male dancers. When Kennedy asks the man to come home with him, he tells the dancer he must climb into the boot of his car as he cannot be seen driving around with another man.

Curry thought the scene just did not ring true. When he had the story verified as the truth by one of Kennedy’s oldest friends, he was appalled.

I thought it was just so sensational and no one would believe it, Curry admits. It is, in fact, based on truth. John Michael Howson told us that story was true -“ that is what Graham thought he had to do. So what sounded like total rubbish is based on truth.

Graham could not be overt about his homosexuality, and it would have been to commit career suicide by even admitting he was gay. Graham knew the pressures he faced by being in the public eye in the early 1960s.

Kennedy’s homosexuality, which was known in TV circles but kept out of the public eye, is among the many facets of Kennedy’s life dealt with head-on in The King, in which Curry plays the TV legend from teenage years through to his 50s.

The story follows the ambitious boy from Melbourne’s suburbs who worked his way into a radio announcer spot. By the time TV arrived in Australia in 1956, 23-year-old Kennedy took to the new medium and became its first superstar.

But The King portrays Kennedy as a man conflicted by his desire to keep his personal life closed in tightly around him, while his ego enjoyed the trappings that came with being the biggest star in the country.

Stephen Curry is best known from his roles in The Castle, The Wog Boy and The Secret Life Of Us. To prepare for the role, Curry watched hours of old footage through the various decades and stages of Kennedy’s career, as well as talking to the people who knew him.

One of his friends told me that Graham was not the lonely figure we hear about, Curry says. I am glad I was told that as I like the distinction between him being a lonely man and being a man who enjoyed his own company.

It seems the only times he was really lonely was when he was in a big group of people. He was a man of such contradictions, as he would shy away from too much public attention, but then would drive around in a Rolls Royce. All those contradictions made it interesting to get into his head space.

One of the close Kennedy friends Curry met to talk with was Val Wesley, the wife of Kennedy’s oldest friend from school, John. It is obvious throughout the movie that while the two men are best friends, Graham was always in love with John.

When I met Val, I asked if she thought Graham might have had feelings for John and, according to Val, Graham was in love with John from day one. But it was something they all understood and dealt with.

Making the situation even more interesting is that John is played by Bernard Curry, Stephen’s real-life brother. There were some scenes when we used to hum to each other, -˜Dad is going to hate this bit,’ Curry laughs.

We were not out to uncover him, but he did have his negatives and positives. I thought if we weren’t going to show a rounded view of the man, there was no point in doing it.

Also in the cast are Jane Allsop (as Noelene Brown), Garry McDonald, Steve Bisley (as Harry M. Miller) and Shaun Micallef.

Bert Newton, Kennedy’s long-time sidekick, is portrayed by Stephen Hall. Curry says while Newton was not an advisor on the project, he did offer his best wishes.

Having someone like Bert who could give the firsthand account was pretty valuable, Curry says. But there were a few other people who didn’t want to talk to us and that was understandable in case it didn’t turn out as well as it did.

Some people said I was either brave or stupid to take this one on. I did think about it for a long time from the outset as this is not a story you want to stuff up. I almost didn’t do it for that reason, but figured I knew I would regret it forever if I didn’t.

The King screens on Sunday 20 May at 8:30pm on the TV1 channel on Foxtel.