George Mason hails from New Zealand and made his acting debut as a young teen in the movie 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous (2005). This inspired him to continue working full-time in acting, appearing across many genres in many productions such as Shortland Street (2011), Go Girls (2009), The Blue Rose (2013) the musical Daffodils (2019), the Australian soap Home And Away (on which he was a series regular from 2014 to 2018), and the Academy Award nominated The Power of the Dog (2021).
Gone are the days of stuffy hotel conference room interviews. Sat in his van, views of a suitably sunshine-scorched beach peeking through the back window, Mason spoke to us about his One Night character Joey Calley. We even had the pleasure of being introduced to his dog who was suitably chilled out, lounging in a comfy-looking dog bed. The vision couldn’t be more Australian if you tried.
One Night sees Mason’s character, Joey, carrying a dark secret that he has held onto, and attempted to bury, for many years. Haunted by the ghosts of his past, Joey struggles to maintain his morality in a sea of his family’s toxicity and chaos.
Though we at first planned on only interviewing the women involved in the series, we quickly realised that this would be limiting ourselves. Hearing as many voices as possible, whether they are from the actor's point of view or a creative force behind the camera, is something extremely important to us at Read The Room. One Night is a show about nuance and complexity, and that certainly includes the male characters in it. We're grateful to have gotten the opportunity to reflect that and listen to many people's experiences working on such an impactful project. Enjoy reading about Mason's below.
Alfie Whitby: Just starting really broadly, what were your initial reactions when you got the scripts? What surprised or excited you the most?
George Mason: When I signed up for it, I kind of thought that my character - You know, I feel like everyone was sort of in the lurch going, “Who actually committed this? Who committed the sexual assault?” I was quite surprised for my character, but also it made my storyline quite a complex one, because obviously he's carrying the burden and the shame of his family and stuff and the small town.
The other character Trev is a much more gnarly, gnarly sort of role to be playing. So I was kind of gearing up thinking, “Oh yeah, shit, this is….I'm going to be playing that role.” It was just such an interesting dynamic, dealing with all the strong women leads in the show and the different relationships that Joey has with them as well.
But yeah, I was really excited. I think Em Ballou did such a great job with the writing. To turn up in the read through and sit down and see who was cast as well - I was just like, “Wow, this is going to be great.”
AW: What scene were you most looking forward to shooting, or was there a scene that you were particularly nervous about?
George: There were definitely some scenes that I was nervous about. I think the whole Hattie storyline for me was - there was quite a lot of weight to those scenes, when Joey’s sort of not really revealing what happened to him. She sort of draws it out of him.
There were some tough scenes down underneath the pub there. I've worked with Yael Stone [before]. She was so lovely and made it really enjoyable and sort of let me kind of rip at her at times. She said, “you can really, really, come at me." So that made it less scary, I suppose.
I think for me, there was a constant thing that I struggled with. It was the idea of remembering the past and actually seeing and feeling how this is a pretty hefty storyline to take on. Obviously, you know, wanting to do it right. Often I was just like…I couldn't see the images. I couldn't actually see - I couldn't come down and see that my brother had done this thing. I suppose that's your job as an actor, to see the images and then play with what's in front of you…
I think the hardest thing for me throughout the whole thing was just going, “Oh man, this gnarly thing happened. How would I react?” Obviously my character reacts differently to how I’d react, but I just found it hard throughout the whole thing to actually see and feel the weight of what that would be. Because a lot of it is in the past and what I came to was the idea that you bury things that you want to forget. So that was a way that I could cop out of [needing] those images when my little brain wouldn't let me see them.
Helena Emmanuel: Speaking of dealing with the past, we were lucky enough to talk with David Howell earlier this month. He mentioned that the two of you worked closely to understand Joey - who he was and that moment in his life. Can you talk a bit about that collaboration process?
George: Sure! David actually worked on a show that I had done previously. I never met him on that, but everyone kept saying, “You got to meet this Davey Howell guy, he's so cool. You guys just got the same frothy energy and you surf and blah, blah, blah.” One day I was sitting out in front of my apartment and I'd seen him on the wall - cause you know, that's the way actors stalk each other is that you see people's pictures - and I saw him sitting out in front of this cafe. I was like, oh, go on, go and say g’day. So I went up to him and said, “Hey man, you're playing the younger version of me.” I think I might've said the “younger, not as good- looking version of me” or something stupid like that [laughs], but we just hit it off straight away. We surfed and hung out and just became friends more than anything.
We would just talk about Joey and our thoughts on [him] - obviously both of us had quite different accents and voices. We would just talk at length about how a scene would feel. I grabbed his scenes and ran them, and he grabbed my scenes and ran them, and then we recorded them just so I could feel what his voice brought to it and vice versa. That was interesting. The good thing about David is he's got that young frothy energy, I was like, “I think that'll come through when you're younger - your youthful energy will be brilliant. Then by the time you have a mortgage and things like that, you become a little bit more adult anyway.” Especially for Joey, carrying this burden of shame and all that sort of stuff - that's worn him down and made him a little bit more jaded with life. Also your voice changes [as you get older] and things like that.
We just became great friends, and it just turns out that he's on the next project I'm working on as well! So we're hoping we can get four for four! The next project after that, he's on and I'm trying to get on it. It’s crazy. It’s like, that dude - I can’t get rid of him. The first two jobs, I loved it. Now I'm like, “I need new friends”. I still do love it.
HE: That’s amazing. What are the chances? Moving on to our next question, how do you feel the events of that night changed Joey and his relationships? Do you think it really impacted him as a person?
George: I think that it stopped him from being able to be honest with himself or with anyone else. Not being able to be vulnerable with people is the hardest thing ever, you know? He really had to close off a part of himself, I imagine grow up really fast as well and become this sort of weird protector. He's the protector of his brother and what his brother’s done, but then he's just got so much judgment from not only the whole town, but from his mom as well. To not be able to tell anyone your deepest darker secrets is really hard.
[His wife] was the one person he could talk to, and I think that had she not come into his life, things wouldn't have gone very well for Joey. I think it's really important to have somebody that you can communicate to and be vulnerable to. I think it was hugely difficult for him having to shut down that part of himself - the softness. He had to become very hard as a way of fitting into that world. I don't think that was ever him either, you know? It was just what he was born into.
It was an interesting one to navigate, and I think that's why it was such a great character to play. He was a bit more sort of three-dimensional, and there's a bit more going on under the skin that he couldn't always articulate. That’s kind of why I was attracted to the role as well, you know?
HE: Yeah, absolutely. One of my favourite parts about this show is how it looks at generational trauma and that it doesn’t contain it to just the experiences of the women. It really looks at Joey and even Trevor as well.
George: Yeah, it's far more nuanced! There's so much within every character. Even with Trevor. I love that. There's some things that he says that are so on the nose, but it's such a good representation of Australia and Australians as well. Which I think is good and hasn't really been depicted before in a way, you know?
It’s cool. Em did a great job.
HE: Yeah, she did. Agreed.
You spoke a bit before about the theme of memory and if Joey’s memory is correct and the question of “Who owns this story?” That's obviously a huge theme in the show; We see Tess, Hat, and Simone grapple with that a lot. We're curious: what ownership, if any, do you think Joey feels he has to that story? And do you think he trusts his own memory of it?
George: I know how Tess and Simone and I have that ongoing, you know, “This is my story; this is my story”. I think Joey doesn't want it to be his story.
He didn't want it to be his story. If anything, he’s probably tried to forget it and tried to minimise it and make it not exist. But things like that don't go away. It's scarred within you. I don't think by any means that he wants to have ownership of the story at all. [He wishes] he could just forget it, but it doesn't work like that. You can't change the past. Because of it, he's lost people that he really cared about, especially his relationship with Hattie.
I think men have a way of sometimes burying things really deep, then thinking that they're okay, thinking that everything will be okay and you can move on. I'm generalising, but in my experience of men around me, they think that, something like this can happen and you can be like, “It's all good. I'm not going to talk about it. It didn't happen. It's down here now”. I think that we all have elements of being able to do that, but it doesn't make the thing go away. Drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and all that sort of thing is just a Band-Aid. Especially something from so long ago, from when you’re young. It’s interesting how everyone's got their own version of memory.
I like the way that it's kind of ambiguous as well, what actually happened. Everyone's got their own reality of it. Whatever someone felt in that moment is different from what I experienced. Do I know the full story? I think I saw part of what happened but it was enough.
HE: That makes a lot of sense. You talking about how he doesn't want to own it and pushing it down reminded me of when Joey and Trevor have that fight, and Joey says, “Now you carry it. I'm done. It's yours.”
George: You're pretty much spot on. That was a tough scene as well because it was that thing of always looking for the truth and hoping that it’s coming out. You always feel like you're shooting for something, and sometimes you've just gotta have a crack and trust. It's not just about you either, it's often about the other person - you've just got to hope that it's all there. That was a big day as well. Those were some solid scenes.
Words: Alfie Whitby and Candice Dupire
Interviews: Helena Emmanuel & Alfie Whitby (with questions submitted by the RTR team)
You can watch One Night on Paramount+ UK & Ireland and Paramount+ Australia now.
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