Having already said Conor McGregor was an inspiration for his portrayal of Ned Kelly in the upcoming True History of The Kelly Gang, George MacKay says that director Justin Kurzel encouraged the cast to form a punk band while they were making the new movie.
Read our review of True History of The Kelly Gang
Speaking to RTÉ Entertainment, the London-born actor, who recently starred in World War One epic 1917, said, "It wasn't specifically Sid Vicious, he’s too English for Ned Kelly, but the punk aspect was a big thing and Justin said `I see the Kelly Gang as a punk band’.
"For our rehearsals, we went out four weeks early as a team and he booked us a gig in Melbourne and he said `you’ve got a gig in a bar in three weeks, you boys need to write some songs and come up with a band’.
"So we did. The band was great. Justin said it was a way for `you boys to start listening to each other. You need to have each other in your periphery’. On the second day of the shoot, we were sharing poems and thinking well, maybe we can make this a song . . .
Among the members of this makeshift band were Nick Cave's son Earl, who plays Ned's brother Dan in the movie.
MacKay added, "Justin wanted an attitude. He wanted this punk swagger, this front foot forward, which was a bit of McGregor. And we came away with this sort of `we can do anything’ attitude, this `come at me!’ sort of thing because we’d just performed this gig."
In the film, which is based on Peter Carey's Booker Prize winning novel of the same name, Kelly is portrayed as a sympathetic figure, who turns to crime after his family is terrorised by British colonial forces and he himself is sold off as a child to a bushranger, played by Russell Crowe in the film.
MacKay’s own father hails from Adelaide but the actor also revealed a closer connection with Ned Kelly’s story - his great grandfather left Ireland as a child to live in Australia.
"He was Dennis O’Leary from Cork and he came across when he was 14 to Australia, on his own, and he set up there," MacKay said.
"He went and fought in the First World War with the Australians and then came back again and eventually went into the pub business. My dad grew up in a pub in Adelaide."
That family history was to prove a strong motivation for MacKay when it came to auditioning for the iconic role as Ned Kelly.
"To be honest the reason I wanted to play Ned Kelly was firstly because of Justin and how much I respect him and his work," he said. "But also a year before the audition, I had a conversation with my dad in which he told me all the stuff about his childhood in Australia and I found it really moving.
"My dad is a big point of reference in many ways for who I want to be in my own life. I’m in my mid to late twenties and you start sussing out who you are as a man and what you want to do and you also start looking at where you’re from.
Constable Fitzpatrick in True History of the Kelly Gang
"I realised that my dad, who is a big point of reference, I’ve only ever known him as a man so I wanted to go back to Australia to find out about him, more than about Ned."
Alan Corr @CorrAlan2
True History of The Kelly Gang is in cinemas on Friday, March 6
More movie news, reviews and interviews here
