In Brief with Peter Wingfield on Just Cause

Excerpted from the PWFC magazine thrive! issue #25, written by Ree

thrive: Just Cause with the American accent was something new and different for you. And it was good. How was the filming experience for you?

PW: Great. I had so much fun doing it. I mean, that for me was a big thrill to be able to work in an American accent, but still feel free, because the hardest thing about doing any accent is that it all becomes about getting the sounds right and not about playing the scenes. So that was really pleasing for me. It was such a fun role. I did the audition and I saw the name Abramowitz on the sheet but I didn’t think it was going to be the same guy. Then the following morning, I got a phone call from David at 9 a.m. saying, “I just wanted you to know they are going to offer you this job.” Because the producer had talked to him and said, “Do you know, David, I’m thinking about offering this job to Peter Wi—” and that’s as far as she got. He just screeched, “Yes, yes! You should!”

Which was very sweet of him. By an amazing coincidence, Jim Byrnes is about to do an episode of Just Cause—an episode written by David Abramowitz—playing the bad guy! He found out about that yesterday or the day before. But yeah, yeah, he’s going to do one too.

It was such a nice role and David and I talked about it a little bit. David said he didn’t want to tread on anyone’s toes ‘cause on this he’s just a writer, he’s not producing. He has no real input after he’s delivered the script. But we talked about the character a bit. Then I went in and just had fun with it. It was a lot of fun.

thrive: It came across as very arrogant. . .

PW: Yeah. Those kind of characters, you’re always looking for some way to make them not just a one-line stereotype bad guy, To make them interesting, to give them some kind of flavor, life. My thinking on this guy was that he was so arrogant, he was so convinced that he could never get caught, that he was having fun all the time. That he liked his life very much. That was part of the thing for me was that I enjoyed playing him because he enjoyed being himself. It was just fun about that. I just kept doing things that I thought were outrageous and silly and clichéd, but that he was playing them as a parody of gangster movies, that he modeled himself on Pacino in Scarface and that he saw himself as a great antihero character. So I do all the things, like wearing the dark shades and taking them off and putting them in my pocket.

thrive: It worked well, I think. It made it a very interesting show to watch. You really didn’t get a lot of scenes with Richard Thomas again.

PW: It was nice to see Richard. And he remembered me. He remembered the show. When I turned up for the read through, he said, “Oh wow.” You could see the cogs turning and he said, ’This is a bit of a change for you, isn’t it?“ Because obviously Ernie Shergold was a long way away from Brad Ryan.

thrive: Did you get a chance to talk to him after you’d done the part?

PW: No, I didn’t. Most of my stuff obviously was with Lisa.