Antony’s Starr-ing role in Rush

He’s best known to audiences for his dual role as twins Jethro and Van West in New Zealand’s Outrageous Fortune, but from tomorrow actor Antony Starr throws a spanner into the works of Rush.

In TEN’s fourth season of hit its AFI-winning cop drama, Starr will play Senior Sergeant Charlie Lewis.

“Charlie comes into the first episode as a go-between between the task force that set up to investigate a ministerial murder and the T.R. (Tactical Response) squad,” explains Starr.

“But he is met with a lot of resistance and a very large lack of tact. Not a huge amount of diplomacy.

“A Tactical Response unit with a lack of tact…” he laughs.

“He doesn’t make a lot of friends and rubs people the wrong way, which as far as the series is concerned is a good character to bring into the show.

“Over the course of series they’ve done a huge amount with the TR squad. I’ve heard it said they’ve done everything a TR squad could do, so having an arc that goes across the entire 13 episodes was a smart decision to make.”

Starr hadn’t seen the series before being joining the show. He was invited to audition following an earlier audition for another John Edwards production, Offspring. Despite his New Zealand background he’s hoping to be accepted by viewers as one of the locals, so he’s offering up his best Aussie accent.

“To my ear it sounds great but if Charlie has a tanty or gets a bit worked up it might drop into Kiwi. But there haven’t been any instances where I’ve been pulled up on it. So I’m assuming it’s going ok,” he says.

“Failing that I’ll just say the backstory is that the character was raised and educated for 15 years in New Zealand!”

Although he had 6 seasons on Outrageous Fortune, success in a small industry became a double-edged sword.

“NZ seems to operate on a ‘turn’ system, where you have your turn and then you’ve got to wait a few years,” Starr explains.

“Work doesn’t necessarily lead to more work but to ‘You’re that guy so we can’t use you.’

“So it’s a blessing and a curse working domestically, but we had a great run.”

Outrageous Fortune‘s mix of family, crims, comedy and drama was so successful it led to a US adaptation -but it only lasted one series. Starr wasn’t enarmored with their take on the show.

“I did see a very small amount but I think they missed it. It was made by ABC and I think because it was network broadcasting they took all the slightly dirtier bits out of it. And I don’t mean just the sexual bits I mean they cleaned the language up. It looked to me like a pretty middle-class, average family. It didn’t look like a bunch of crims. It looked like ‘diet Outrageous Fortune,'” he says.

“I think NZ responded to it because it didn’t pull any punches. It wasn’t heavy by any means but it wasn’t backwards in coming forwards when it came to the darker sides of life. Whether it handled it in a dramatic or a comedic sense it was still pretty gritty.”

Rush airs 8:30pm Thursdays on TEN.