Playing the many shades of Fat Tony

Nine’s Underbelly franchise has been the gift that keeps on giving.

Since 2008 we’ve had six seasons and three telemovies. Whether contemporary or period, the series has always approached crime from the point of view of the crims with a sexed-up style.

Now, for reasons unspecified, we have Fat Tony & Co. Spin-off? Sequel? Prequel? Either way it revisits the landscape of the original, the Melbourne gangland wars, centering around the ‘Carlton Crew.’

While Robert Mammone appeared briefly in the original series, for legal reasons he remains coy about just who he played. In Victoria, where the show could not air in its entirety during court proceedings, he was billed as ‘Larry.’ But nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Ask anyone who saw the series in other states or from a flea market DVD and they will tell you who he played.

Now in Fat Tony and Co. he plays convicted drug dealer, Tony Mokbel, who was sentenced to 22 years in maximum security after a high profile arrest in Athens.

Some of the original Underbelly characters -and actors- return. There are new characters and some fictionalised amalgams.

Mammone, who had followed Mokbel’s story closely for some time, is confident that unlike the first Underbelly, this one will air without any legal hindrance.

“Channel Nine in particular has been very careful that we don’t colour the story too much with fiction, for that purpose. They’ve tried to steer clear of anything that may bring us more attention than we need,” he told TV Tonight.

“It’s a story about people who are no longer with us, but some of them are, and a lot of police officers as well. There are still some serving and retired Vic Police that we talk about in the show. You can’t just go in like a wild bull in a tea shop.

“As much as we’d love to just make great television and tell a story, whether it’s true or not, you sort of can’t. We could do that but then it wouldn’t be the dramatisation of the Fat Tony story.”

Before his arrest and conviction Mokbel had built a $140m drug empire, rising from a suburban milkbar owner to Australia’s most wanted man.  Victorian and Federal police undertook a marathon attempt to bring him to justice, spanning countless arrests, legal battles and the downfall of corrupt police.

But there were shades of his character, sometimes comedic, sometimes spoken of as a ‘gentleman’ crim, that didn’t fit the traditional view of a drug king.

For television drama, does that make him a villain? Anti-hero? Mammone says he wanted to present a character who was a bit of everything.

“I wanted to portray a character who I guess is an anti-hero a bit, but the kind of guy who people want to engage with and who people want to watch, laugh with, and go along the journey with,” he says.

“I think if you are portraying a character in a particularly dark light, then that’s probably not attractive to audiences. Someone who has a bit of light and shade about them. Just because they are supposedly notorious as a drug dealer and a producer and all that stuff which the bloke was found guilty of, doesn’t mean you read up on the book of Bad Guys 101 and play that guy.

“The thing to remember is that bad guys don’t believe they’re bad guys. They don’t walk around going ‘I’m a bad guy, I’ll walk around like a bad guy.’ Not at all.

“So I was careful to steer away from the clichés and to present the guy as close as possible to what I think would make an interesting journey and one that audiences want to connect with.

“I think Australians like that sort of character. In my view that’s the sort of person that Tony was….. kinda like.

“A bit like a Ned Kelly. A bit of a people’s hero. Like the rascally cricketer that we all sort of admire. The bloke that sort of tells it like it is and doesn’t suffer fools. I think we like those sort of people.”

But in the true crime genre there are also victims of crime to consider, surely?

“That’s true and that occurs all the time. I think one can be sensitive to it and still try and portray a dramatic truth in the story and still be entertaining,” Mammone explains.

“Of course there will always people out there who would rather not see gangsters, bad guys, murderers, rapists, drug dealers on screen. But I think we’re always fascinated by that side of life and this is another story that involves characters who are pretty shady and from the wrong side of the tracks.

“Those people are what we want to watch a lot of the time.”

Returning as former characters are Vince Colosimo, Gyton Grantley, Les Hill , Madeleine West, Simon Westaway, Gerard Kennedy and Kevin Harrington,  joined by Hollie Andrew, Shane Jacobson, Stephen Curry, Steve Bastoni, Richard Cawthorne, Jeremy Kewley, Simone Kessell, Nicholas Bishop and as Judy Moran, Debra Byrne.

“Wait til you see her. She just embodies the character!” says Mammone.

“She rocks up to work as little Debbie Byrne and steps out of the make-up truck as Judy. It’s a wonderful transformation to watch.”

With so much Underbelly DNA, why the decision to distance itself from a successful franchise? Mammone doesn’t enter into suggestions the title may have been to get around Screen Australia guidelines that limit the number of episodes which can be funded.

“There’s no escaping the term and the word Underbelly, but this is not an Underbelly. It’s Fat Tony and Co and we’re very deliberate about that insofar as we’re telling the story dramatically about Tony Mokbel. It happens to involve some of the original characters from the first thing but we wanted to separate this from the Underbelly franchise,” he suggests.

“I guess when some things have been around for a while people tend to lose the desire for it. That’s natural.”

Nine is hoping Underbelly fans will be drawn back to where it all started, with the Melbourne gangland wars, this time ending with the arrest of a bloke in a badly disguised wig in Athens. Mammone calls the hairpiece “the squirrel,” after a newspaper cartoon at the time.

“It will get as much attention as anybody else I think!” he laughs.

Fat Tony and Co. airs 8:40pm Sunday on Nine.