‘I wanted in’, says Gallipoli’s Matt Nable.

Matt Nable didn’t really mind what role he played, he just knew he wanted to be part of Gallipoli.

When he told producer John Edwards and Nine CEO David Gygnell, the boss said he would make it happen.

“I said to them ‘I really want to be a part of this.’ I was doing the Underbelly: Badness launch and I sat with Dave and John Edwards and I said ‘I’m in.’

“Gynge was like, ‘I’ll make this happen.’ But I’m very lucky that they had faith in me to do it. Never did I feel like I was entitled to anything, I just made it clear that I wanted to do it,” he told TV Tonight.

“But I have a military background. I was living in army barracks until I was 15. My father served 20 years in the Australian Army. He was the head of the Physical Training Unit. My grandfather served in the Air Force in New Guinea. My great uncle served in the machine gun battalion in New Guinea, so I grew up around horribly-affected men.

“This is really important to me, to be a part of and I’m extraordinarily passionate about doing it the right way.”

He got his wish, playing tough-as-nails Sergeant Harry Perceval.

“My job initially is to make sure the troops are moving forward. So I work in tandem with Captain Taylor (Jeremy Linday Taylor) who leads from the front, as it was back then,” he explains.

“I’m 41 which is quite old for a sergeant, and he would have served as a militia because we didn’t have a regular army in the Boer War. But Jeremy’s character and I find ourselves back in a situation of conflict.

“He’s an amalgam of people. Not an archetype, but the sergeant was responsible for things that were unequivocal. That’s what you had to do and you had to be a certain personality type to take on that role.”

“They were boys without a leader”

Despite being a fictional character, Nable was determined to be as authentic as he could in depicting a first world war sergeant. Based on Les Carlyon’s historical book, the production drew on the expertise of military adviser Dayton McCarthy, Ph.D.

“He told us about the amount of casualties, NCOSs and officers that were killed on the frontline. On that initial day there was a lot of ambiguity about what was to happen. There were men hiding in gullies and men sitting on the beach because they were rudderless. And that part of Gallipoli is (never) shown,” Nable explains.

“But they were boys without a leader and it was akin to being a young boy without his father.

“So it’s incumbent on us (older actors) to make sure it’s imparted onto the younger actors.

“It is the most important story to represent authentically and I’ve felt passionate about this for a very long time.”

Gallipoli screens a double episode tonight at 9pm on Nine.