This year’s Logies ceremony was always going to be about Sam Neill to some extent. But a win in the best actor category for his role as barrister Brett Colby in The Twelve afforded a double opportunity to celebrate the career of the much-loved New Zealander, who died from pneumonia at the age of 78 last month.
Johnny Young’s death last week would probably have thrown planning for the In Memoriam segment into disarray had it been anyone other than Neill at the top of everyone’s list of TV people we will miss. Katie Noonan’s performance of Crowded House’s Don’t Dream It’s Over, a favourite of the Jurassic Park star, was not to be displaced, though, no matter how strong the lure of the Beatles’ All My Loving (the signature tune of Young Talent Time) might have been.
On the red carpet, Heather Mitchell, who was nominated for best supporting actress for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, said Neill, a longtime friend and a frequent collaborator – including in the forthcoming feature The Fox – is already “greatly, greatly, greatly missed”.
She shared a couple of memories of her friend, the first personal. “I was very fortunate that my husband and I went on a trip with Sam a couple of years ago to the sub-Antarctic, and we followed the albatross,” she said. “That will always be a very, very fond memory for me.”
The other was professional. Though exactly how professional is perhaps open to debate.
“He directed me once in a series and I had to bark like a dog while I was having sex,” said Mitchell. “And I remember him doing it for me.” And with that she joyously recreated the moment, with some of the wildest woofing the Logies red carpet has ever witnessed.
On stage, Mitchell had the double duty of speaking about Neill during the In Memoriam segment and again as she accepted his acting award.
“I’m so sorry I’m not Sam,” she said on the latter occasion. “I know how much this would mean to Sam … this is an indication of his connection, the connection he has with people, with his audience.”
Danielle Cormack worked with her fellow Kiwi (to be fair, a term Neill bristled at) on the third season of The Twelve: Cape Rock Killer. “I literally sat with him for months because we were in court together,” she said, confiding that to while away the downtime between set-ups, “we started a limerick competition. I was going through some of my admin the other day and I came across some of the limericks he’d written for me.”
Any family-friendly enough to share?
“It was a lot to do with actors and actresses – none mentioning bishops – but a lot to do with out-of-work actresses,” she said, laughing. “I don’t know what he was hinting at.”
Simon Baker, who won the best supporting actor award for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, said Neill was “dignified and beautiful and had great poise. He was very generous towards me, very kind and warm and funny and caring. He was dignity.”
Claudia Karvan – another winner, as best supporting actor for Homebodies – last saw Neill just a month before he died. “He was just desperate to get back to work,” she said.
Though he was a bona fide international star, there were no airs and graces about Neill, said Karvan, who recalled working with him on The House of Hancock, a show she produced. She recalled being out in the desert, the cast and crew sharing dongas, the catering consisting of a table set up with bread and butter and instructions to make your own sandwiches. “And I was like, ‘Oh no, he’s gonna call his agent and get choppered out of here’. But he just queued up and made his own sandwiches like everyone else.”
Leigh Sales, host of the ABC’s The Assembly, which won the Logie for best factual or documentary program, said it was “poignant” to revisit Neill’s screen roles in light of his recent passing. And given Neill was the first guest on The Assembly, in which a group of autistic journalism students interview celebrities, that includes her own program.
“To see bits of that again [was to be] reminded of how terrific he was on screen,” she said. “I think the way he came across in his social media, when he was on his farm, that’s really how he came across [in life], Sales said. “A real gentleman.”
