The Strange Art of the Everyday

Julian McMahon talks to Jean Lynch about his role in Premonition and how he discovered that less can be decidedly more

It’s perhaps a little telling that you will most probably better know the names of the characters played by Julian McMahon than that of the man himself. He is the hot shot, designer-clad Christian Troy of the Golden Globe winning Nip/Tuck; the tortured demon Cole Turner in the cult TV series Charmed; the evil Dr Doom, nemesis of The Fantastic Four: All potentially career-defining roles and together constitute quite a body of work, yet the name Julian McMahon, who many may remember as Ben in the Australian soap Home and Away, doesn’t quite role off the tongue as easily as you’d might expect. Indeed, is it pronounced ‘McMarn’ or ‘Micman’? (it’s the latter, according to imdb). Is he a victim of his own success?

‘My characters have always been larger-than-life’ agrees McMahon, ‘and quite dark – very dark, and they’re also very performance oriented characters. Guys like Christian Troy, you have to perform him in order to make it work. Dr Doom is the same kind of thing – a cartoon character, a comic book character come to life, and that’s a different kind of thing, the presence of that person is the necessity of the way you peform him.’

To be able to take a step back from such a role is one of the reasons McMahon was attracted to the part of Jim Hanson in Mannen Yapo’s Premonition. In the film, McMahon is husband to Sandra Bullock’s Linda, a woman for whom time suddenly distorts itself, the days of the week playing out in a random manner. One the first day her husband is killed in a car crash, on the next she awakes to find him in bed next to her, safe and sound. Another day it’s his funeral, the next he’s happily taking a shower. While Linda understandably begins to question her sanity, Jim – thankfully not privvy to the strange events – is an everyday everyman who continues his daily routine.

‘This guy is just a guy who at this point in time is just meandering through his life,’ says McMahon. ‘The one thing I kept saying to myself was “don’t perform him” because once you perform him then that Christian Troy guy is popping out or Dr Doom is popping out. You know, Christian Troy just kind of stands out, he’s like jumping out the screen at you. I wanted the audience to feel more voyeuristic, like they’re just watching somebody just living – a guy through his life. Watching him having cereal, in the kitchen, at the fridge. I wanted it to be so you never felt he was anything more than he was, and then the story and the relationships and the storytelling could take you where you needed to go but never “this is Jim Hanson”. I worked hard at trying not to over peform in any way.

‘I was very touched by the script; I felt very emotionally connected to it by the time I’d finished. I started thinking about things, all those questions and those paths. The bigger thing that really hit me was the sensibility, how it relates to family and relationships. That touched me more than anything else in the movie.’

Premonition is sure to to confound the expectations of anyone looking for a high octane thriller. German director Mannen Yapo took over the helm precisely because the producers felt that his distinctly European style would perfectly match the mood they wanted to create for the film, a style that would echo the uncertainty and range of emotions experienced by the characters. McMahon explains.

‘His first movie, Lautlos, is about this hit man – it’s hard to describe it, you should see it – but inside this story is this excrutiatingly beautiful love story that’s between these two people who should not be together and you don’t think they should be together and won’t be together, and it pertained so much to this movie. There was this real story about these real people who had real emotions and feelings, real patterns of life, very normal – that, to me, was the embodiment of the core of [Premonition’s] story, not all the other stuff, the flashing backward and forward – the real core was this thing, this love story, that’s what I always found most attractive about it, what I felt most emotional about.’

At an advance screening, I tell him, the tension within the cinema was nail-bitingly audible, especially leading to the film’s climax, one of the most edge-of-your-seat moments you could possibly experience. This incredibly well-paced vice-like grip on the emotions, to what extent were he and Bullock aware of that throughout the shoot?

‘Oh yeah, brutally aware, are you kidding? We all went out about three weeks early to start to discuss, and me, Sandy and Mannen sat down and talked for an hour and a half before a scene. That emotional void inside of there continually throughout the movie with these two people, because that’s what makes you root for them at the end. When the last 20 minutes come and she realises that phone call and all of this starts to come together, if you’re not fighting for them then the movie doesn’t work.

‘You’ve got this love story that’s been ripped apart. At the beginning you get told he’s dead so where do you go from there – how do you make that work? Well, you build this extraordinary story, this extraordinary thing, and we had to do that with the amount of weight that was carried in the room together, and the things that won’t fit, the inability to communicate was more important than saying dialogue.’

Given that the film invites the audience to consider how the small, seemingly insignificant moments of life can have a profound effect on the future, I wonder if McMahon himself can look back and realise when this has been the case?

‘My whole life! It’s all about little choices you make to do little things. I mean, going to the store one day can change your life in dramatic ways you won’t even be prepared for. When I was 17 years old I was going to Africa with a friend of mine for three or six months or whatever, going on safari, and then I got offered an opportunity to go to work and do this commercial in America, and if I didn’t go that way I wouldn’t be here, I can guarantee you.

‘I never thought this is going to create this for the next 20 years, no way – and then I look at what I have, including my daughter, including the career, including where I live and who I spend time with – it’s just prolific and extraordinary.’

Premonition opens across the UK on 16^th March 2007.

Julian McMahon can also be seen playing Dr. Cristian Troy in new episodes of Nip/Tuck, Saturdays, 11:00pm, Sky One