‘Nipples are a bit silly’: Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer get personal | lou_roog
They even met on the set of the comedywas another thing entirely. It was written and created by them, they star in just about every scene and it’s even dedicated to Dyer’s grandmother Joan, “who loved dogs”. Dyer’s old family movies make up most of the opening titles. The little kid being knocked over by a dog? That’s her sister.
Dyer dreamed up the idea after feeling dissatisfied with life in LA. She wasn’t getting the work she wanted, so she set herself a week to try to write something. After spending the first day downloading screenwriting software, something clicked, and by the end of the week she had the bones of“We just wanted something that would bring two people together that would have never met otherwise,” says Dyer.
“But it was so important for us to have just moments of what they do bond over because they meet, it’s literally a car crash. It’s not good. So there had to be this moment where they connect, and the connection is, in large part, a similar connection to us, at least initially, which is the enjoyment of the same sense of humour.“You see that when they named the dog and there’s just enough in there to keep you going as an audience to go, ‘Oh, they could be nice together, those two.
“We wanted the way we speak, the way we relate, the way we’re idiots, to be seen. And we know that better than we know the American experience.”And while the show was written in the US, Brammall and Dyer always saw it as an Australian story. Dyer remembers receiving a script note from a US executive querying some Australian slang in the script and worrying that American audiences might not understand it.
Now Brammall and Dyer have been in the US for a while – they married in Florida last year and adopted their daughter Joni there – would they recommend it to other actors hoping to follow the path to Hollywood?