We Spoke To Rodger Corser About ‘Party Tricks’, Sex In Parliament And How Weird Australian Politics Is

Anyone who witnessed Campbell Newman’s crazy-brave run for Queensland premier from outside State Parliament two years ago is likely to experience an odd sense of déjà vu watching Network 10’s new political drama, Party Tricks.

The six-part mini series follows fictional Victorian Labor premier Kate Ballard (Asher Keddie) as she attempts to retain leadership after the shock announcement of a new Liberal election candidate: David McLeod (Rodger Corser), a popular media identity who doesn’t even hold a seat in the House.

Thankfully, the similarities between Queensland’s Campbell Newman versus Anna Bligh showdown end there — or at least hopefully, as the alternative is just to creepy to contemplate. Because Ballard and McLeod’s election race is complicated by a tumultuous affair they secretly shared several years earlier.

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Thanks for the inspiration, real life politics

Politics is a weird and wonderful world, and series creator Michael Lucas and producers John Edwards and Imogen Banks (of Puberty Blues and Offspring fame) worked its real-life oddities to maximum advantage, cherry picking some our country’s most bizarre and intriguing political events to come up with the Party Tricks storyline.

Like, for example, the five-year secret affair between deputy Labor leader Gareth Evans and Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot in the 1990s. (It was famously and controversially revealed by veteran political journalist Laurie Oakes in 2002, after Kernot failed to mention the dalliance in her “tell all” book. I haven’t seen the end of Party Tricks yet but … spoiler alert?)

Of course, when you mash all of these bizarre events together into one plot, the premise does get kind of far-fetched. Yet, mostly, it seems to work in Party Tricks.

Actually, says Corser during a telephone interview with Junkee, that’s partly thanks to the real-life precedents. They make us, as an audience, a little more preconditioned to believe similar astonishing events, giving producers artistic license to run with it.

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Apparently, affairs happen all the time in Aussie politics (spew)

“The issues we’re dealing with are certainly entrenched in the state political world,” Corser says. “Affairs go on in politics all the time, if not between members of parliament, certainly between advisors and even some of the media. They all work and sometimes drink together. It can happen. Workplace romances aren’t new and aren’t rare.”

The difference, he says, is how such indiscretions are dealt with. “This could be anyone at the top end of town where there’s more scrutiny, more eyes on you, more to lose. It’s just an added layer of pressure and there’s just a different type of scandal in those worlds,” he says. “Everyone sort of accepts that these indiscretions go on but it’s your job to keep them very quiet.”

Corser drew from real life, too, to build his character, a sexy, over-confident and almost reckless former journo. He chatted at length with Eddie McGuire, pinched some of Ray Martin’s verbal rhythm and mannerisms, and took a lead from Karl Stefanovic’s cocksure attitude.

“I mean, Karl Stefanovic sitting down with the Dalai Lama and doing a joke about takeaway pizza and it bombing terribly, but it doesn’t flatten his ego at all. He just shrugs it off and moves on. So I definitely borrowed from that,” Corser says.

He jumped at the chance to work again with Australian small-screen darling Keddie, after the pair briefly starred together in Rush — though they actually see very little of each other on Party Tricks’ set. “The irony is that it’s very hard to get people from opposite sides of politics in the same scene together,” Corser says.

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Turns out 27-year-olds are actually running our parliaments, kinda

The show, some of which was filmed in the hallowed halls of Victoria’s lower house on Saturdays, also stars some of Australia’s younger emerging talent as the gaggle of advisors and journalists surrounding Ballard and McLeod.

There’s Charlie Garber as Ballard’s speechwriter, Angus Sampson as her sweary press secretary, and Ash Ricardo as McLeod’s pregnant yet defiantly stiletto-clad public relations mastermind.

They’re all noticeably young, which, says Corser, is another way in which Party Tricks aims to mirror life.

“Politicians spent 80 per cent of their day with their advisors and these people are predominately in their 20s and early 30s. They are probably only in their second job, only three or four years out of their degree and yet they have a big amount of say. They’re listening to interviews, getting leaders back on message, even telling the leaders off, slapping them over the wrists — and they’re 27 years old,” he says.

“I think it’s a good thing because you do look at Parliament, especially as a younger person, and you don’t really see too many people that reflect your generation. It’s nice to know that a couple of steps back there is quite a vast amount of people in there, contributing to issues.”

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Party Tricks airs on Mondays at 8.30pm on Network Ten.

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Koren Helbig is an Australian freelance writer living in Spain. She has written for publications including New Internationalist, frankie, Kill Your Darlings and The Lifted Brow, and in a former life she covered the colourful world of Queensland politics for The Courier-Mail. Koren blogs at The Little Green House and tweets at @KorenHelbig.