Hey Jon, you’ve been to Australia only once — what was your fondest memory of your visit?
Yeah, I went for the first time last November and I absolutely loved every part of it. A very close friend of mine lives in Manly beach in Sydney with his wife and two kids and I just had a blast and the loveliest time going out to dinner, hanging out at their house, walking around the neighbourhood and around the beach. A lot of long walks around the lighthouse on the south head there and the harbour… oh, it was just beautiful. I also went over to Bondi and took a quick swim at Icebergs, which was totally exciting. It’s made me want to go back and explore more of Australia and I’m looking forward to hopefully getting a chance to do that.
So you’re no doubt familiar with most Aussie lingo?
I have to say most of my Australianisms come from Summer Heights High. So, unfortunately, I’ve picked up most of my Australian from Ja’mie. My favourite thing about Australians, in general, is their good natured love of living life. It’s like, “It’s a beautiful day, let’s go outside and go for a swim — let’s just do it” you know? It’s a beautiful place, so why you wouldn’t want to go outside? I feel like part of it is that you could literally die any day and in seven different weird ways.
Wait, you’re not one of these Americans who believes everything in Australia — like spiders, snakes, sharks… can kill you, are you?
Well, yeah. On my first day there I’d gone to pick up my friend’s kids from school and we brought them back to their home to get ready because we were going out to dinner and blah, blah, blah… it was chaos. So I’m sitting there, looking at a big map of Australia over their fireplace trying to figure out where, how far it is and whatever when I hear the son from the shower scream, “Dad, there’s a Huntsman!” I was like, “Whoa, shower emergency, that’s rare.” So, I looked to my friend, and he goes, “Oh you’ve got to see this.” When we got to the bathroom I was like, “What the f—k is THAT?!” And it was a human-sized spider on the shower door! And his son was standing in the shower not even scared but just bummed out he had to wait for dad to get the thing off. These things are big boys and they will come at you – that’s what I was told. I was like, “Well, we should get our guest a bucket to put this in because I ain’t touching it.”
I guess we should talk about your new film, Baby Driver. Why did you decide to take on this role?
I’m a massive fan of [director] Edgar Wright and loved his previous films. He also happens to be a friend of mine and we’ve gotten into each other over the years. He’s a singular talent and then he wrote this script I thought was a really cool idea – sort of a heist movie set to music. So, I said to him, “I’d like to be a part of it” and he goes, “Well, that’s good because I want you to be in it”, and I said, “OK, well, there we go.”
For the full article grab the July 2017 issue of MAXIM Australia.
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