Actor Tim Pocock on hiding his sexuality and the trauma of conversion therapy

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Speaker 1: Can I thanks for listening to the show. This is Better than Yesterday, conversations and ideas to make your day to day better than yesterday, every week since twenty thirteen. My name's Oshiginsburg. I'm glad you're here, but I do have a question for you. Have you ever been told that you're wrong? And I'm talking about Oh that thing that you just said that was not correct? No? No, you as a person, who you are, what you want, what you feel, have you been told that is wrong? Now you need to be fixed, You need to be saved. What if you were being told that you're wrong all the time by the people that surround you for the most formative years of your life, and what effect does it have on you? More, what would it take to liberate yourself from those beliefs, to feel proud of who you are as you were born and step into a life that you want. Well, that is exactly what Tim Pocock is here to talk to us about today. It's an extraordinary conversation. We'll get to it right after this.
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Speaker 2: At school, you'd hear stories. There'd be these other kids, these other maybe you know, questionably flamboyant kids who just would all of a sudden disappear. My mum would love to use example. She would love to sort of be critical of others as a sort of a teaching mechanism for us. So she would talk quite freely about like, what did you hear about so and So's child. Yeah, it turns out he's decided that he's gay now, so you know, they've just sent him off to this place to you know, get fixed and stuff. But like, gosh, where did his parents go wrong? You know, I just wonder like how could they have dropped the ball like this? And you'd hear those kinds of conversations and I'd be there in my mind kind of thinking like, oh, okay, well, I definitely have hell waiting for me when I die. And I know I'm getting punched in the face tomorrow when I go back to school. But I really don't want to be shipped off to some camp and have people poking around in my brain. That's why I never came out. I just kept it to myself. I didn't want anyone to know. When I did actually get taken, it was sort of under false pretenses.
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Speaker 1: Thanks so much for listening to the show. This is better than Yesterday. Tim Pocox on the show today very quickly. This Sunday at Story Club, our theme is Everybody needs good neighbors. And there's a line in that story that I'm going to tell on Sunday night. The tickets in the show notes if we want to get there, there's a line in there which just kind of, I guess sets the scene a little bit for the conversation I'm about to have with with Tim, because I'm going to tell a story on Sunday night about what happened when I was a teenager and a family of bikers moved in next door. And what's interesting is that there was one kind of dad and he had some mates around it, and I would hang out there a bit and really cool. But what's interesting is this guy, he was in his thirties, wrote a big fat Harley. Him and his mates. They spoke to me like no other man in my life spoke to me, because at the time when I was living there, I was going to an all boys private school in Prisbone, and the men in power there would scream at us like we were naughty children and would punish us, sometimes physically, for not behaving like the men that they wanted us to be. But the guys who lived next door, they didn't speak to me like that. They spoke to me like I was a young version of them who deserved their respect, a person that they would relish sharing the secrets of the world with. And I thought about that listening to Tim's episode a conversation before publishing it today, because while I wasn't involved in any kind of religion, organized religion, kind of schooling like he was, mine was pretty organized and pretty religion. It's great for some people, it's not for me. I was traveling Wolf to a birthday party on the weekend. He said, what's that building? I said, that's a church? So what's a church? Far out? Year five? Thankfully, Nil de grass Tyson has answered the question for me. God is a word that human beings have used for a long time to describe things that science has not defined yet. And look, Wolf and I talk a lot. He was able to hold on to that answer. But yeah, I certainly did not have that experience when I was his age. I b I thought it was all true, as you'll hear me talk about with my guest today, Tim Pocock. Now he's an actor. You may know him from Dance Academy, X Men Origins, Wolverine. You know the two thousand and nine one that Hugh Jackman was just massive in, Like, yeah, he was in that. But today the story that Tim is here to tell is his story. Tim Pocock's just written a book called The Truth Will Set You Free Growing up gay in Opus Day. It's a heavy read. I'm not going to lie because he details what it's like to grow up in a conservative Catholic family, attending school that's got links to Opus Day, a rather intense sect of Catholicism, What he faced when he was going to that school, what are your faced a result of it? And the truly excruciating experience of trying to reconcile what he was being told he should be versus the truth of what he actually was, his eventual experiences with conversion therapy, and even more we get into all that conversation in this one. It is. It's a big one. If you went to a school like mine, you might recognize a bit more than you think you want to recognize. How to have a big sit down after listening to this. The book's great, team's great. I hope you enjoy the show. Look I'm thrilled you came in. How are you doing today?
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Speaker 2: Man, you're right, I'm doing well.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a rainy day. It is any days, didn't he But that's that's lovely. Yeah, because I like wearing my nice jacket, but I haven't had a chance to wear yet.
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Speaker 2: Oh. Look, I was going to be shirtless, but now I've got this ombre thing going on because of the droplets. We can go shirtless if you want to go shirtless, jacketless. It's not podcasts.
00:06:18
Speaker 1: Now, people, could you know?
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Speaker 3: I mean, only fans just got valued eight billion dollars. I mean they've got something going on over.
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Speaker 2: They made bad career choices.
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Speaker 1: Only fans is worth more than paramount.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's nuts.
00:06:28
Speaker 1: With the studios, with the back catalog, with MTV, with the streaming channel, with everything, only fans is worth more than that. And that doesn't give you a clue as to why I have not had a TV contract in two years. I don't know what does. It's fun nut, but I'm grateful you're here. When the opportunity came up to speak to you, I was telling you out, tom My producer, I'm can we please please please get them on? I don't have a as extreme story to yours. I think yours is at the edge case of how extreme things can be. But it's a very common story, certainly in the kind of school I went to up in Brisbane, certainly with the experience of people close to me who are not a heteronormative kind of person, and so I thought it was really important to I'm grateful that you wrote this book and you want to talk about it.
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Speaker 2: No, thank you, And that's kind of the point of why I did it, because I think it's something that a lot of people, maybe it gets lost in translation, the fact that there are long term mental health repercussions to growing up in that kind of environment. I think there's this sort of perception that coming out, which is a term I hate, by the way, but that the coming out process is just you click your fingers and then night and day you're now that person, but it's not. You then have to unpack everything, and you have to retrain yourself and how you think, how you think about yourself, what your morals really are, what your tastes are, all those kinds of things, and you know that's a process in and of itself, and certainly in those more conservative areas of the world, there's just no support and there's also a wilful ignorance to what that is like. So I just thought, well, not only have I had my unique experiences, but I also have the opportunity to share them, so that perhaps people can't hide behind that wall of willful ignorance moving forward.
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Speaker 1: Tell me, for firlks, you might not understand what is it about the phrase coming out that rubs you the wrong way.
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Speaker 2: I think it just it oversimplifies what it is. If it was as easy as just being like stuck in a closet, then burst that door down a long time ago. So I just think it's a bit reductive, if anything. So I don't really think there's another term. I can't really come up with anything to change that. But you know, it's really a long journey, and I just think it's easy for people to just say it that way.
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Speaker 1: It's also this misconception that you have one conversation once and that's it.
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Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: No, man, you kind of have to do it twenty times a day, twenty years later.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. The truth will set You Free, which is the title of my book. Initially I was calling it the Cage because that's what it felt like. It feels like being completely trapped and that you are in a cage. Someone else has the key and you can't get out, and the cage really is in your own mind. And so I think that kind of sells why something like the phrase coming out is perhaps you know, not quite enough.
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Speaker 1: There's a friend of mine who is one of the people that I went to this school with, had a huge problem with the affectations and the telegraphing, to the point where he's like, Oh, come on, love, how many SA's are there in Hamburger. I never forget that he said that to somebody once. But on the flip side, I kind of understand if you're tired of saying it all the time, if you throw a bit of a telegraphing in, whether it be a flare of a hand or a particular choice of clothing, an eyebrar ring, whatever, it kind of like, is it not obvious? Do I have to say it out?
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Speaker 2: Wow? Yeah. The other thing as well to that is that it can also just be an expression of the freedom when you're finally feeling it. You know, I'm not really a particularly flamboyant person myself, but it can be really freeing sometimes if I'm having a conversation with someone to do you know, a feminine voice and you know, prants around a little bit. And it's not that I'm you know, like like trying to telegraph or anything. It's just it's me just expressing myself and not having to care that anyone might judge it, because you know, in my own family at home, you know, my mum would like slapped my wrist if she thought it was a little too limb, or she would like, don't walk like that. You look like a sissy boy. People are going to think things about you, and so I just you grow up feeling so self conscious all the time that when you do have those little moments where you're in a safe space and you're around people that don't care, then it can be fun to be like yeah, queen, which you know, I am not that guy. Ironically, sometimes I am.
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Speaker 1: It is a cold and rainy day here in Sydney, so I'm guessing this is somewhat reminiscent of a summer's day of your childhood.
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Speaker 2: Ah yeah, I love weather like this, actually it does. It reminds me because I grew up in country Ireland and it was always gray. It was always quite bleak and miserable. But to me, that's quite romantic. I was always a creative kid, and we had this little enclosed sort of verandah at the front of the house, and our view is incredible, and I would just set up there with an easel. I would listen to audiobooks because I'm dyslexic, so i'd listen to like Wuthering Heights or Jane Ere. I was only like seven, but whatever. I was listening to those kinds of things, and then I would just paint and do that. And so that's kind of like this romantic kind of idea that I have. When the weather is kind of dreary like this, then it just reminds me that and takes me back to that place. Although I didn't super appreciate it this morning because my hair was looking so good earlier. And then I got absolutely dreamed because I thought it would be a great idea to walk and yeah, here we are.
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Speaker 1: I know about a good and bad hair day. I think I'm having both at the same time right now. Ireland, because it's because it's in the anglosphere, because there's English people tend not to associate it with an incredibly strict country, just unintended coming out of a period of unbelievable religious control of the community and the laws of the community. What do people what do people need to understand you think about how religiously conservative Ireland can be.
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Speaker 2: Well, I think, for like, in my particular circumstance, we lived in a very small country town, and I think that the more isolated a place is, whether it's over there or even here in Australia, those kinds of conservative values can remain a little bit more unchecked because there is that separate from the rest of the world, and so current trends in terms of music, TV, that kind of thing just don't quite filter through in the same way as they do in bigger cities. And so we definitely lived there and it was like very catholic town, like everyone was Catholic. And I think that's the reason why my parents chose for that to be where we moved, because they were super conservative and wanted to keep us away from the world. And so it wasn't really so much that I felt the Catholicism, as I just felt an absence of anything else. YEA, So my entire world like everything that I knew, everything that was normal was because everyone around me was doing the exact same thing and had the same kinds of lives, so there was nothing to challenge that perhaps the level of fervor that we had was maybe not what other people were doing. It definitely was such a religious conservative It felt like living fifty years ago or or a hundred years ago. And especially because you've got actual castles in people's front lawns and old buildings and stuff like, it really felt like living in a different world altogether.
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Speaker 1: When was the first time that you had an ink? Because fish don't know what water is. When was the first time you had an inkling that other kids your age looked at the world in a different way and there were other things out there that your parents perhaps had you had not seen yet, or like what's what's that over there? And have an idea that your parents are trying to shut it down, but you're kind of hang on a second that looked kind of interesting.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember really wanting to get a bowl cut when I was like six, because that's what If we would go into Cork City, you'd see them and you'd see people wearing the match you match you want to added ass tracksuits, which you know, yes, horrible, but at the time that was fashion and that was cool, and I just I wanted that. And that was when like mum was just very much like, no, no, you're not wearing what other people wear. You're not getting haircuts people are getting because that's modern and modern is bad. And even as a young child, I remember thinking like, but why, and we'd watch movies from the fifties. We wouldn't watch current.
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Speaker 1: Film where a man would slap a woman and go down together.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, really like My Fair Lady, you know, the sort of very yeah and like just very sort of old school misogyny just sort of like steeped into there. And you know, kids my age were watching The Witches that movie had just come out, and absolutely not allowed to watch that because Witchcraft is a cult and devil worship and all of that. But it's just a film. And so that was sort of when I started to realize that, you know, even in our small country town, the other kids were accessing things like that and Captain Planet, which was also off off off limits for us. I'm pretty happy for it, I mean, back we should yeah Captain Yeah, well, I mean I wouldn't know. I was never allowed to see it because because that was worshiping the world. Oh, so I was even seen as like, you know, you should only be worshiping God. So Captain Planet because it had sort of a like a green agenda, so to speak, can't watch that. So I did find it even early on difficult to connect with other children my age, But that sort of turned sort of more so when I came back to Australia and I actually accidentally became an opera singer when I was ten, and so I was starting to then meet kids who were performers, who went to other schools, who didn't go to Mass every single day and pray the Rosary every single day and all of that, and that was when I started to kind of go, oh, like, I think, maybe maybe I'm in a bubble.
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Speaker 1: I don't know.
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Speaker 2: And I started noticing boys sort of already, but that was obviously wrong. But then, even though we were still so young and sexuality wasn't really a thing, I started to kind of have this thought of like, oh, maybe if I didn't know those things, I would actually feel better about myself.
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Speaker 1: I do want to get to that the audition moment because that's that's you know, that's the end of act literally the end of act one. That's the turning point before on page thirty that's where you do the audition. But we'll go before that. There's scream right and stuff because I remember, as in myself, when those switches were starting to fire, you know, those little lights in the control panel were starting to light up. I see it in my son. There's a he's five and a bits nearly six, and about two months ago, there's a we watched the New Transformers movie and there's a pretty hot lady Transformer and he's like, Dad, can we draw I can't remember her name? It's like, can we draw her? Like? Yeah, we'd looking through pictures as I like sketch. He's like, no, that one, that one, that one, yeah, and he really not interested in any other ones, the ones with the guards at noop. He wants the one with the great curves and okay, buddy. And you know, there's there's people in my life who and you and they were five. You know when did you kind of have it? You said you had an inkling? Did you remember how that showed up?
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Speaker 2: Definitely? Yeah, It's something that I've thought about a lot. I had a crush on an altar boy when we lived in Ireland, the classics classic. Absolutely yeah. Well, I mean I had no other social sphere. I was in church, so but you know, it was just this boy. He was a few years older than me, went to my same school, and every morning before school we'd go to the local church and go to Mass, and he would always be serving, and I just liked the look of him. I didn't understand it. I didn't get it. I'd never heard the word gay or homosexual before in my life, Like, I didn't get any of that. But having watched things like say the sound of music, I was like, oh, I'm looking at him the way that Maria looks at Captain von Trapp. I don't think I meant to be looking at him that way.
00:18:57
Speaker 1: Oh where did that message? Where did the I don't think I meant to come from?
00:19:01
Speaker 2: Because I'd never seen anything like that before. I didn't know anyone who was like that. You know, boys were meant to like girls. And that was just the end of it. And I just started to realize, like, oh, I think you know, I've got the Doe eyes for another male. And so it just felt even without really understanding it. It's different, and different is wrong and at.
00:19:26
Speaker 1: That time, and this is the part that I really related to in the book You're in Doctrine. It's so much that any of those kind of urges or things are really wrong and bad. Oh yeah, you know, there's great explanations of pits of hell. I drove past a church all the way here that rhymed.
00:19:45
Speaker 2: It was like.
00:19:48
Speaker 1: Hit church before you hit the hearse well, like bleak Hell's coming for you. Yeah, it's like, but it isn't. I was just drove past. But at the time I completely belie that I didn't know anything else, and I felt terrible that I was having these thoughts and touching myself in these ways, and I was so ashamed of it. And I read in that and I was, you know, I literally lay there at night whispering it to my pillow, the thousands of those fucking prayers, hoping that it would make it stop.
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Speaker 2: Yeah. Same, Yeah, how fucking torturous exactly, which child, Yeah, absolutely, And that's again that's what I think that like so many people that don't really think about Yeah, especially the people who, regardless of their beliefs, you know, I'm not anti religion. I'm not, you know, wanting people to have different beliefs or whatever. I just want people to maybe have a little bit of a different way of thinking about these things, because you're right, when someone is a young child in early stages of development, for them to have such torturous, deep self loathing is a really damaging and harmful thing. And I really don't think that any parent of any religion would want that for their child, and I think that they are sort of maybe perhaps not aware of it, because of course the child can't speak up for themselves, which is why it is a cage, which is why they do feel so trapped. It's all very internalized, and so you know, I think again that's sort of part of my mission saving with the book, is that I can maybe be that voice and maybe break through that, because I mean, in my case, we'd listen to lectures about hell that were recorded by bishops overseas, but also we had these books of saints in our house, and at nighttime, instead of saying, you know, a bedtime story, we would have read to us, you know, these lives of these saints people for us to try and emulate. And some of these saints had actual visions of Hell, or in one case, I think sister Josepha Menendez, she physically went body and soul to Hell. God gifted her with that experience, supposedly, and then she wrote these graphic depictions of like in one of them, I remember, it's so vividly because I'm a claustrophobic person, where she gets doubled over, popped into a hole in the wall that is scorching hot, and it is constantly just pressing on her. She can't breathe, she can't move, and it's just that for all eternity. Can my kids Daddy? Literally yeah, sleep well? And then you're just lying in bed and you know, those visions just start surrounding you. And when you've got something inside of you, you're like, I am different, And like I looked at you know, that kid the other day and thought I liked the look of his face. And that means that that is literally what's waiting for me when I die. Yeah, not pleasant, there's a I got it.
00:22:40
Speaker 1: I put it in my notes because it was so heartbreaking, this quote. I cried myself to sleep at night, praying with complete certainty that I would wake up in the morning and no longer be gay.
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Speaker 2: Yeah I wanted that. Yeah.
00:22:55
Speaker 1: So at that point you have this realization that I am the thing they say is bad, therefore I'm bad and like that twisted, shitty loop that you get stuck in. Yeah, how long were you in that space? For?
00:23:09
Speaker 2: Oh years, like well into my twenties, from probably age twelve thirteen till like I mean, I mean I was. I was twenty six when I was taken in for conversion therapy, and I still at that point had been hiding, pretending, you know, wishing. Even at that point, I was like, I'm not going to change, but I'll be happily celibate for the rest of my life. I would like pray to God and say, all right, dude, let's let's let's make a pact. I'm a good guy. I all to serve. I play organ at mass, I run a children's choir at church. I'd take care of my mom and my grandma, like I go to Mass every week and most of the time during the weeks. Like you know, I'm a good guy. I ask for you to change this. You haven't changed it. So how about you just give me like a bit and acting career and I'll be celibrate for the rest of my life. I'll be George Clooney, like I will go and just like never marry, but I'm going to work on like movie after movie after movie. I think, well, at the time, he was, you know that like bachelor that was never settling down. So that was what I was telling myself in there.
00:24:17
Speaker 1: I think there was a lot of routing going on.
00:24:19
Speaker 2: Well for sure, yeah, yeah, but I was going to be the good version, not just the bachelor living. Yeah, that ear thing that people do.
00:24:31
Speaker 1: Fuck how twisted like that. As an adult, those kind of things are happening. But just to go back a little, he ended up in in Sydney and it was the Australian Youth Choir and to your school, yeah, which it's always exciting when you people are on the grounds and nobody's parents and the people we see all the time. When you're watching people of your age standing there singing, was there a realization of like, oh, hang on, this is something.
00:25:00
Speaker 2: I sort of not not really was weird. I'd been playing piano since I was three, and I'd liked music and I'd sort of just adapted to that really well, so I really enjoyed music, and I liked classical music. I'd never really sung before. It wasn't something that was like, oh, I really want to do that. But when they came, they sort of just did this mass audition. They had everyone stand together. They just had everyone sing the national anthem together, and they just kind of walked around. If they heard a promising voice, they'd invite them to come and do a proper audition.
00:25:28
Speaker 1: How I really believe we were Girt by Sea?
00:25:30
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely well. I thought that I didn't know the words. I thought it was dirt by Sea, but like i'd yeah, because that kind of that's a beach is dirt by sea. Yeah, But I just didn't know the words, so I didn't sing. And then they're like, oh, you too shy, and I'm like, in my thick Irish accent, I was just like, oh, I just like got here. I don't know the accident. I don't actually know how to sing it, and they were like, oh, do you want to sing something else? So I just sang Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star, and they're like, all right, you can come an audition. And it just sort of happened that way, and then that opened other doors sort of moving forward, and it.
00:26:00
Speaker 1: Did was quite the cascade. What was it like to have an affirmation, a positive message about who you were from people that weren't almost in charge of you, like parents or teachers and things.
00:26:11
Speaker 2: I just I really liked that I had an outlet for the creative drive in me. I was too young to really understand what that was, but there was just something about going into a room with a bunch of other kids who liked doing that as well, and having that in common, and it not being school. I hated school. I didn't understand the point of maths, like we've got calculators, guys, like, we don't really need to learn, you know, Pythagoras's theorem. And so it was just the idea of doing something that was still like a classroom based thing. But I actually enjoyed it and I wanted to be there, and it would actually often get me through days at school because I'd be looking forward to rehearsals that night. And that was even before the acting thing came on. That was just purely the singing. I just really enjoyed that.
00:27:03
Speaker 1: And you landed in this room of people, you ended up you hit the magic flute. By the time you're ten. Yeah, with the an Australian Opera.
00:27:13
Speaker 2: Company austral comtry at the Sydney Opera.
00:27:17
Speaker 1: My son's called Wolfka. By the way, after Amadeos, you mentioned being in this room of kids your age. What's it like going to rehearsals at the Australian Opera Company and just being surrounded by grown ups, adults, careers.
00:27:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, seeing your people, what's it like? It was amazing? Like I it was really where I first was like I can see my future. I saw these other singers, performers. I'm like, I can do that one day, because I'm already doing it now, and not many people my age can say that they're doing this kind of thing. And it was like a lead role. It wasn't a chorus role. It was like solos and all of that. And I'd never done it before and so I just kind of like trotted up very naively, like a little Bambie deer in the headlights. It did my thing, sang a song, and you know, they're like, well, we did that one in English. We did other operas in other languages. I did one called pelaas and Melasond and I had like a line. It was like into which fluid into Thailand. Like I still remember that for some reason. And when I was such a popular kid at school, and I definitely helped myself out, but I would pretend that I could speak other languages and I would rattle off the lyrics from the operas that I was in, just to be like, yeah, I can speak French and they'd be like, oh, wow, you really can. I'm like, it's just a song from Carmen. But okay, sure, yeah.
00:28:48
Speaker 1: Just to have that that's almost a double life thing because you you've got these kids at school and you write about it. It's not a great time being at school. We all know the kind of names. The singing kid. Yeah, it gets called.
00:29:04
Speaker 2: And it doesn't help that I have Coe c K in my surname as well, so that just kind of upped the ante on any of the other names at.
00:29:12
Speaker 1: This point in your life. Later on, whoa ye, right, bro?
00:29:17
Speaker 2: I mean yeah, well you know now it's it's an asset. So so what's it like? Uh, yeah, you're doing You're on stage at the Sydney Opera House. You're doing a curtain call.
00:29:30
Speaker 1: It's way past bedtime. I was being thrown on stage, go to bed, wake up, go to school.
00:29:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'd still like have like flex of makeup on from the night before, which was particularly bad when I did. I was in Basloman's Midsummer Night's Dream and I was painted pink from head to toe. Yeah yeah, because of the fairy children she designed all and stuff.
00:29:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, well she's got more roscers than any Australians, that's right.
00:29:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, not many fourteen year old can say they worked with them, so you know, yeah, like it was. It was an incredible experience. Think Milan Rouge came out like a year later. I was just like, oh, yeah, I know.
00:30:08
Speaker 1: Them, yeah big, but you go on to school, it was still a.
00:30:11
Speaker 2: Little bit of pink behind the ears, you know. And then and it was it was weird because apart from just sort of the homophobia that was very entrenched in the school, but also in the community that ran and organized the schools and everything, apart from that, it was the fact that they were doing all of this based on justice suspicion, and that suspicion was based on my talent. So this thing that brought me so much joy every night, and that made me come alive and you know, getting standing ovations from thousands of people every night was also becoming the source of my torment as well. So then I started to have this really negative sort of thing, like, you know, why did you give me this ability? Like why couldn't I have just been better at sports or you know, like and it, yeah, just sort of felt unfair in a way because I wasn't asking for any of it, And you know, I lived for the times that I was in rehearsal or on stage because it was away from the rest of it. And the worst thing really was when my opera career had to end because you know, puberty happens, your voice changes, you can't be a voice soprano anymore.
00:31:17
Speaker 1: Well, there were ways that they used to do it, there were, Yeah, but the somewhere along the way, castrati stopped being a thing.
00:31:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's still a well castrati for sure, but you know there's still countertenors, which is, you know, such a good.
00:31:29
Speaker 1: Voice, young man, give to your parents, we're going to take your testicles out and the rest of your life you get to have a job.
00:31:36
Speaker 2: Great what happened, but I would I would have I would have gone for it. I honestly would have gone for it because when I started noticing puberty, it's you know, hairs start growing, right, And I was never taught sex ed. My parents didn't teach sex said the school didn't teach sex ed because that's sort of how archaic they sort of were in their education. So I knew nothing about it. I just knew that at some point my voice was going to change. So when I started noticing hairs growing, I, in my naive sense, thought, well, if I shave them off, it's going to stop the puberty. So I would like steal my dad's razor and I'd stand in the shower and I'd like shave my arms and shave my legs and anywhere that hair was growing, just thinking like, if I do this, it's going to keep me with a high voice. So then I don't ever have to not have the opera career anymore, because if I don't have it, how do I get through every day? And so that was well, you know, it was obviously unavoidable in the long term, so as when I then pushed to try and change schools. But unfortunately, the way that my school, which was you know, run by the Open Stay organization, the way that they operate is that they the school has a very stronghold on your family life as well. They're in constant communication with your parents, you know you have. They called them tutors at the time, now they call them mentors. Essentially, they're a monitor. They're a member of the teaching staff who's a member of OPA stay. More often than not, they're what's called an OPA stay numery, which means that they're a celibate man that lives communally with other teachers from the school and they would just come and random intervals during the school week and take you out of class for ten fifteen minutes to have chats about your growth, your development, always with the focal point being on your spirituality and your spiritual life. That would then get passed on to the principal, who was also a celibate OPA stay numery. He would then have meetings with your parents where they'd be like, okay, we're noticing this about tim. Then on top of that, they had study centers, which is where these celibate teachers lived and they would have the kids go after school. You'd hop on a bus, you'd go to these study centers, which was the home of some of your teachers and the priest. You'd do your homework, they had a little chap, you'd have a bit of spiritual development, and then you'd just hang. You'd play sports, you go ab sailing, and did a whole bunch of different sort of activities and stuff. The idea was that you were just constantly surrounded by them and their influence and everything that would happen within their walls. All the school wars would get passed on to your parents. At the same time, my mum was actually principal of the primary school of the sister school that was in the same organization, so she was very much surrounded by all of it. She appreciated everything they did. She lived for their kind of methodologies, and she wanted me and my sister to be, you know, post to children for it all. So when I was coming towards the end of my opera career and wanting to change schools and I got offered partial scholarships for like the Sydney Conservatorium of Music High school, she chatted with the school. While I wasn't privy to that conversation, I am pretty sure that the conversation was within he is gay, he just needs to spend more time with us. So I was told, your religious education is more important than anything else. You're not changing school. So then it was I couldn't leave. I was just surrounded by it, And now was, if anything, even more surrounded by it because I was now going to the study centers after school. And then you have another one of the Opstein yumries would come and tap you on the shoulder and have chats, and they'd start talking to you. You're sixteen years old and they'd be like, oh, yeah, you know you've got a strong faith. Yeah, have you thought about becoming a numery yourself? Like, you know, that'd be a really good idea. The idea being that me, as a sixteen year old, I'm saying, yes, I want to be celibate for the rest of my life, and I want to live in this study center with all the rest of you guys and never break outside of this bubble. And some kids in my class at that young age did take up that make that, you know, commitment for life.
00:35:54
Speaker 1: Hearing you describe that, tim, the parallels between the kind of thing that I up with, there's not quite as intense with the monitoring stuff, but the funneling of young boys into this thing. I mean, it's recruitment. It is absolutely impossibly grooming.
00:36:15
Speaker 2: Yes, it's very close to.
00:36:17
Speaker 1: It sounds very groomy like and a really weird And I guess you know, hearing you tell his tales, man like the thing that breaks my heart the most as you do, as you recall it, even when you're in your twenties, is you were doing everything they told you to do to do to get the right thing out of this. You go here, you eat the Jesus biscuit, you serve, you do the thing, you do the prayers, d D D DA. Life is going to be great, all right, and you're doing it all and it's still isn't there?
00:36:48
Speaker 2: Like, man, how much nothing changed?
00:36:51
Speaker 1: How much torment? Meanwhile, other people go, please let queensland within the state of origin, and that happens eight times. And you're like, guys, come on, like the torment. As you're developing as a young man, how the world works. It's like it's just up against you and for no other reason, like it didn't have to be like that.
00:37:11
Speaker 2: It didn't. And you know, I have a bit of a twist in the book where I do reveal that I was adopted and that kind of shows just the accident of all of that, because we're also taught that in order to sin, you have to have full knowledge of the sin, So therefore being gay was the sin. Apparently, if I hadn't been adopted by those people, and I've been adopted by other people who weren't religious, I still would have been gay, but I wouldn't have been told that it was a sin, which means that even if it is a sin, it wouldn't have counted for me. But also I would have been able to have gone through all of my adolescent years without having all of those other external worries. So then you have this huge what if in your life of like, does that mean that I maybe would have been more comfortable in myself earlier? Would my acting career have happened earlier? Would it have been more successful? Would I have carried myself with more confidence? Would I have made the same mistakes? Would I have fallen for the same boy, Like all of these kinds of things that you have to go No, Nope, that's a dangerous road to go down.
00:38:16
Speaker 1: Can't change anything in the past. It's just the idea that this is what I don't want to like this is happening right now as we speak here in Sydney, probably within ten k's of here. There's a college just over there actually, And it doesn't have to be this way. It does, And in this time of trying to be different parents and better parents for a children, having so much more understanding about how developmentally dangerous it is to put these giant absolutes and terrifying thoughts into kids' heads and fucking them up with this logic, well, you're clearly not braining hard, huh.
00:38:50
Speaker 2: Or the other circular argument that I would always have with my mum when the bullying was happening, I would always be told what Jesus said, turn the other cheek. So it was an old oportunity to be extra virtuous. How lucky was I that I got the opportunity to be closer to Jesus by emulating him in that way. And then the other thing that she would say when I would sort of talk about, like, you know, how this was unfair or whatever, she'd say, well, we all have our cross to bear, you know. Jesus carried his and he got crucified, and in a way we all have our crosses to bear as well. And so there's just there's never an ability to really like break through the surface and say no, no, I'm like, I'm like really trying to communicate.
00:39:30
Speaker 1: With you here, like but no, yeah, it's not like you're set and fire to things or you know, graffitiing or anything. You like, I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing. Guys, you're trying.
00:39:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you become the model child. You become the people pleaser to try and prove to everyone like there isn't actually anything wrong with me. Ultimately though, you know, the moment that you do say those words I am gay to people in that mindset, that's that's the flick of the switch there. Yeah, that's when it's like, oh, well, sorry, can't be in each other's lives anymore.
00:40:02
Speaker 1: And so, well, just taking a moment away from Tim to play some ads back in just a moment. Do you remember along the back fence of your school, the house that was there, Well, it's not a house.
00:40:23
Speaker 2: Like the back back fence.
00:40:24
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, it's not a big it's not a small house.
00:40:28
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, it's a giant yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
00:40:30
Speaker 1: I shot three seasons The Bachelor there.
00:40:32
Speaker 2: Oh no way, that's where that was yep, yeah, that makes sense.
00:40:36
Speaker 1: And so I was there and bachelorette, and so that's why we did Brooks season okay oldly yeah, getting the back fence, yeah, okay, yea. And so I would show up to work every day and I was like, why it's pretty It's like eight o'clock. Why are there's still kids playing around here? What she just described is what was going on. Yeah, those study groups and those pastoral care things happening and fun and run a venture times with poison. Yeah, And so that when and this was right around when the same sex marriage put a site was happening, and that school ended up in the press quite significantly because of letters they were sending home.
00:41:23
Speaker 2: They're a big fan of the letter campaigns. I'm fairly certain there will be one about me, because I remember when I was at school, if there was ever anything anti opus stay in the media, there would be letters. We would have the teachers come in and talk to us about, like, don't pay attention to any of this. I worked at a movie cinema when the Da Vinci Code came out. The film and one of my teachers turned up and tried to have like a protest in the Foyer saying that we shouldn't be selling tickets to it, Like, yeah, they're very, very big on that, and you know, I'm fairly certain that they will be aware that this book is happening, and.
00:42:01
Speaker 1: I'll look forward to their correspondence. Yeah, so do I wonder what kind of fonts they have?
00:42:06
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, I received an email from the current principal back into NT twenty three after I did the Four Corners Report with Louise Milligan about the Oprah State Schools. You know, perhaps they'll reach out again, and if they do, I'd be interested in having a chat, But I don't think they'd like what I have to say, because I would like to build a bridge if I could, But I know that they're not prepared to have that conversation. They We used to go to all night vigils when it was the Sydney gain Lesbian Mardi Gras to pray for everyone that was there.
00:42:47
Speaker 1: All those prayers were answered. I've been to that party. Thank you. It was fucking good. Yeah. I think I said oh my God a couple of times and the RhI, Yeah, it was real good. I still have a culture that shows up because of a bloke eye patched that night, So thank you.
00:43:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, you're welcome, You're welcome, prain hard just for you.
00:43:08
Speaker 1: Yep, that's wild to teach. And I I was found it kind of interesting that in around honestly it was up September eleven. It was up to September eleven here in Australia, all this like, oh my god, they teach this at a Muslim school and that at a Muslim school. And I'm watching these news reports go down going hang on man, like it's word for word what I got taught. But no one ever made a fuss about that. The or you'd see the signs in front of a church like the one I saw today, you know, hit the church before you hit the hearse. Imagine if it was like hit a lah before you make sure you see a la before you get in the funeral car. People lose their minds, lose their minds. Yeah, but apparently it's fine.
00:43:56
Speaker 2: Well, because theirs is the one true religion. Is this sort of this, this haughtiness to ours is the best.
00:44:03
Speaker 1: Couple of billion Hindus.
00:44:04
Speaker 2: I'd like to know, well introduce yeah, yeah, absolutely right, Like there is a very extremest nature to Catholicism that I think people seem to turn a blind eye to where they wouldn't say, for like the Muslim culture.
00:44:21
Speaker 1: A lot of this religious stuff. I find it just co ops of things that is naturally in us as humans, which is to care for each other and try to have empathy for our fellow people, because it's only if we have empathy and cooperation that we survived. That's how we ended up being dominant as a species. There are currently in Australia and New South Wales there's starting to be organization of particularly in areas like Western Sydney. Organization of one would call kind of very centrist, moderate Muslim politicians kind of gathering together to start to become some sort of an independent cross bench the state or federal parliament, and people are very friend about that. However, churches have been in politics for a long time and the organization you're speaking about their quite the tendrils of their operations. It's far more in re grained.
00:45:18
Speaker 2: A lot of people realize, oh absolutely. I mean the former Premier of New South Wales, Dominique Perrete, went to my school. I knew all of his a lot of his siblings. You know. It was one in the year below me, who you know, wanted to be an actor as well, so he and I'd like helped each other out. His younger sister dated one of my cousins for a little bit. For people to get up in arms, as you say about say people of the Muslim faith trying to set up, you know, a party or have some representation, when you know, to be honest, like you know, that doesn't need to be a threat. There is a Muslim population in Australia who perhaps do feel like some of their needs aren't being addressed and some of their rights or what have you. And yet it does definitely show quite a hypocrisy if people are going to be upset about that when there's definite people in Parliament as we speak that are part of the church, part of that world, and who are using their political platforms to make decisions on behalf of the people that they supposedly represent that actually are just decisions that represent themselves.
00:46:29
Speaker 1: Well, he the ideology is very difficult to separate church and state. I mean, you look at what happened with nightlife in US in our city of Sydney with eleven years of Conservative Christians and government and now King crosses yoga studios. Yeah, you know, and you know various other kind of ways that access to abortion in Australia as well is fucking crazy. Man. So these people who are in these positions of power, is it fair to say that they may be being unfairly influenced by people outside of the parliamentary system, outside of their electorate who they're like, that's pretty much where their influence should be.
00:47:07
Speaker 2: And yeah, I wouldn't necessarily say that they're being influenced. I think it's it's a determined thing. Like they have gotten into politics because they want their voice, they want to influence based on their beliefs, and I think there's sort of this sense of like, oh, God is placing me here because I can do something with it.
00:47:31
Speaker 1: I remember doing I did a satirical news show at the Melbourne Comedy FIRSTIV a couple of years in it Rowan. The idea was that would just take stories out of the news and improvise news stories like it was a pretend TV show and we didn't want about the The day the Conversion for therapy thing went through and it was like, hang on, what these children like? It just absolutely blew my mind. When did you first understand what conversion therapy was I was, and when to just start to get an inkling that, ah, I think that's coming for me.
00:48:03
Speaker 2: Uh. At school, you'd hear stories. There'd be these other kids, these other maybe you know, questionably flamboyant kids who just would all of a sudden disappear. Maybe they were at a different school now, or they were just gone for a bit. And you know, my mum would love to use example, She would love to sort of be critical of others as a sort of a teaching mechanism for us, and so she would talk quite freely about like, what did you hear about so and So's child. Yeah, it turns out he's decided that he's gay now, so you know, they've just sent him off to this place to you know, get fixed and stuff. But like, gosh, where did his parents go wrong? You know, I just wonder like how could they have dropped the ball like this? And you'd hear those kinds of conversations, and I'd be there in my mind kind of thinking like, oh, okay, well, I definitely have hell waiting for me when I die, And I know I'm getting punched in the face tomorrow when I go back to school. But I really don't want to be shipped off to some camp and have people poking around him my brain. So I just that's why I never came out. I just kept it to myself. I didn't want anyone to know. When I did actually get taken, it was sort of under false pretenses when I was in my mid twenties.
00:49:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, how does a grown man who has a career, Yeah, that's going great. How does a grown man end up doing that?
00:49:19
Speaker 2: Yeah? It was literally right after I finished filming the second season of Dance Academy. I'd already done X Men, I'd done the first two seasons of Dance Academy, and my mum was really ill, and we had a bit of a family fight, which you know, was a high stress situation at that time. My father was having an affair as well, so this was a lot going on. She was dying, he was, you know, off with my godmother who was his mistress, and just a lot of stuff. Classic Hills District, yeah, very yeah, no, classic good Catholic family stuff.
00:49:49
Speaker 3: Fucking it's the go with the hits man. Yeah, just open with Hotel California. Then we can all go out home.
00:49:56
Speaker 1: It don't make us right.
00:49:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I forgot to tell everyone that The Bald and Beautiful is actually based on my life. So yeah, so we had this huge family fight, and with a bit of misplaced aggression, I actually swore at my mum and was a bit of a thing. You know. She was on death Store and the next day she just knocked on the door and she said, look, I don't think you're dealing very well with my illness, so I've made an appointment for you to see a therapist. And I thought, oh, this is this is actually really good. I need this. I'm stressed out, I'm not sleeping. There's so much that I want to talk about. This will be really good for me. So we go down and then I just I noticed when we got into the office there was just a lot of religious paraphernalia in there, you know, iconography, statues, paintings, that kind of thing. And then she went in and sat and had a session with him first, and then I get in there and.
00:50:44
Speaker 1: He was it like in a strip mall. Does it have a sign out the front.
00:50:48
Speaker 2: It was just like in a just a very nondescript office building. But I did notice that the sign under his name, it said Catholic psychologist, and I just thought, oh, do psychologists have religious and nations? And don't really think that they do. But okay, So that was sort of when the first little sort of like pit sort of happened. I thought like, who am I really seeing here? And then when I did walk into his office and sat down, he just didn't wasn't all that interested in what I had to say. He just kept talking about how he specialized in hypnotherapy and how he'd be able to put me under and help me with like addictions to like cigarettes or alcohol or yeah, gayness, And I was just like, okay, well, I'm not a smoker or a drinker. I haven't brought up the fact that I'm gay to him. Yes, But he also just said to me, he's like, oh, I know the school that you went to. I'm also a member of Opustay. And I was just like, Wow, I left school eight years ago and I'm right back in the clutches right now. And this person, where I know exactly what his biases are and where he's coming from, he wants to put me under to be like completely vulnerable to his influence in my brain. And I was just like no, no, no, no, no, We're not going to do this. So I just you know, I mean I pretended and I just sort of sat there and acting. Yeah. Literally I just was like okay, sat there and just you know, pretended to do what he was doing. But literally it was just like doing a shopping list in my head, like Okay, so I need to bring a new protein powder, I need to do this, just like drive out what he was saying, and then what kind of should was he thought? So well, he was definitely trying to do the hypno stuff. So it was you know, like picture a beach, what color is the sad, what color is the trees? What? You know? He played new like beach sounds in the background, and then he was like just talking about like letting everything go. And then he would, you know, bring up stuff like you know, you know God loves you, and every time that we're tested, you know, that's an opportunity to get closer to God, and there is such joy in being able to overcome the temptations of Satan. Things like that, and I just thought, well, this doesn't feel very like school psychology to me, doesn't feel unbiased, doesn't feel like someone that I can actually open up and be completely honest with. But also, I mean in the book, I call it psychological rape, because that's what it is. You're basically being artificial, artificially duped into a state of vulnerability, see essentially roofed. And then you're, yeah, just vulnerable for someone to penetrate your mind against your wishes.
00:53:29
Speaker 1: And you're an adult. Yeah, and you mentioned earlier, did you hear what happened with science as child? This person possibly like they're with kids man ten twelve younger, yeap and doing this Yeah, and it was and there's completely well and completely fine.
00:53:49
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah. And then like online forums and stuff. You know, after that experience that I had, I kept going on with it for a little bit. You know, my mum was sick and it was just something she wanted to do, so I was like, whatever, I'll just go and keep attending. You know, she was paying for it, so I was like, all right, it's her money. I'll let her waste it if she wants to. And then when she did pass away a couple of months later, I'd was like, all right, I'm done with that now. And then a few years later I had my first relationship and it was horrendous. And after that I had reached out to my sister just to you know, you go through a bad breakup, you just you want a shoulder to cry on. And the response was like, well, you know, you just you shouldn't be gay, Like this is punishment, like you shouldn't be gay. And then she was sending me links to these conversion therapy camps, like men's groups, which had online forums as well, but also meetups and stuff with the idea of like them retraining their brain into not being gay anymore. So that's just to me.
00:54:47
Speaker 1: Like the whole setup of like when we started doing this show, The Bachelor, people, how come there is any gay actual I was like, well, think of what happens in the mansion.
00:54:55
Speaker 2: Mate, I think a lot of people would tune in.
00:54:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's not like, oh, we're all going to go to camp. Yep, I'll come back.
00:55:04
Speaker 2: Well yeah, absolutely, yeah, it's called camp. Yes, maybe might be able to meet someone. I mean, you know that that was something that was just always held haled over my head while I was growing up, and thankfully because I sort of didn't say anything, I wasn't exposed to it. When I was even more vulnerable. I think the fact that I was still exposed to it in my twenties shows just kind of the psychological damage that can happen to someone that can keep them, even in their mid twenties, feeling so helpless against that kind of a thing. So my heart bleeds for the younger people. And that's exactly why when Equality Australia reached out and asked me to share my story and be part of their campaign to have it made illegal in this state, I absolutely said yes, because it's not just something I'm passionate about it. It feels like a responsibility because I'm able to talk about it and I'm able to really get across the need for it to be illegal. And you know, it's a proud moment to be able to say, like, you know, that has happened now. So I was able to turn that sort of negative part of my life into something positive for others, so that other young children no longer have to worry the way that I worried when I was younger, that that could happen if I dared in my Catholic faith.
00:56:27
Speaker 1: To be honest, we need to play some commercials. Yeah, back with Tim Pocock in just a second. The idea that that conversion therapy is no longer there is wonderful, but it's it doesn't mean that, you know, we're out of the woods.
00:56:54
Speaker 2: Absolutely not.
00:56:54
Speaker 1: No, the persecution and guilt and all kinds of twisting of kid's head are still happening. What are your thoughts about the privileges that are extended to these schools in our community around things like tax and influence upon the community.
00:57:11
Speaker 2: When you do think about the fact that these are institutions that do get tax offsets and do get government funding, that is a worry because from my perspective, I did not receive an adequate education there because it was so filtered by the religion. Whole chapters of textbooks were removed or blacked out. I remember that.
00:57:35
Speaker 1: I don't remember that things getting photo they would photo copy them. They've got a glue stick or something, Yeah, sticking over bits in the biole textbook.
00:57:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, nineteen ninety absolutely, yeah, yeah, And that was you know, I was like it was in the nineties and you know, early two thousands for me as well. And yeah, we'd go and pick up our textbooks at school because they would order.
00:57:54
Speaker 1: Them for Yes, I remember that too.
00:57:56
Speaker 2: You'd go out and pick up your box filled with your books and they'd just be you know, the science chat textbook, which is the whole section about evolution or reproduction gone just not there. And if you know, a kid was sneaky and tried to ask a question, there'd be a detention and whatnot. And you know, to that point, when I'm old enough that the school certificate was still a thing when you're in year ten, And when we sat for the science exam, our principal, who was a celibrate Oprah State Humory, he came down to the classroom ahead of us sitting the science exam and said, now, look, there is going to be a section in there about reproduction. Obviously we know we haven't taught you this stuff, but you guys don't need to worry because it's only five percent of the whole paper. So you guys can still easily get banned six you can still get ninety five percent by leaving that bit empty. But hey, you know what, if you guys know any of the answers, go for it, knock your socks off. And I mean, that's just plainly irresponsible. And this is something that you know as you say, this is some a place that is getting government funding and that is getting tax breaks and stuff. So that's just irresponsibility. And it also just means like why is this place getting this this money?
00:59:14
Speaker 1: But you're pumping out people who've got high stakes jobs in public office who do not have an education in critical thought. Yeah that's not okay, it's not. No, that's in a role of responsibility that millions and millions of people rely on. Just have someone thinking clearly and assessing data. You haven't ever learned how to question or go maybe I haven't got maybe whatt this one wrong? Yeah? What else? What's what's your idea over there?
00:59:41
Speaker 2: No?
00:59:41
Speaker 1: No, no, There's only one absolute truth and that's what it is, and we never questioned it. That's not a great way to take public officer.
00:59:47
Speaker 2: We're giving them the keys of the kingdom. They can make choices on behalf of the masses based on that inability to think outside of their own belief system.
00:59:57
Speaker 1: When I tell a story a bit, but when I first got gone, I first got diagnosed, I was like, oh my god, what he goes? Well, what do you think you've got the career of God? Of course you've got the career of God because of the brain you've got. There's no question that the drive that you had within you to be you drove the work ethic because you worked stupid hard, you know, I guess you know. Every hour you were pulling at the the cinema was an hours that you were at home or looking at people wearing different clothes and being out there. There's a question that you got where you are because you worked your a. You worked your ass off, and that's a part of that was a drive away from.
01:00:35
Speaker 2: This surely, absolutely, yeah, for sure. I just I think to live is to be curious, and I just saw such a lack of curiosity in the world that I was in. It was almost like life was a burden that had been thrust upon people and the only way to really get through it and the only purpose for it was to get to heaven at the end of it. So it honestly would be better to just change yourself in a basement somewhere so that you're never surrounded by anything else and just literally live in that situation so you can be completely pure and blameless. But I just thought, well, no, like if God just wanted us to be in heaven, then we'd just be in heaven. There's a reason why we have this earthly plane, and I think that the existence is there for us to explore to learn, because by me not meeting you and knowing you, then I'm cut off from part of God's creation. Yeah, to live is to be curious. And I was totally prepared to be, you know, mister devout Catholic until my dying day and never act on homosexually. Yeah, I was perfectly ready to do that. I didn't necessarily believe that it was right, but I thought, if that's what I'm being told and I don't want to go to Hell, then I'll make that sacrifice. But I don't think that it's wrong to actually experience the world and to meet people from other cultures and see other places in the world and expand my thinking and my understanding of things. And in so doing I started to realize just how little I did know, and how many things had been ingrained in me that I didn't actually really believe. I just thought I did. You know, I used to be very critical of the way people dressed, like because that was just what I was used to, because there was, you know, a certain way to dress and whatever, and you know, literally be like, oh, she looks like a slut, and I wouldn't even think anything of it, because that was that's how my mum talked. She'd be like, oh, look at that. Look at that slutty girl over there. Her mum must be so ashamed of her. And then you know, she'd turn to my sister and be like, you're not going to dress like that. So it's just sort of that thing, and you just get so used to it and you don't necessarily understand that the language is not okay. And in fact, I ended up I was shooting a TV series, an American TV series, and this was right when I was on the cusp of coming out. I just had my first experience with a guy. I was still very in my head about it. The industry, though it says it's super progressive, it was also very much like, you know, well, if you're gay, you're not going to get cast in certain roles, so better not come out ever, so a little bit like being back in a similar kind of cage there. And I just kissed a guy, and I was like actually coming out for the first time, and very worried and in my head about it, and then I had a little bit of a disagreement with one of my co stars. I was on the phone to my sister and I was just like, oh, I don't know, she's just off being a slut somewhere, and the coast overheard me say that and completely took me to task. We had a huge row. We've been friends for four or five years at that point, and I was so devastated that I'd hurt her feelings, but I kept trying to excuse myself, and it was really the first time that something like that had even still like I was twenty seven at that point, I was still like, oh oh, it made me really think so many different things about how I think, how I speak, what opinions do I have, just because I was sexually repressed and never had the freedom to go off and do that. Then you know, you know, only a few short months later I was emulating her behavior and loving it.
01:04:26
Speaker 1: So there's but you're absolutely right there, there's a reason that rumors fly about certain leading men because even though we know they're playing pretenzies on screen, yet we're yet to have a real big action star kidding ass and taken names that we also know lives with a dude and has kids. Yeah, we yet to have that. Yeah still in twenty twenty five.
01:04:58
Speaker 2: I think the closest we've had is like Ezra Miller, but then they turned out to be quite problematic, so not really someone that we can fly the flag high on.
01:05:09
Speaker 1: I was packing, was packing on a lot of muscle, A bit of a question, a bit of an answer to some of those those questions a.
01:05:15
Speaker 2: Little bit because I sort of agree, like, I think that moving beyond stereotype.
01:05:22
Speaker 1: I wish I had photos like that when I was younger. You're fucking great. How much work it took to get that big.
01:05:27
Speaker 2: I wish I was currently in that state as well. I've got a film coming out later this year, and I was in the best shape of my life for it, and then I took on this book right afterwards, and then the stress of it all, like lost all my hair, corters, old belly started happening, developed a bit of an autoimmune issue. So just kind of dealing with all of that now. And you know, the director of my new film keeps sending me stills and like trailers and stuff where I see myself looking all jacked, and I'm like, oh, I just don't want to be that guy again.
01:05:53
Speaker 1: Your muscle thankfully were back, and your muscles know how to do it.
01:05:57
Speaker 2: You also know how to absolutely and you know it's now being taken of all that stuff, so like I can bounce back to it. But yeah, I definitely did want to get away from the stereotype of, you know, growing up, the representation that I knew was Will and Grace and the characters on that you know We're you know, they were they were a stereotype of what a gay man is. But also I was absolutely not allowed to watch something like that because that was just part of the gay agenda to you know, try and force it down our throats by having one TV show. Sure so, and even still to this day, I think when because because the industry, you know, I don't want to you know, shoot the hand that's feeding me. But the industry when it does do things that are sort of queer related, I think they are trying to tick boxes. I think there's still a lot of tokenism in that world. And it's not so much that they are making things a lot of them. There are some that are great, but I think a lot of things they'll make things where they'll include so characters, not because they particularly want to have good representation, but because they go, oh, that is a box that we need to tick. And you know, I would love to see, you know, like just an old school rom com that happens to be two dudes and doesn't need to necessarily be about any of the former SOB stories because if we all know, read my book for that. But like, if we're going to go to the movies to watch a rom com, let's watch something that's maybe got a little bit more of the giggles. And yeah, the same with say like action stars and stuff. You know, I had an agent that would always say to me when he found out that I was gay, he got very upset with me because he felt that, you know, I had been lying to him. And I was like, well, no, dude, actually has nothing to do with you, but okay, but he just said, you know, you've got to keep this under wraps. We need to strategize this because if people find out, you'll never play a leading man and you'll never play a superhero. And I was like, well, psych, I've already done both, so been out.
01:08:04
Speaker 1: There. Yeah, there's the token episode or the token character. And then there's episode four of the Last of Us season one, which is if you have I want to do anything, it's a film in itself. You don't even know, don't even have to watch the rest of the series. Absolutely, I'll go to just thinking, Yeah, so staggeringly beautifully done and wonderfully cast and Nick.
01:08:29
Speaker 2: Nick often was such a surprise. I mean, Murray Bartlett is incredible, but yeah, nick Offman, just like the tenderness and just the love and the warmth and affection between the two and the fact that it was just a love story. Yeah, just go. Things like that go such a long way.
01:08:49
Speaker 1: And it kind of leads me to the thing I kind of wanted to. I guess you know, ultimately, we as humans, there is a true human need that is being was being ignored, would buy all of the stuff that was forced on your throat. We as humans. There's things that happen when we drink water. There's things that happen when we eat nourishment. There's things that happen when we have physical intimacy that only happen when we have physical intacy. And if we don't have physical intency, it's bad for us. We get sick, it's we don't think great, you know, we don't. We don't live as long. Physical intimacy touching another human is a very important thing that we need to have, just like we need sunshine and sleep. To have been restricted of that for so long, and you know, the idea that you were willing to go you'll live the rest of your life without it, just so you could be a it shows you a lot about the being lauded over with will you'll be ostracized?
01:09:42
Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah, And ultimately, as sad as is to say, like because I was trying to avoid the ostracision, That's why I was willing to go that extra mile. But then when I did eventually do the coming out, I mean, all of my fears were realized. So the fact that that's still happening today it's twenty twenty five, you know, that is still a fear that younger children in those worlds will still have. And I don't think that that's right or fair. But I also know how voiceless that they are in that kind of circumstance, which is why, like you know, my book is quite TMI. It's embarrassingly revealing of my life and my personal life, including sort of the ways that I've misstepped since coming out, and the relationships that I've had, and how ill equipped I was to deal with those kinds of things, and therefore the stupid mistakes that I made and the setbacks as a consequence, those are things that I would also like for other people to be able to avoid. One of the things that heightened those issues was the fact that I didn't have the family support to fall back on. And I think that by being honest in this book and talking about all of those grave errors that I did make, you know, I'll wear my own mistakes, perhaps people will shift their thinking. Perhaps that ostracision will become less and less because there might be a greater understanding of what it actually like, what the experience is really like for people like myself, and therefore their gay queer loved one that might be in their family having those same issues. I think if I can even just help a handful of people out that way, then it'll be worth the hair loss.
01:11:38
Speaker 1: What would you say to parents who are starting to you know, the kids five or six. You know, there's five six seven year olds in my life. They're wearing dresses, you know, they move in a certain way. Their parents are like Matt, so they are. What would you say to either parents of kids like that, or maybe teachers who are faced with this choice of let my kid and love my kid, let my kid be who they are and love them but who they are, or if I do that, I will get ostracized like face with this choice of love, but I don't want to lose this community and my support. What would you say to those people who might be listening.
01:12:20
Speaker 2: Out of the two of you, who's the more vulnerable, the young child or yourself? I think always pay attention to kids. Kids are smart, They start to develop themselves and their personalities at a young age. And coming from a place where I always felt like a second class citizen because you're just a child, you know nothing, I just think give the respect that a child deserves to just become who they are. Leave them alone, you know, because yes, there are things that are just going to be phases, and there are some things that aren't going to be phases. Maybe putting on the skirt is just a phase, maybe it isn't. Who cares. Just let them do their thing because they'll end up being whoever they are, regardless of what you say or do. But you have the ability to make that an easier life or a more difficult life. And I think as a parent who loves their child, surely you're not going to choose the difficult option.
01:13:19
Speaker 1: There's a person in my life who's child started wanting to transition to live life as a girl when they were about fifteen or sixteen, and I was talking to them about it, and they just they were so cool. But it I've never really spoken to someone who's in this situation as you are. And you know, because I'm making puberty was starting to really kick in and they were having to make a lot of heavy decisions about this. And this person just said to me, look, the suicide rates for kids like my child eighty five times higher. I'd rather have and a live daughter than a dead son.
01:14:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, so amen, that's what we're doing. Yeah, No, I completely agree with that. Yeah. I think it is ironic, isn't it that the say, the conservative people in my life who will be trying to groom a child into making a life choice of celibacy at the age of fifteen and sixteen, will say, how dare you allow gender affirming care for a fifteen sixteen year old when they're too young to make a decision about their life. Does that make sense? I don't think so.
01:14:33
Speaker 1: Not a lot of stuff about any of this makes sense. Yeah, but it has been protected by the Solemnity in the reverence around it for so long people are afraid to speak about it. But I don't know if we can keep doing that. It's so damaging. And like I dare say, you're one of the lucky ones, Tim, there's plenty of people who maybe you didn't know about, but didn't.
01:15:00
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, yeah, no, I'm very well aware.
01:15:03
Speaker 1: Of that everything you did, but they didn't have the strength to do what you've done.
01:15:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you know. I make a mention in my book. I've had a very unique set of circumstances in my life, and I think that being adopted with something that always made me just have a little asterisk about myself, that always just made me feel a little bit like they don't get me. And I think that was something that really helped me a lot. If I was biologically my parents' child and I was feeling that same kind of lack of understanding, I think that would have been more difficult, and I'm not sure if I would have been strong enough to handle.
01:15:38
Speaker 1: That it's been wonderful that I'm so happy you came in today. I didn't say a lot of the stuff, but you should know that my body has been coursing with emotional memory of a lot of very similar things to what you've been describing in the suburbs of Brisbane when I was younger, and I'm just grateful that my kids don't go through that. Yeah, it's not right.
01:16:08
Speaker 2: It's not right.
01:16:09
Speaker 1: No, And if anybody at the Open s Day wants to write to me, I look forward to your correspondence. I hope your paperweight is lovely and you have a really good type setter, so I look forward to your letter. That was my guest, Tim Pocock. I was not quite as prepared as I thought I was for having that conversation with Tim. I thought, no, I didn't grow up in a CULTI kind of thing like he did. No, wait, not at all. But the more that we spoke, the more I found parallels, which, as I mentioned before, went as intense as what he was going through. Oh boy, there were some stuff that we didn't talk about on air. There's some stuff that we spoke about once we stopped rolling that was very close to home from what too much describing I'm thrilled if some people have a great time and the religion brings them things that they allow us wouldn't get good for you. I'm happy for you, I really am, because I know to be quick to see where religious people are right. But the kind of stuff that Tim's talking about, I can't abide by that, and I don't know if our community should. Just because it's shrouded in the reverence that surrounded religion for so long doesn't mean that it's okay. Some of that stuff is pretty not okay. It's a long conversation. I'm sure it's just there's no where you finished. If you have any thoughts, you can find me send us email at gmail dot com. That goes for you overstate. Maybe you can come along with the Story Club show July sixth the Factory Theater in Marckville. It's this weekend with Merrick Watts, Marley Silver, Ugly, Phil O'Neill is joining us Nardia Townzone. So we're not Lodge and myself where going with the theme everybody needs good neighbors. I'd love to see you there. Great wa