Mark Coles Smith concedes he may have overreacted to the person who told him he was “like the next Aaron Pedersen” a few years ago.
“I was a little triggered,” the 33-year-old Indigenous actor, who burst onto the big screen in Last Cab to Darwin, admits. “I went rushing to the defence of my ego and said, ‘I’m not the next anyone else’.”
His prickliness at the time seems especially ironic now because he has just landed the lead in the third season of Mystery Road, playing a younger version of police detective Jay Swann, the character Pedersen has made indelibly his own in two movies (Mystery Road and Goldstone) and two series.
Indigenous actor Mark Coles Smith, photographed on August 16, 2021 on the beach at Broome, is set to take on the role of Jay Swann in Mystery Road: Origins.Credit:Petris Torres
“I really wish I’d said something different to that person, like ‘they’re big boots to fill’,” Coles Smith says with a wry chuckle. “What Aaron has done with the role can’t be replicated. He’s made it what it is, and he’s done that while working at the height of his craft. Jay Swann is this iconic character that audiences have spent a lot of time with.
“Those factors are creating a bit of pressure for me, but also inspiration,” he adds. “I’ve been given the responsibility of an origin story. We’re venturing back to a younger Jay, to discover how and why he’s become the man we’ve grown to know. There’s a bit there to take on, but I like to think I’m not doing it on my own.”
Directing Mystery Road: Origin, which will begin production in and around Kalgoorlie later this year, is Dylan Rivers, son of Warwick Thornton (who directed three episodes of season two). Shooting it is Tyson Perkins, nephew of Rachel Perkins (who directed season one). “It’s being helmed by a generation of up and coming First Nations filmmakers,” Coles Smith says. “This is an exercise in young blood, and I’m excited by that.”
Aaron Pedersen has stamped his mark indelibly on the role of police detective Jay Swan across two movies and two series in the Mystery Road franchise.
The Nyikini man was a teenager when the kids’ series Ocean Star came to Broome to film. He stumbled his way into a role but says he has approached the acting game since with a degree of scepticism. Even so, when he moved to Melbourne a decade ago to study audio engineering and sound design – “my personal passion” – part of the lure was his agent’s prediction that he’d get lots more acting work if he did so.
“It’s in my nature to be expressive and want to tell stories, whether it’s through acting or sound or music,” he says. “But it’s been a wary journey, a slow transition; do I tell people in my hometown this is what I do? It’s such an abnormal thing for so many other people. ‘You’re an actor? What do you really do?’”
