Ben O’Toole teams up with besties and ex-flatmates Lincoln Younes, Kick Gurry and Alex England for new comedy

There’s a certain camaraderie that can form when a bunch of people are thrust together to live with one another in a share house. Get beyond the bickering over who’s turn it is to put out the bins, or do the washing up, and it’s possible to forge lifelong friendships. No one knows this better than Kick Gurry, Ben O’Toole, Alexander England and Lincoln Younes — they all bunked in together from 2016, becoming flatmates while living in Los Angeles auditioning for roles Stateside, forming close bonds in the process. It was while living in that house that Gurry, who first rose to national fame after starring in the 1999 Aussie film classic Looking for Alibrandi, started working on a treatment for a series that would go on to become Stan’s new six-part comedy, C*A*U*G*H*T. The show is about four Australian soldiers who get captured behind enemy lines and make a hostage video that goes viral. When looking for inspiration for his four central characters, Gurry didn’t need to look far — they were all standing right there, in his kitchen! “It’s been so fun, working together,” says O’Toole, who is speaking to STM from his Sydney home. The 34-year-old actor has carved a varied stage and screen career since graduating from WAAPA in 2011. This year he’s appeared in two well-received stage productions, starring as Stanley in Red Line Productions’ A Streetcar Named Desire, and in a new play, On the Beach, for Sydney Theatre Company. He’ll soon be seen as Teddy in the much-anticipated Netflix adaptation of Boy Swallows Universe. “I mean, it’s legitimately a dream to make something with your friends. And not to be self-congratulatory, but also to make something people will enjoy. And thus far, the people who have seen it, have, so that’s been great.” He’s right — if early episodes we’ve seen are anything to go by, then audiences are bound to get a kick out of the riotously silly buddy comedy, set to hit screens on September 28. It’s legitimately hilarious — and has attracted some big name stars. Alongside the four friends (Gurry writes, directs, but also stars), the series also sees Lost star Matthew Fox, Susan Sarandon, Bryan Brown and Sean Penn step into roles, the latter also executive producing. He hopped aboard after seeing an early “proof of concept” film the flatmates shot pre-COVID-19 back in 2019. “It was the strength of Kick’s scripts that attracted pretty much everybody,” O’Toole explains. “But also, Kick’s relationships — he has been in the industry for so long, and he is an incredible storyteller. “Sean Penn was a friend of his, saw the proof of concept and was like, ‘I have to be a part of this’ — and Susan Sarandon. “Then there’s Matthew Fox, he’s a very good mate of his as well, so it was pretty surreal.” It was during 2020 that Gurry began working on early scripts. By this stage, the pandemic had hit full force and their cosy share house was about to be ripped apart. Younes had been shooting a pilot for a Warner Bros show that ended up being shelved due to COVID, and he returned home. England was the next to return, to be closer to his partner, Gold Digger star Claire Lovering, who was back in Australia. It was just Gurry and O’Toole left, “but then I got on the phone to my agent, and they were like, ‘Get the f... back here. ’So I was like, ‘I think I’m out of here, man,’ and he was like, ‘are you serious?’ “Then he left as well.” Though the pandemic temporarily scuppered their Hollywood ambitions, the four ex-flatmates remained in contact, and as Gurry beavered away at early C*A*U*G*H*T scripts, the others weighed in over Zoom. He already had them in mind for their characters, and they’d shot their teaser, so all felt bonded to the project. “The scripts started getting developed in lockdown,” O’Toole explains, “and we started seeing iterations of scripts, and on Zoom we would do table reads, to hear it out loud.” The next thing was to actually get it made. It was a matter of finding a time when all the actors had availability in their increasingly busy schedules, “which is such a difficult thing,” O’Toole admits. “You are millimetres from getting a show greenlit, and you need the team, but at the same time it’s like, ‘Well, we can’t internally hold ourselves to something that might not ever happen’.” Luckily, the stars aligned and Stan came to the party, agreeing to allow Gurry and his team to make the show as they intended. O’Toole made space in his schedule to begin filming late last year — a good thing, because as he explains, if the project had continued without him attached, he would have been devastated. “Kick and I wouldn’t be friends,” he laughs. “I mean, it would be over — I would have been devastated, and like, ‘You know, that part was based on me, and you cast someone else?’ No!” As O’Toole explains, all of the central characters, the four soldiers captured in the series, are exaggerated versions of their own personalities. “All the characters, pretty much, are extensions of ourselves. There are some people in this show that might not like me saying that, but it’s the truth,” he says. Thankfully, he’s a big fan of Rowdy Gaines, the “30-year-old man-child with a hair-trigger temper and a never-ending thirst for misadventure” he gets to inhabit in the show. Rowdy is not quite as slapstick as some of the other soldier mates — he has a sick daughter, Indy, back home who needs money for medical treatment. It’s Rowdy’s idea to try to use the hostage video as an attempt to gain fame, in the process helping to raise awareness for his daughter’s GoFundMe treatment appeal. “Rowdy is a beautiful character in that he asks the question of an audience: ‘what would you go through to save your child’s life?’” O’Toole says. “That grounds the events in the POW camp in reality, and gives us permission to do absurd things, but for every absurd moment there is a moment of truth and gravitas. “I think that’s what Kick’s scripts captured beautifully. We’re putting the audience’s heart in their throat, then the very next line they’ll be pissing themselves laughing.” In episode two, his character’s back-story is fleshed out, and O’Toole gives a spectacularly good performance as a grieving dad prepared to do whatever it takes to save his child — he’s fantastic. He feels the same way about the performances of his co-stars. “How good is Lincoln in this show?” he says. “He always gets cast as these broody leading men . . . but he’s bloody hilarious.” He’s right. Younes, best known for his recent role as leading man Jon Ibrahim in the biopic drama Last King of the Cross, gives a truly hilarious performance as — and we’re quoting here verbatim — “a pansexual Lebanese Australian with a giant d... that his father has always resented him for.” See, we told you this show was ridiculous. “Alex is great too, and Kick is hilarious,” O’Toole adds. “Even Matthew Fox — he has been cast as the straight man, and he’s just ridiculous, and so funny.” There’s something joyous about watching these four friends have the time of their life on screen — it’s hard to imagine any of them keeping a straight face as they filmed some of their more out-there scenes. “Kick will probably hate me saying this, but so many takes were ruined by him, the director, laughing,” O’Toole admits. “We’d be in the middle of a scene, and Kick would have to turn to face away from the camera, and we’d be like, ‘What are you doing?’ and he’d be like, ‘I’m sorry — I just can’t be a part of this scene anymore,’ because he was laughing so hard. “We were all doing it.” Audiences will be too. And it’s not a stretch to think this show may join other Aussie comedy success stories from this year, like Prime Video’s Deadloch and ABC’s Gold Diggers, becoming viewer’s new favourites. If it doesn’t — that’s not a big deal either. These four friends will continue hanging out, continue cracking each other up, and continue to be in one another’s lives, despite the fact they’re no longer fighting for first shower in the morning. “We do, genuinely, get along very well,” says O’Toole. “And even if the show doesn’t work, we will probably still keep getting along. “It was so much fun and I just feel so grateful and fortunate.” C*A*U*G*H*T premiers on Stan on September 28.