GOING to work with your parents can be a boring business, only made exciting by the stationery you can steal or body parts you can photocopy.
For Zac Bell, following in the footsteps of his Gold Logie-winning mum, Rebecca Gibney, was the acting break he’s been waiting for - not to mention the chance to fall deeply for one of his co-stars and first “grown-up crush.”
No doubt embarrassing her 10-year-old with the intimate details of his small screen debut in Seven’s crime drama, Winter (airing this Wednesday night), Gibney admitted she “tried everything“ to talk her son out of a showbiz career, but relented when he won producers over on his own.
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Exempting herself from the casting process, the show’s leading lady and co-executive producer said Bell had been begging her and set designer husband Richard for a job since they started their production company last year.
“Ever since he was little, even when we lived in Tasmania, he absolutely idolised (the late Crocodile Hunter) Steve Irwin. He would go out on his own and go ‘right, we’re in the Tasmanian wilderness and looking for the wild wombats’ or whatever it was he was pretending to stalk. Seriously, he’s always been like that and wanted to have his own nature show,” Gibney told News Corp Australia.
The opportunity to play a small role in Winter - as the nephew of this series’ central murder victim - was all the break Bell needed, running lines with his famous mum at home but holding his own on set.
“I said to him, ‘okay, darling you have to do this by yourself, I’m leaving...and they cast him. The director said ‘he’s a natural.’”
Despite the family connection, Gibney made few exceptions for the show’s star recruit.
“There were a couple of days where they were long hours and I could see him getting tired. Then he came up to me and said ‘can we go home soon?’ and I said, ‘are you talking to me as mum, or as a producer, because the producer says you’re not going home until you’ve done the job. He’d say, ‘well can I have another donut?’ and I’d say, as a mum, ‘no you can’t.”
Her tough love softened a little when her only child got a bit teary when he had to farewell his on-screen mother, actor Kate Mulvany.
“He absolutely fell in love with Kate...in fact, I think she’s the first grown-up crush he’s ever had. When we said goodbye at the end of filming, in the car he started to cry. I said to him ‘are you alright?’ and he said ‘I don’t know...I have this funny feeling, I’m going to miss her so much,’” Gibney said.
Bell said the best advice from his actor mum was “don’t act. She said it needs to be real. In that moment it’s reality so nothing else matters.”
Inspired by Irwin, he plans to join his school’s drama club, as well as pursue his dream of being a TV presenter.
“Even though (Steve Irwin) wasn’t acting, I loved the way he was on camera. He had so much energy and enthusiasm. I like acting but I like presenting too.”
Speaking as his mum not just his co-star, Gibney said: “he’s actually a really respectful, lovely boy and I’m very proud of that. He’s very polite and well-mannered...so hopefully he sticks with those traits and doesn’t become a diva!”
Winter airs Wednesdays, 9pm on Seven.
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