Actor Samuel Johnson weighed in to Molly Meldrum’s newest public controversy in an explosive radio interview yesterday – and his vitriol in the direction of the person he performed in an acclaimed 2016 TV miniseries took many unexpectedly.
“I’m sick of him doing this, I’m sick of it,” Johnson mentioned, weighing in on 79-year-old Meldrum dropping his trousers onstage at a Melbourne Elton John live performance final week.
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For Johnson, it seems the ill-advised stunt introduced again recollections of his personal cringe-worthy onstage encounter with Meldrum, when he crashed his 2017 Gold Logie acceptance speech.
The win – for enjoying Meldrum within the two-part miniseries about his life, Molly – got here at a pivotal level in Johnson’s personal life. The actor had change into a tireless fundraiser for most cancers analysis, beginning the Love Your Sister charity in 2012 along with his sister Connie, who had been identified with a number of cancers all through her life.
By the time the Logies came about in April 2017, Connie’s sickness had progressed – she would die 5 months later, aged simply 40.
As Johnson defined on-air yesterday, he had deliberate to make use of his Gold Logies speech to attract consideration to the trigger, very similar to Carrie Bickmore had completed in her well-known Beanies 4 Brain Cancer Gold Logie speech two years earlier.
Instead, Meldrum rushed the stage shortly after Johnson accepted the award – then took over the microphone, giving a rambling and at occasions express speech of his personal.
“He [Johnson] rings me from Broome, he said, ‘I’ve been offered this role of playing you in a miniseries,” Meldrum mentioned, as a shocked Johnson watched on.
“[He said,] ‘When I get back home from this bike ride on this unicycle I’ll come across and study you.’
“I said, ‘Sam, you already know me, what are you talking about? I know, you wanna study me, I’ll teach you how to be gay and be gay.’
“He said, ‘F**k off!’”
And on it went, Meldrum talking for minutes on finish as Johnson stood by patiently, watching his second within the highlight slip away.
“I know it’s very hard to play an old drama queen like myself, and you did a great job, right. So on behalf of the drama queens of Australia, I would like to crown you also with my gold hat, here it is, well done. Thank you everyone,” Meldrum continued, earlier than the ceremony wrapped up, with Johnson barely capable of give any of his personal deliberate acceptance speech.
In the times after, Johnson was sanguine, releasing his personal pre-prepared speech on-line – an emotional, articulate name to motion for he and Connie’s most cancers charity.
He even defended Meldrum over the controversial second, saying that whereas he “must have been loosey-goosey”, it was in reality “a really sweet act”.
“It was [a bit] awkward, but it was classic vintage Molly. It’s Molly doing Molly times a hundred,” he mentioned on The Project.
Six years later, and Johnson clearly felt able to share his true emotions about what went down that evening, in an look on 4BC’s Afternoons With Sofie Formica yesterday that left the radio hosts speechless.
Phoning in to the radio present, Johnson revealed that Molly’s Logies second had come as much more of a shock because the pair had been estranged.
“A few years ago I won a Gold Logie for playing Molly. We weren’t getting along at that point, because for six months he’d told me who to thank, and he wasn’t even nominated for the Gold Logie. He’d wanted me to make it all about the network and thank the producers, and I wanted to make it all about cancer,” Johnson revealed.
“We disagreed on that, and we didn’t speak the whole night.”
He revealed that throughout the ceremony, late music promoter and pal of Meldrum Michael Gudinski got here to him with a request: If he received, might Molly be part of him onstage to current him with a golden hat. Johnson says he firmly refused.
“I said no, absolutely not. He’s not nominated. They announced my name, I was getting up there to have my Carrie Beanie moment, my million-dollar moment, the moment where I was going to plug the charity … Molly got up, gave me a hat and interminable drivel for eight minutes that nobody understood.
“He took away my moment, and recently he took away Elton John’s moment too. I’m sick of him doing this; I’m sick of it.”
And Johnson doubled down in one other radio interview this morning, talking to Jonesy & Amanda on WSFM Breakfast.
“There’s a lot I haven’t said and I’m trying really hard to be diplomatic but I’ve seen this same type of thing happen over and over again,” he mentioned, when requested in regards to the Elton John incident by the hosts.
He mentioned Meldrum had been “drunk as a skunk” on-stage on the Logies, and requested: “Who’s looking after him? He must not be out in the public during the PM, not with the way he drinks.”
He completed with some stinging recommendation for the person he performed to such widespread acclaim: “Hang up your hat, mate.”
