Hunter Page-Lochard rolls with the punches in Kid Snow, September 15, 2024
/In the midst of a successful streak of contemporary television roles, the actor joins a cast a fellow rising Aussie stars for director Paul Goldman’s ’70s-set drama
Portrait of Hunter Page-Lochard courtesy of Madman Films.
By Cynthia Wang
Growing up in a family of acclaimed dancers, Hunter Page-Lochard saw firsthand how moving the body could move the soul. Enmeshed in theatre arts from childhood, he discovered that the quicker he could master choreography or learn how to behave as naturally as a character would, the better he could manifest the essence of that character. “As actors, you’re always looking for something interesting to do and for something that you want to do that’s impactful,” he says. “It’s something more than background noise. You grow as a person.”
With that in mind, Page-Lochard has battled flames in the 2021 series Fires and hit the surf in 2022’s Barons. In February 2024, he won the AACTA Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama for his powerful portrayal of Indigenous rights activist Lynus Preston in season two of The Newsreader. In each instance, he says the physical demands of the role have informed him as an actor. “You take the elements from everything,” he explains. “Fires is probably a really good example. It’s not so much that I left that going, ‘Oh, I know how to firefight now.’ But it’s like you understood what a certain demographic goes through, what that workforce is and taking that into account.
“Each project and each thing you learn adds to your repertoire and to your personality,” he says. “It’s always kind of uplifting. I think projects like that… as actors, you’re always looking for projects that elevate you and your personality.”
Page-Lochard found such a project in Kid Snow, the latest film by director Paul Goldman (Australian Rules, Ego: The Michael Gudinski Story). In it, themes of loyalty, redemption and finding one’s self-worth populate the carnival-like world of Australian tent boxing in 1970s Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. “Kid Snow is a roller coaster ride into a story about brothers and the burdens of family,” Goldman wrote ahead of the movie’s release. “A story of simmering relationships and the uneasy truces people make when haunted by the past, until secrets and lies inevitably surface, tearing them apart. These are lives cruelled by fate and destiny, redeemed by learning what and who is worth fighting for.”
Page-Lochard shares a light-hearted moment with director Paul Goldman on the set of Kid Snow. Photograph by David Dare Parker courtesy of Madman Films.
Although Billy Howle (boxer Kid Snow), Tom Bateman (promoter brother Rory Quinn) and Phoebe Tonkin (single-mum Sunny) drive the central plot, the ensemble cast includes Page-Lochard (Lizard), Mark Coles Smith (Lovely), Shaka Cook (Armless) and Nathan Phillips (Billy) as Kid Snow’s boxing-troupe mates. Lizard, in particular, becomes Kid’s confidant, trainer and corner. “Out of anyone really, Lizard would step up to the plate and represent that group really as one individual, really, to kind of uplift him and get him ready to where he needs to be,” Page-Lochard says, “but also to ground him in a spiritual place, ground him to country.”
Years ago, Bidjara and Māori Australian star Deborah Mailman told Page-Lochard a story about a relative of hers who boxed in the tent circuit, “so I kind of knew about the world a little bit, but I didn’t know the details per se,” he says. Yet on set, former amateur pugilists and a tent showman served as consultants. “Learning from them and hearing their stories was quite insightful,” he says, “and it just finished colouring the full picture that Deborah Mailman started.”
Lizard (Page-Lochard, left) tells Kid Snow (Billy Howle) just how much further he needs to push himself to get in shape for the fight of his life. Photograph by David Dare Parker courtesy of Madman Films.
Naturally, Page-Lochard had to pick up enough boxing skills to be viewed as someone’s mentor. He also had to run across a vast amount of outback terrain without seeming winded. “That was grueling, I’m not gonna sugarcoat that,” he admits with a laugh. “Look, I’m very fortunate again for growing up in a physical family, in a dancing background, a theatre background. So pushing through the pain, I’m very used to it. But poor Billy was not! So there was a lot me being Lizard in real life trying to push him along.”
Making up for the energy exerted was taking in the scenery. “It was fun because of the landscape,” Page-Lochard says. “You’ve got to do this run 20,000 times and then change locations and do it another 20,000 times. But still, when you are waiting there to do your take, you just take a moment to look around and you just breathe in the country and you go, ‘OK, I’m not that mad about this!’ You look at where we are and think, ‘This is pretty gorgeous.’”
“That was grueling, I’m not gonna sugarcoat that,” Page-Lochard says about running across the Kalgoorlie landscape with Howle. Photograph by David Dare Parker courtesy of Madman Films.
When Lizard isn’t running or sparring, he spends the nights with the other boxers. Collectively, they have passed on their customs and culture to Kid Snow, imbuing him with both a sense of camaraderie and the freedom to find himself. That’s why they aren’t too worried when Kid leaves the tent for a few days; they tell a frantic Rory that his brother is just on walkabout and will come back in his own time.
Of that moment, Page-Lochard blended the traditions of his Indigenous and African American heritage with that of his costars to make their characters rich in purpose. “We had a great rehearsal period in Kalgoorlie, and those were some of the things that we did definitely delve into,” Page-Lochard says. “I think that’s a great example of a scene where there is a level of understanding that not many other characters would understand, and there is a sense of spirituality and a sense of groundedness. It’s sort of like an initiation and Kid definitely does go through a sense of initiation, and it’s something that especially Aboriginal men are very familiar with.”
It doesn’t hurt that Page-Lochard got to catch up with Smith and Cook, sharing their personal and career experiences during down time in filming. “We always say this to each other as actors — it’s lovely being able to work in mainstream and to be able to call this a living. We’re very fortunate and grateful for that,” he says “But, you know, when you do get to work with mob, it’s always nice.”
Billy (Nathan Phillips, left, kneeling) and Armless (Shaka Cook, standing by the lockers) lend their support for Kid Snow (Howle) in silence whilst he receives a last bit of instruction from Rory (Tom Bateman, far right) and a shoulder rub from Lizard (Page-Lochard) in Kid Snow. Photograph by David Dare Parker courtesy of Madman Films.
For Page-Lochard, working on Kid Snow also represents a different kind of Aboriginal representation. “I think the more we all are seen together in motion pictures like this, where it isn’t traumatic, the more palatable it’s going to be for the Australian audience to not feel like [our presence in films] is political,” he says. “There’s elements of colonialism in there, but it’s not so much a story about that. I feel like there are more places for Indigenous characters like that in motion pictures and doing films like Kid Snow is great because the more people see it, the more we get to make more movies that aren’t traumatic.”
To that end, Page-Lochard travelled to the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival to pitch the upcoming slate from Djali House, his production company. “It’s very exciting — we’ve already spoken to certain people, certain investors, certain sales agents and distributors, and kind of gotten a real lay of the land,” he says. Although he cannot get into more details about a project involving his father, former Bangarra Dance Theatre artistic director Stephen Page, he is thrilled at expanding his directorial range beyond shorts and TV episodes.
“I’ve got a feature film that I’ve been working on for a while called Native Gods, which is my sci-fi epic fantasy,” Page-Lochard says. “That’s kind of the main priority at the moment, just working on that. That’s the one that’s got development funding. And yeah, it’s exciting. It’s funny — when you can be ambitious and want something of a scale really, really big and to have everyone around you tell you you are crazy — when you just put the work into it and really organise yourself and talk to the right people and stuff like that, it looks less impossible. Watch this space.”
For more information, go to https://www.madman.com.au/kid-snow/. I published this piece on Medium as well.