Matching Jack

First published on 16 Aug 2010. Updated on 16 Aug 2010.

Marisa (Jacinda Barrett) is having a lousy week. No sooner is her young son Jack (Tom Russell) diagnosed with leukemia than she discovers that her husband (Richard Roxburgh) is a serial philanderer. While Jack befriends another leukemia sufferer (Kodi Smit-McPhee) Marisa becomes close to his Irish father (James Nesbitt). Matching Jack is a romantic tearjerker about illness, infidelity and silver linings. Veteran Aussie director Nadia Tass explains the making of her first local film (with partner David Parker) in 13 years.

What was the inspiration for this film?
This was inspired by a number of true stories. Lynne Renew wrote the original script and it was just a very strong, emotional story. The idea that a child's life might be saved through his father's infidelity was just so original and so loaded that we were immediately pretty keen on doing it.

Getting the tone of this film right must have been difficult?
When we first read the script ten years ago, tonally it was different. We added more humour. I think David and I are pretty much known for taking serious subject matter and couching it in humour.
 
Jacinda Barrett is an Australian actress but this is her first Australian film...
I had Jacinda on my radar from a long time ago. The audience is actually going to believe that Jacinda Barrett is actually Marisa Hagen, because even though Jacinda has been in Bridget Jones's Diary and Ladder 49 and The Last Kiss and all of that, she actually isn't a recognisable face to that degree that it's going to colour their perception of the character.

What made you choose Kodi Smit-McPhee, James Nesbitt and Richard Roxburgh?
It was about three years before we shot it that we started talking to Kodi and Kodi's father. I had to have Kodi play Finn. He's such a wonderful actor. And Jimmy [Nesbitt] read the script five years before we shot it and said yes right away and stuck with us through all the vagaries of the financing process. I was thrilled that he wanted to come on board. Richard [Roxburgh] was kind of late into it. It was actually a really rough role to cast because he begins as the bad guy and we needed to make that character very human and not just see him of a caricature of the all bad guys out there who were screwing around. I didn't want to go there and neither did Richard.

Is it true you re-mortgaged your house to help finance it?
Yeah that's true!
 
It's more than a decade since you've made a film in Australia, right?
Yeah and I really wanted to come home. I felt this film would sit so much better in Melbourne. We did talk about Seattle.
 
You've made a couple of TV films with Julia Roberts' production company in the States. How did that come about?
She approached us. She saw Amy (1997).

That's flattering.
Yeah, it was good, because it meant we did the first two for her and that was setting the tone for the subsequent films that were going to be made and it's good. There's been constant work in America for us. Gaynor Flynn