The cast of Lowdown.
Adam Zwar lets celebrities get a little bit of payback in his new comedy about showbiz reporters.
Magazines, print journos and gossip columnists beware! ABC's new comedy series Lowdown will turn the tables on media who make a living out of celebrities.
Adam Zwar, best known as the long-suffering boyfriend on Wilfred, plays Alex, an entertainment reporter for the tabloid newspaper Sunday Sun. Zwar devised the series with co-creator and director Amanda Brotchie, based loosely on his years as a journo before turning his attention to performing.
"We always hear about celebrities and how difficult it is for them to deal with the media," he says. "But this is a show about how difficult it is for the media to deal with celebrities.
"They live interesting lives, those people, meeting interesting people everyday. Their morals are constantly challenged.
"If they see something happen in a nightclub immediately they have to work out whether to write the story or not, what the moral and ethical implications are."
During his time as a showbiz journalist and columnist, Zwar claims he spent a week holed up in a Stuttgart Hotel with AC/DC, was threatened by Sting, had his tape recorder thrown out a hotel room window by Billy Idol, and was heavied by bodyguards of an Aussie tennis champ.
In Lowdown he will draw upon such experiences while looking at the tenuous line between subject and author. Zwar says the journos are often complicit in generating stories rather than simply reporting on it.
"They're an entertainment industry as well and sometimes they just want to turn the words around to make the story a little bit more exciting," he says.
Also appearing in the series are Paul Denny, Beth Buchanan, Dailan Evans, Kim Gyngell, Julia Zemiro and Ashley Zukerman with narration by Geoffrey Rush. There are also guest appearances from Rob Sitch, Judith Lucy, Steve Bisley, Martin Sacks, and Craig McLachlan.
"It was great to have Craig McLachlan. He gave us three episodes of television in the hours he was on set by virtue of telling us stories from the '90s!" he laughs.
"It was insane for him. He's so wonderfully indiscreet and hilarious with his anecdotes. He's an encyclopaedia of that period of television madness."
Lowdown airs 9pm Wednesdays on ABC1.
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