‘I used to be a snob’: Joel Edgerton on his return to TV in twisty thriller Dark Matter

Are you happy in your life? It’s a challenging question, but it’s also the title of the first episode of Joel Edgerton’s twisty new sci-fi series Dark Matter, in which he plays alternative versions of himself. So it’s an obvious ask: Are you happy with your life, Joel?

“Yeah, I am, but it’s an interesting thing, right?” says Edgerton. “Because we walk past each other on the street, and we run into colleagues, and we ask the question, ‘How are you?’ and we generally always say great or good. But in ourselves, we have other, more complicated, conversations going on about where we feel we are and what we’re missing, and then what we hoped for, or the things that weren’t satisfied for us in our life.

“I don’t know anyone, including myself, that is happy 100 per cent of the time. But I’m aware of how lucky I am. And for all the ups and downs, many ups and downs, I can say that I feel like life is far better for me now than I ever imagined it would be, but I’d still have my days and I still suffer my anxieties. I’m happy in my life and I do wonder what else I could have been, but I wouldn’t choose to go and swap it out.”

The 49-year-old – he’ll be 50 next month – is talking over Zoom from Los Angeles, ahead of the premiere of the nine-part Apple TV+ series. He’s wearing a fetching navy crocheted shirt and his beard is in full bloom.

“I’m glad you noticed,” he says, laughing about his bushy beard. “I’m moving into my Ernest Hemingway phase.”

The last time I spoke to Edgerton was in 2018, when he was in Sydney to promote Boy Erased, the film he wrote, directed and starred in. Back then, he was keeping up a frenetic pace, working on two to three films a year, and living between LA and Sydney.

He’s slowed down a bit since – being a dad to toddler twins will do that – but what has really changed is his approach to television. Since his 2001 breakout on the small screen in Ten’s big hit The Secret Life of Us, in which he played bogan tradie Will, Edgerton has rarely appeared in a TV series. There’s been a handful of shows – The Underground Railroad and a guest appearance in Obi-Wan Kenobi are two of the biggest – but Dark Matter marks a definite shift in his approach to work.

“During COVID, I was watching so much TV, and I used to be a snob about film versus television,” says Edgerton. “And I realised, while I’m watching a lot of television, now I’m really enjoying it, and I’m watching actors get to explore character over more than an hour and a half, in a series of eight or nine or 10 episodes.

“And I thought the writing on television was really fantastic. Succession is so great, for example, the writing is so muscular and awesome. And the performances and the actors look like they’re having so much fun.

“So when I read this book [Dark Matter], and realised they were making a series, I was like, ‘This is a real challenge I’ve never had before, playing two versions of the same character and exploring all these ideas and challenges I’ve never had, in a cool story that reflects things that I think about a lot myself,’ so I got really into it.”

In Dark Matter, based on Blake Crouch’s 2017 bestseller of the same name, Edgerton plays Jason Dessen, a Chicago physicist living a quiet life with his wife, Daniela (Jennifer Connelly), and their teenage son Charlie.

After meeting an old friend at a bar one night, Jason is attacked on his way home by an alternative version of himself, drugged and then taken to a large metal box. When he wakes up, Jason has entered another timeline in which his life is radically different to the one he left behind.

The impostor, meanwhile, slips into Jason’s Chicago life and begins to ingratiate himself with family and friends. The only catch, however, is that impostor Jason isn’t an exact copy, he’s the man Jason would have become if he had made a different decision at a critical point in his life. He’s got more swagger and more bravado – and doesn’t want to give up his new life.

For Edgerton, that meant splitting his performance in half and finding the nuances in each personality. It also meant considering the two Jasons in a more personal way: one was a workaholic, who pursued success at any cost, while the other chose his family over career. And that was where it hit close to home.

“By suddenly being in a position in life where you’re dedicated to a partner and you’ve made the choice to have a family, the byproduct of that is you have to give part of yourself away and be selfless,” says Edgerton. “And keeping your eye on other people is more important, or super important, in your life. And I think that humbles you, and creates an empathy in you that you may not have had before.”

So which Jason does he prefer?

“You’ve got to root for Jason one,” he says, laughing. “But I mean, that doesn’t say one is more interesting than two. I remember being on the set and realising that members of the crew were talking about if they were on Team Jason One or Team Jason Two, because there’s a certain fun and delectability to watching Jason as an impostor step into the home and try and presume to be a parent to a teenager when he’s had zero experience.

“But at the same time, one of the wonderful things as well, as the show was developed, you’re starting to understand how much of an infraction it is for Jason to go and presume to get his old girlfriend back, knowing she has no real physical experience with him, and to presume to be able to sort of assume that intimate role is such a violation.”

In many ways, it’s a sci-fi Sliding Doors (without much rom or com), a multiverse thriller that deals in what-ifs: what would my life be like if I had made this decision instead of that one?

“It’s really just a focused way of looking into things that I think about a lot,” says Edgerton. “In terms of how have all of my choices in life, and all the hands I’ve been dealt, led me to who I am and where I am today?

“And the kind of person, and my outlook on life, is based on all of those things – nature plus nurture. I’m very grateful for everything I have in my life, and my family, and I wouldn’t change anything, but I’ve also evolved into a place where even the things I used to think that I regretted in my life, I realised now are a part of who I am and I accept that.”

Has he ever thought about what his other path would be?

“Depends what category of life you’re talking about,” he says. “If it was career, I had fancied at some point that I’d go off and go to fine art school and be a painter. And I do wonder whether I’d be showing in a gallery or whether I would have just packed up my brushes and kicked a hole in my studio wall by now.”

Edgerton also has the inevitable task of convincingly explaining the quantum physics brain bender Dark Matter is based on: the thought experiment that is Schrodinger’s cat, in which a hypothetical cat is thought to be alive and dead simultaneously.

“You know, of all my average skill set, quantum mechanics is not one of them,” he says, laughing. “As an actor, when you realise you’re punching above your weight in terms of playing a certain career, whether it’s anaesthesiologist or some sort of medical practitioner or a lawyer or something, where there’s verbal gymnastics and trying to encapsulate concepts for an audience in an understandable fashion, you go, ‘All right, well, I’m pretty certain my IQ is somewhere smack bang in the middle. So I gotta pretend to be smarter than I really am right now. Good luck.’”

And the trick to delivering it in a believable manner? “You just say the words with no expression,” he says. “And if you look like you believe, the audience will believe it’s true.”

The other TV project Edgerton has had a hand in recently is the special Bluey episode, The Sign, in which he played a policeman. That, more than anything, is a sign that his approach to life and work has changed.

“I only wish I was doing more of it,” he says, laughing. “Because now my kids are almost three, half the day is spent having to call them Bingo and Bluey, they’re dressed in Bingo and Bluey ears and their bicycles are differentiated by Bluey and Bingo stickers. So Bluey is a big part of our household and I watch more Bluey than I watch anything else like that.

“I’ve been waiting for this episode to come out, nervously going, ‘Why am I more nervous about this than anything else I’ve ever participated in?’”

Dark Matter is now streaming on Apple TV+.

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