Judith Lucy’s face is in the church carpet and I’ve buried it there, grunting and mouthing expletives as I fumble with the mechanism on the prop handcuffs. ‘Can I ask you a favour’ she asks, quietly and with the faint note of weariness that comes from three weeks shooting and five takes of having your face shoved in church carpet. ‘I don’t suppose you could push me into the carpet with a little less vigour? It kind of, I dunno, hurts I guess.’

I’m mortified. All I’ve wanted to be is the best Policeman 2 I can be, and I’ve overcooked it with the star. I could blame the director, Tony Martin. He’d asked us to ‘play it super seriously, like you’re about to apprehend the most dangerous terrorist in the city’ but it’s probably my responsibility not to turn Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey into Judith Lucy’s Dabblings With Police Brutality. I promise to be gentler.

‘It’s okay,’ Judith says kindly. ‘‘Judging from your heavy breathing you’re putting everything in. I’ve been taking a lot of my mood cues from you.’

We do five more takes. The point of the scene is to dramatise an event that occurred during Judith’s tearaway Christian youth. Apparently she really did sneak away one lunch time and really did get in trouble for practising liturgical dancing without permission. In the ‘as it happened’ version, the police weren’t called and didn’t make a pistols drawn, SWAT team style arrest of the pigtailed youngster. But this wasn’t the ‘as it happened’ version. This was the big Judith dressed as little Judith waving her arms disjointedly to ‘Yahweh is the God of My Salvation’ version.

Jlsj Script 1 4

My performance was not flawless — there was the take I misplaced my gun (‘maybe don’t leave it lying on the floor next to the perpetrator’) and there was the never ending battle with the handcuffs (‘we got the close up, and the fact you swore softly over the sound effect will give the foley artists something to work on’) — but Fred Whitlock (Policeman 1) nailed his lines and Judith’s face-in-carpet confessional about her passage from liturgical dancing to trying heroin was spot on.

Nevertheless, it ended up on the cutting room floor. As it was explained to me by producer Todd Abbott, ‘The focus of the series has become more about Judith’s documentary style explorations of faith, and less about the comedy flashbacks written into the original script”. Or, to paraphrase — less Policeman 2 shoving face into carpet, more Brett Kirk in lotus position chanting affirmations to the rising sun.

It was a bitter pill to swallow. The months went by, and I spent many of them in a dark room, snapping and unsnapping my handcuffs, wondering why the finger dexterity that came so easily now deserted me on the take that mattered. Sometimes I’d wear full uniform. Sometimes I’d just wear the hat. I stared at my phone, wondering if my agent would call. Sometimes she would, but it was never with that chance to atone as Policeman 2. I realise now, I shouldn’t have even hoped. She is, after all, a literary agent.

But then on 23^rd August 2012, it happened. The phone rang, it was Tony Martin and he was ‘wondering if I’d like to be involved in Wayne (Hope) and Robyn (Butler)’s new series Upper Middle Bogan’. I barely heard the trailing sentences. ‘I’m directing the episode … not a big role … a non-speaking part …’ It was all just a mess of words, marking time until Tony shared the information we both knew I needed to hear.

‘You’d actually get to be a cop again,’ he said.

‘A Policeman 2?’ I asked, knowing that Policeman 1 was an impossible dream, and Policeman 3 a phonebook-to-the-ribcage demotion.

‘Yep. Policeman 2,’ Tony replied. ‘You’ve got those big policey shoulders. You make a good cop.’

From there, it was the usual showbiz whirl. Wardrobe ringing to find out my pants size. Wardrobe ringing again to ask my shoe size. Wardrobe ringing a third time to ask if I’d mind bringing my own shoes along ‘just in case’.

The shoot is in Taylor’s Lakes. I arrive at the local sports ground where the production trucks are parked. Makeup is quick, just a touch of powder, which is either a credit to my improving psoriasis or testament to the fact that I’ll be nestled fifteen metres into the background behind Policeman 1 and Glenn Robbins, who is playing bogan dad Wayne Wheeler.

Nevertheless, I’m treated like an important player. Contracts are signed ($96.50 plus superannuation), a pressed uniform is unveiled and within twenty minutes, I’m in a minivan, being driven to set as ‘Constable D. Petrovic’.

I should stress that this sense of identity came only from the nametag, and that the script only called for ‘Policeman 2’. Still, it’s good to have a name, and doubly good when I find out that Petrovic is the surname of a woman in the costume department who’s snuck away for the day to watch her beloved Pies play the Swans in Sydney.

The minivan drops us at the road block closing off the quiet suburban street for shooting. We walk to set, my shiny leather soled police boots making a satisfying clack with each step. ‘This is the march towards redemption,’ I think, lowering my peaked hat. ‘This is the Policeman 2 performance of my life.’

In the makeshift greenroom, tucked at the back of the Wheelers’ McMansion beside an indoor swimming pool, I meet the rest of the cast. Policeman 1 is Bert Labonte and, like me, he’s played a cop before (Snr Const. Roy Nicholl, Blue Heelers 2004). Indeed, having acted professionally since 1997, he’s played all sorts of things before, including but not limited to Otis Redding (Nightmares and Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Steven King, 2006), Teddy Taiwan (Rats and Cats, 2007) and Sharktooth Pete (Pirate Islands: The Lost Treasure of Fiji, 2007).

The other actor is Gareth Yuen, who is playing Angry Driver. Both Gareth and Bert have lines, but neither seems nervous, and we spend two hours talking about the things actors talk about, which includes but is not limited to:

• The fact hyenas in The Lion King musical wrecked their shoulders leaning over holding puppets;
• The fact Gareth’s sister, who was the monkey in Act 2, Scene 1 of Phantom, wrecked her back with the rake of the Princess Theatre’s stage;
• The fact that stages generally have a rake, which makes it easier for audiences to see but can wreck the back of someone standing still for a long time on an angle, as the monkey had to do in Phantom;
• The fact Gareth has recently moved to LA, and that some of the parties there really are very good;
• The fact that Bert’s daughter is rehearsing for a primary school production, and last night left two unwrapped Flakes on the back seat of the car (with disastrous results).

I share my acting history, and we all agree that it’s amazing that myself and our director Tony Martin have not only both played minor roles in separate productions of Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons but have both been unfairly laughed at by our respective audiences for purely physical reasons — me, for height in mitre (eleven feet tall); him for twigginess of be-stockinged legs (extremely).

Finally we are called. Gareth has already done his Angry Driver to Wayne Wheeler’s face, and now he just has to do his Angry Driver to me. My director instructs me to look officious and occasionally take a note in a pad. We are the background detail to Bert and Glenn’s foreground statement taking, and we do several rehearsals where we babble through his statement and then some real takes in which we are told to mime our babble, lest it come out on the audio track.

It’s too early to say whether my performance is a triumph. Certainly, I mime babbled in a way that harnessed everything I imagine a Policeman 2 should be, and also did a few ‘now maybe just calm down a fraction there’ hand gestures that I think Wayne and Robyn will like. This rehearsal, filmed by Tony Martin on my phone, does not do my effort justice because I’m not wearing my Policeman 2 cap. I can’t truly be Policeman 2 without my cap.

Encouragingly, we are in the background of a shot that is part of the dramatic through line, and so it will now take a real effort from the editing team to cutting-room-floor me. And you might even argue that we’re middle ground, and not background, because there’s other extras employed as ‘Sticky Beak Neighbours’ on the footpath on the other side of the street.

And so I’m calling it. Mission accomplished. It’s all over bar the IMDb listing. I am Policeman 2, watch me gesticulate.

As Brett Kirk put it in Spiritual Journey: ‘As a human being I’m honest, I’m passionate, I’m courageous, I’m disciplined, I have a concentrated mind, I’m compassionate, I’m aware, I’m a good listener, I’m patient, I’m tolerant, I’m fun, I’m adventurous, I’m loving and I’m affectionate, I’m kind, I’m responsible, I am love. I don’t get caught up in my thoughts, I don’t give control to my ego, I don’t dwell on the past, I don’t worry about the future, because the only moment we have is this moment right now.’

Or as I mouthed during my stellar performance: ‘Yep, yep … understand completely. Sorry to hear that. Yep. Yep. No, I can understand your frustration. Yep … okay. We’ll do our best.’