The American actor has just flown home to New York City from Sydney, where he, partner Rose Byrne and their children had spent several months, and jet lag has reared its monstrous head.“We got in last night, I had a pretty good night, but it just hit me like an ago,” he says to news.com.au over Zoom. “Right now, it feels like somebody’s pulling ropes on my eyes.“I was saying to Rose today, ‘The kids didn’t get up last night, I have the feeling it might happen tonight, we shouldn’t think we got away with it.’”Cannavale and Byrne landed back in New York just as Sydney’s lockdown was extended for another month but before that he had been strolling down to Bronte pool for daily swims.“You guys have such great outdoor spaces. You can really spend the day outside on those walks and taking a swim.”The prolific Cannavale, 51, wasn’t just slouching around in Australia. Since this time last year, he’s being in two productions here – an upcoming Australian film called Seriously Red, which stars Byrne and Krew Boylan, and the glittering, star-studded miniseries that brought him here, Nine Perfect Strangers.RELATED: Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s huge finale gambleCannavale and a cadre of Hollywood stars including Melissa McCarthy, Michael Shannon, Regina Hall, Luke Evans and the usually US-based Australians Nicole Kidman and Samara Weaving, decamped to the Byron Bay hinterland to film the eight-episode show based on a Liane Moriarty book.The production caused quite a fuss when it landed in Australia last year, lending to the idea that half of Hollywood was escaping the US covid chaos for the Northern Rivers of NSW.The story is set in a wellness spa in which emotionally bruised guests come to heal and work through their demons. Cannavale plays Tony, a prickly former football star whose anger issues and substance abuse finds him at Tranquilum as a last resort.Tony shares most of his scenes with McCarthy’s Frances, an unlikely pairing of two characters who meet in hostile circumstances. But from their animosity there is an unmistakeable spark – and it’s the relationship that is most compelling in this character-driven drama.Cannavale and McCarthy are no strangers when it comes to onscreen chemistry. Nine Perfect Strangers is their fourth collaboration, having previously worked together on Spy, Superintelligence and Thunder Force, the latter two were produced by McCarthy and directed by her husband Ben Falcone.NED-3498-What-to-Watch-Article-BannersRELATED: What to watch on streaming in AugustIt was McCarthy who roped Cannavale into Nine Perfect Strangers.“She texted me and said, ‘I’m going to do this thing, you should read it because this character is so great for you, I’ve never seen you play this, it would be you and me again’,” he says. “It’s very, very hard to say no to her, because she gets so excited about it.“If she’s excited about it, then she’s just not the kind of person that would do something for any reason other than she’s got some idea, some creative impulse that I’d like to be a part of, because she’s so talented and such a hard worker.“I just love working with Melissa. You never know what you’re going to get, but you know it’s going to be good.”Cannavale says the scenes with McCarthy were “really fun to play” because “these characters really don’t like each other”.It was a different on-screen relationship between the pair, who have previously been nemesis or former lovers.“We haven’t done this before,” he explains. “We haven’t played two people that were so battered as those characters are and who surrender to each other. Those are two characters that you just do not see that coming [for them], and we kind of earned our way there.”With a cast that includes so many acting luminaries, it’s not surprising the performances in Nine Perfect Strangers are what stands out above all else.And younger cast members such as Manny Jacinto and Samara Weaving were in awe of watching thespians of that calibre, impressed by their ability to just play and be present.But Cannavale was also full of praise for them, “those guys, they’re no slouches either, they got pretty creative and went for it as well”.“I think the ensemble is terrific,” he adds. “I wasn’t really surprised, although I was surprised every day with the choices these fine, fine actors would make that I just wouldn’t expect.“Guys like Michael Shannon and Regina Hall, I was blown away by Regina. And Nicole’s work is fantastic, she really brings it home.“I think we were all just so grateful to be working during such a difficult time, we were so grateful to be there. At that point there had been four months of isolation and that’s just not a natural thing for humans to do.“It lent itself to an atmosphere of having fun and trying anything you wanted to try.“We were all grateful to be in each other’s company.”Nine Perfect Strangers is on Amazon Prime Video from Friday, August 20Share your TV and movies obsessions | @wenleima
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