When Mark Coles Smith found out what the second season of Mystery Road: Origin was about, he knew it wasn’t going to be an easy shoot.
“I remember getting the scripts and just going, ‘Oh gosh, here we go,’” Mark tells TV WEEK. “There’s some very heavy topics tackled this season.
“It was a story that, going in, I really cared about. I looked at it and went, ‘Wow, I’ve not seen this story before, and I’ve not seen the story done this way. It would be amazing to pull this off.’”
Season two, set in the year 2000, follows Mark’s character, Detective Jay Swan, and Tuuli Narkle’s Mary Allen, as they move to the timber town of Loch Iris, where Mary’s mother grew up. Before long, they discover that the townspeople have been hiding terrible secrets for decades.
“I think the journey of Mystery Road: Origin is, really slowly, taking this man through the valley of the shadow to lose faith in the system that he thought he could make a difference in – which has been a genuine experience for many Indigenous police officers, men and women, particularly at this period, going from the late ’90s into the early 2000s,” Mark says.
The 38-year-old actor has starred in plenty of shows, from kids’ series Ocean Star back in 2003 to Canadian drama Hard Rock Medical to Netflix hit Apple Cider Vinegar. But playing Jay in Mystery Road: Origin is something else.
“In working history, for me, there’s nothing I can compare to what the scheduling feels like, season one, season two of Mystery Road: Origin. It’s massive days, and you’re on, on, on.”
Season two was filmed in Pemberton, in the southwest corner of Western Australia, famous for its tall karri trees.
“It remains the idyllic film shoot of my professional career,” Mark says. “The three months there was so, so wonderful.”
Mark would explore the local region with other cast members on Saturdays, then spend Sundays on his own.
“Sunday would be about just being really quiet, resetting, bit of meditation, go to the gym, but just a quiet day, not about engaging with anyone else.”
Born in Kalgoorlie in Western Australia but raised on a cattle station in the Kimberley, in the north of the state, Mark hosted the docuseries The Kimberley for the ABC earlier this year. He still spends a lot of his time in the region.
“What’s important to me about working in the Kimberley is being close to my family and being close to the community that is largely responsible for the person that I am today, the values that I have and that connection to country,” he says.
“I’m older now and I really enjoy boots-on-the-ground work, fieldwork. This is a beautiful country and it’s really big, and there’s some incredible, incredible landscapes out here.
“I feel very much like I’m in this whole new romance with the Kimberley.”
Even though Mark spends a lot of his time in the north of WA, doing work other than acting, his star continues to rise. In 2023, he was nominated for a TV WEEK Gold Logie for the first season of Mystery Road: Origin – “I was really surprised and honoured,” he says of the Gold Logie nom – while this year, he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Logie for Apple Cider Vinegar.
As for what’s coming up next, Mark says there’s “a lot of very fun stuff”
“I generally don’t talk about what’s coming up – I like it to just land and people go, ‘What? Mark’s in that, what?’” he laughs. “But next year’s looking really exciting. In regards to the acting side of things, I’m interested in doing some stuff overseas.
“I like the idea of going on a bit of an adventure, and so I’ve got my eye on breaking into some broader markets. So we’ll see!”
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