William Zappa has an impressive body of work, appearing on Australia’s stages, television and movie screens, and he lives right here in the Triangle! He was recently in The Twelve with Sam Neill as the villain – or was he unjustly accused? You will have to watch. He was very much the villain in The Dry and a very British cop in Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears. He was in Mad Max 2 and also Rake, and I’m pretty jealous about that. With this body of work behind him, which also includes some great audiobooks, I asked William how he knew he wanted to be an actor.

‘I was about eight-years old, and my cousin Avril was in a Christmas pantomime that needed some extras. My cousin Eddie and I got roped in. We did something that made the audience laugh their heads off, and I thought, wow, this is fantastic! It was the drama department at high school that really got me into acting. When I was 14 or 15 and had a leading role in Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle, I got my first review in a newspaper. It said, “William tells me he wants to be an actor. He is.”’

It’s very difficult to be an actor living in regional Australia, William explains, ‘Very few plays or films or TV shows get done down on the far south coast, so travel is inevitable. Since COVID, auditions have changed, whether it’s for a commercial or for film or TV.

Instead of being with people who can give direction or a sense of what they are looking for, you get the script and find a suitable spot in your house to do the scene as a selfie.

It’s really, really hard to know what direction to settle on before you send it off. And if you get a callback, it’s a lot of time and money driving and flying.’

William’s passion project since 2011 has been adapting and performing Homer’s Iliad, which you might have seen in June at Four Winds. ‘It is one of the most extraordinary stories of humanity and our problems ever written. I often describe it as like the CSI of ancient Greece. The descriptions of swords slicing off arms and spears piercing chests are quite phenomenal. It’s also got some absolutely fantastic humour in it too. To do the whole thing would take sixteen hours, so my recent show was only part.’

Based on seventeen translations of this 3,500-year-old poem, William decided to create his own version, ‘To put it into our language today. I’ve used very much a modern idiom, even swearing, but it’s not colloquial because I really appreciate the classic nature of the story and structure of the poem. Most of the translators are academics, whereas I’m an actor who speaks other people’s words. The whole process for me has been about making this story as accessible as possible, and the translators – the work that they have done – are phenomenal. Every one of those seventeen translations is as different from the others as mine is from theirs. I’m extremely proud of it, I have to say.’

Flick Ruby

Photo credit: Leigh Small

William Zappa is also featured in the June 2026 Triangle Community Podcast.