-Russell Crowe, it is awesome to see you, buddy.
I miss seeing your face in person, man.
Thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate it.
What time is it in Australia right now?
-Cheers, Jimmy. Lovely to see you too, man.
It's just after 8:00, maybe a quarter past
8:00 in the morning.
-Are you quarantined? Where are you?
Are you with the fam or -- -Yeah, well, I'm in the bush.
So, I'm sort of isolating in isolation.
When this isolation thing first started --
where is that -- There you go.
You know, we had sort of family discussions and stuff about,
you know, where people were going to be and all that.
You know? And my parents are here in the bush.
You know?
My dad's 84, my mom's 79.
You know, they've got the complications
that come with age.
So I just made the decision that I had to be here, you know?
So, you know, I was talking to my boys,
and they kept the schools open here for quite a while.
So there's a bit of confusion there about
where people were going to go and all that.
And then at the end of the day,
my kids decided to isolate in Sydney.
I was -- -Wow.
-You know, I was a little affronted because it's the bush.
We got the wide-open spaces. You know?
We got all of these amazing things up here, right?
But they were like, "No, no, Dad, we've made the decision
that in a pandemic, we're going to isolate
in the most populous part of the country,
surrounded by the areas that have the most infections."
And I'm like, "Guys, can I ask why?"
And my youngest one, who is just too honest,
said, "Uber Eats."
-[ Laughs ]
Uber Eats? -Uber Eats.
-Isn't that great? -In a pandemic,
my fatherly roles and responsibilities
were passed over for that.
-Kids are going to be kids, right?
I mean, I -- what -- what a year it's been,
an unfortunate kind of year for Australia.
Describe the vibe with the fires out there.
I feel so bad for everyone over there.
What's the vibe over there?
-It certainly has been a bit of a run, you know?
Where I am here in the bush, we --
you know, this time last year, we were sort of about two years
into drought, so we were extremely brown
and the dams were all going down.
And then, as we went through the winter,
we didn't get the rains that we were hoping for in the spring.
We got a little bit, but not enough.
And things just got hotter and hotter and hotter.
So by the time, you know, September,
October rolled around, the fires were already starting to burn.
And they started off a long way away from here, you know?
They started off a couple of hundred kilometers away,
but you could just see it encroaching on a daily basis.
You know?
Then come the end of October, I had to fly to America.
I was working in Wilmington.
But November 12th, the fire hit here, in --
not only in this valley, in this piece of land.
I'm looking out a window over there
and I see a tree with fresh leaves on it
but that tree would have been aflame right there.
You know?
And we were surrounded on three sides.
Now, you know -- but we went from that
drought into that fire, you know,
and that fire threat was around for months.
And then when the fire threat was over,
the heavens opened up in February.
And we had pretty much like three-quarters
of an annual rainfall within a few weeks.
So the whole valley got closed down.
Every road out was flooded.
It was -- it was like just one extreme to another.
And then we come out of the flood, of course,
into this coronavirus.
So it's been just a series of events, you know, that --
but, you know, I think when you look back through history
and you realize lots of other people
and times have been way more serious
than what we're dealing with, as serious as it is.
You know, there's ways forward.
You know, you just got to keep doing your thing, Jimmy.
-You also did a great thing with the --
with the Rabbitohs that I want to talk to you about.
But I -- before we get into that, you know,
Black Lives Matter, the protests have been, obviously,
all over the place, not only just in America.
But also the protests have --
they're very big in Australia as well.
And you did a very cool thing with your team.
-To explain for people, you know,
I have an ownership in a rugby league team,
in what's called the NRL here in Australia.
The South Sydney Rabbitohs is the name of the team.
It's been around since 1908.
It was a foundation team.
You know?
You know, within Australian culture,
you know, of course, there's, you know, Australian aboriginals
and also many Maori people from New Zealand
and other nations like Samoa and Tonga and Papua New Guinea.
And, you know, the player base for the game of rugby league,
you know, definitely has a majority of --
of black players. You know?
And as a club, we just asked them
if they wanted to make their own statement.
And so they took it upon themselves
and they talked to their opponents
on the night, the Gold Coast Titans,
and they also talked to the referees.
So before that particular round started, the entire squad --
both squads, and the referees and any administrative staff
and stuff that were there in the stadium,
of course the stadiums are empty at the moment,
they all took a knee together.
And you know, that was just a gesture of support
from across the other side of the world.
You know? And, you know,
the great thing about it was that right across the board
from the top of the sport through both clubs
and the administrations to all the players and coaching staff
and everything, there was 100% agreement
that that's what we should be doing.
You know?
-Really? -To offer support
but also to bring light to certain issues
that are prevalent in Australia, you know?
We have a really negative colonial history
of how we treated the indigenous culture that was here when we,
you know, when the English first arrived to settle the place.
You know?
So there's a lot of those things that are public knowledge
and are discussed at certain points
that just need to be fully addressed.
And one of them is a thing that requires a lot of focus,
and that's black deaths in custody.
There's been an inordinate amount of aboriginal men
and women die in police custody since the early 1990s.
And these things just simply have to stop.
There has to be the focus given and the seriousness given to
re-achieve some balance. You know?
Or achieve some balance for the first time in a lot of cases.
-Absolutely.
Well, I think the picture even just of both teams on one knee
was a beautiful thing.
And it did send a good message.
-They sort of seemed to naturally --
I don't think there was any plan,
but it kind of formed a heart.
So it was kind of a poignant moment.
And I've had, you know, and the club has had nothing
but absolutely positive feedback for it.
-Good for you. I wanted to tell you
before we got going on this,
but I'll just say it now, you were so great as Roger Ailes
and congrats on winning the Golden Globe.
Crushed it.
You were so good, as you always are.
But that was great.
And I wanted to get a message to you,
let you know how much I thought, what a great performance.
You were amazing. -Thank you very much.
You know, that was a hugely challenging job.
And I kind of -- you know, going into it --
the first time I did the makeup test, man,
it was six hours long. You know?
I'm staring down the barrel of that job.
You know?
And 68 makeup applications or whatever, going, "Seriously?"
You know?
-We got to do this tomorrow again, too, and the next day?
-And the next day, and the next day?
Yeah. We got it to --
to an efficient level and then over time,
learned a lot about, you know, the best way to approach
it and adapted the schedule completely around it.
So I was very lucky I was working with Blumhouse
and the people that made that easier than it might be for me.
But yeah, that was a seriously challenging gig.
-You did a great one. You did a great one.
I want to talk about your new movie, "Unhinged."
I'm also a little frightened to talk to you right now,
because you are scary as hell in this movie.
But can we talk about that movie when we come back?
Is that okay? Can you stick around?
-All good.
-More with Russell Crowe when we come back, everybody.