If any filmgoer or TV viewer remains unaware of the hot streak that Patrick Brammall is currently enjoying, they’ve put in a concerted effort.
The Devil Wears Prada 2, in which he plays the new Australian boyfriend of Anne Hathaway’s fashion journalist Andy Sachs, is among 2026’s cinema smashes, ranking fifth at the Aussie box office so far.
Colin From Accounts, the beloved homegrown rom-com sitcom that he co-created, co-wrote and co-led with Harriet Dyer, just wrapped up its third and final season in the show’s trademark delightful, warm, insightful and very funny (and Australian) fashion.
Now comes thriller Last Seen, Apple TV’s first original scripted series made, set and completely shot in Australia. Brammall plays former police detective-turned-dispatcher Ian Ridley, whose life on Victoria’s coastline was understandably altered when his three-year-old daughter Maggie disappeared. Then a child’s body is discovered in the local forest 11 years later, and an emergency call from a teenage girl also reaches his headset.
ScreenHub: Patrick Brammall changes gears in new Australian thriller Last Seen
Brammall and Cowell on Last Seen – quick links
Big star, big year, big series
In what’s already proving a huge year for Brammall, ‘Last Seen‘s a big one for me,’ he tells me. ‘It’s a really big role, on a really big scale.’
He isn’t just talking about leading an Apple TV production, though ‘knowing that they were coming into town was like, “Oh, they’ve got resources, this is exciting”,’ he says. ‘Because you know they’re not going to do anything by halves.’
His joy about Last Seen being Australian, and how it showcases Aussie talent on- and off-screen, is just as evident. ‘Every department is firing,’ he says. ‘The incredible ensemble of the cast working at this high, high level – and the crew. It’s no surprise, actually, with the crew, because Australian crews are best in the world. I truly believe that,’ Brammall says.
‘It’s an Australian story. It’s really a bit of a minor miracle when something good gets up, and this is that, I think.’
On the screen, Last Seen is indeed an Aussie tale, even if it’s the result of a US-owned streaming platform adapting an East Texas-set book by an American novelist, with a German director helming every episode.
Brammall’s long-time friend and Ruben Guthrie director Brendan Cowell co-stars, as part of a cast that features fellow familiar local faces Daniel Henshall, Zahra Newman, Bert LaBonté, Jessica Wren, Colin Friels and Felix Cameron, and unearths newcomer Chloe Jean Lourdes.
Kris Mrksa is on scripting duties and executive produces, after penning episodes of the Brammall-starring Glitch and, alongside Cowell, writing episodes of the Aussie television version of The Slap.
With the series primarily filmed along Victoria’s Shipwreck Coast, Last Seen’s entire look, feel, texture and mood also screams Australia. It’s there in the accents and dialogue, of course, but also in everything from the hue of the ocean that Ian swims in with his AA sponsor (played by Henshall), through to the dense foliage surrounding the farm where Cowell’s Henry Reid has carved out an isolated but happy life with his wife Jenna (English actor Maxine Peake) and their 14-year-old daughter Sarah (played by Lourdes).
Watch the trailer
More than just another missing girl thriller
This isn’t the type of Australian project that comes along every day for Brammall, even two decades into a career that has made him one of the country’s busiest actors, with a resume spanning The Alice, Home and Away, The Strange Calls, A Moody Christmas and The Moodys, plus Offspring, Upper Middle Bogan, No Activity, Bluey and more.
Another part of the appeal of Last Seen for him is that ‘the material is so dark,’ he says, but also smartly layered. ‘It’s a thriller, which is great, but then the desperate parents seeking the missing child is not an unfamiliar story to us now.’
He adds, ‘What was different about this script, and about the way that was executed by Christian [Schwochow], our director, was there’s a psychological realism. It becomes very character-driven as well, at the same time as the plot drives it.
‘So I think it does subvert the genre. It works in a way that we don’t expect with this sort of show.’
Cowell also found it ‘surprising’ because he thought he knew what to expect of the thriller, he says. ‘And then I got lost in the characters, and I found the surprises surprising by nature, the way the writers had taken this novel premise and given it lots of really clever layers.’
He adds, ‘I also thought the writing was nice and sparse enough for the actors to fill in. There was room for us to do what we do well.’
For Lourdes, the young actor ‘couldn’t believe I absolutely struck gold’, with a chance to make her on-screen debut in one of the series’ most pivotal parts. She adds, ‘There’s so much complexity in that story and in each of the characters, and the world that they live in.’
The rising star was also drawn to the fact that in Last Seen, ‘we kind of subvert the genre, from going from a thriller to very action-y, borderline horror towards the end of the show, and so approaching that extremity.’
Two real-life friends playing two sides of the same coin
Enlisting Cowell opposite Brammall is particularly canny, and adds to the series’ complexity. When you’re looking for a couple of actors to play what are two sides of the same coin in many ways – two dads who are willing to do anything for their families, for starters – who better than a pair frequently mistaken for each other in public?
‘It was actually brilliant casting, having the two of us opposite each other,’ says Brammall. ‘There’s a similar energy there. We’ve been friends for a long time, but also professionally been circling each other for a long time. We worked together in a director-actor capacity some time ago.’
While Brammall and Cowell’s real life history didn’t overtly factor into crafting the dynamic between Ian and Henry, ‘our characters are thinking about each other a lot of the time,’ says Brammall.
‘And I think it really aids the story and brings a complication to the story. It adds a really strong texture for the audience.
‘It didn’t change the way I approached anything. It didn’t change the way these characters interacted, but I think it was a great story point, a great bit of casting, to embody this story.’
Adds Cowell: ‘What was brilliant about the construction was that my character, who could easily be labelled as “bad guy”, had such a good heart. And when you fall into this family, and meet Chloe and see the way Maxine and I are with her, and the world we’ve constructed in nature, you start to go, “Hang on, he’s not the worst guy”.
‘Then you see Patrick pushing his family away and battling with alcoholism, and I just love the way the characters are flipped on their head as soon as you think that you know someone. As soon as you go to judge a character, your expectations are subverted. That’s a joy to play.’
Cowell compares sharing the screen with Brammall to ‘that Bruce Lee movie, where you know Chuck Norris is going to arrive’.
‘I’ve always wanted to mix it with Patrick as an actor,’ says Cowell. ‘From directing him, I saw that he’s got it all available to him as an actor.’
Going to emotional extremes
In the talent that he sees in Brammall, Cowell clearly isn’t alone – and Last Seen doesn’t put its leading man’s skills to waste. As well as being a missing-girl thriller and an investigation-driven whodunnit, plus a family drama twice over, this is a series about the traumas, wounds and scars that everybody bears, and how they influence our lives. Exploring that relatable experience meant, for Brammall, that ‘you dig as deep as you need to dig to get the thing you’re trying to unearth’.
‘For myself, it’s just about opening up in a way so that I could be affected by the story, and affected by the other characters and the situation. He’s a grieving father, I’m a father of two young girls,’ he says, ‘and that was my leaping off point. So that made it easy for me to lean into that.
‘And then creatively and imaginatively, you fill it in, so I can get to that extreme place that Ian Ridley is at.’
No character in Last Seen has an easy emotional journey, but for Lourdes, ‘even though I haven’t had Sarah’s experience, I understand the power that love can have over you and to push you to do things that you might not usually do … and I think that was really helpful when approaching the content that gets very hectic,’ she says.
‘So I understood why she made the decisions that she made – even if, as an audience member, I had a different opinion … but I understand both of the justifications. I think that really speaks to the writing as well, and the complexity of how human all of those characters are.
‘They’re not one-dimensional at all. They have so many flaws, but also so many strengths. And everyone has to address something in their past in order to be able to move forward.’
Maintaining the intensity required was a commitment, however. As Cowell notes, ‘in Australia we have an inherent casualness to our nature. With this story, I was reminded to make sure I maintain the stakes of it, and the importance of what was going on – not to overact, but to remember this is 11 out of 10 most of the time, and the plot is continually ratcheting up and escalating, and the level of importance in the drama and what Henry stands to lose.’
‘But it was a joy to dig into this stuff. This is what I want as an actor: you want to get the distortion pedal out and rock and roll.’
Career longevity and the role of luck
While comedies have dominated his on-screen output this year beyond Last Seen, Brammall doesn’t have a different approach when he’s in a dramatic role. ‘I’ve been really lucky to be able to bounce from comedy to drama and back and forth,’ he says. ‘You just play each ball as it comes.’
‘The writing’s got to be good. You’ve got to be able to, with your instrument, meet the writing – and find where you meet the writing as well. Not try and go to the role or have your persona so strong that you envelop the role,’ he says. ‘That’s where it happens, I find, and I’ve been really, really fortunate to have that time and time again over the years.’
Asked what he makes of his journey from his first screen role on 2004’s The Alice to featuring in a cinema smash, farewelling his award-winning sitcom and leading Last Seen all within months of each other, ‘primarily I feel old,’ he laughs. ‘But actually it’s a great privilege, especially in this country.’
‘It’s a real trick to stitch together anything that you might call a career – and then, on top of that, anything that you’d be proud of within that career. It’s very hard as an artist in Australia to plan work, plan a career,’ Brammall says.
‘It’s something that I feel like only happens when you look in the rearview mirror and go, “Oh, there’s a body of work. How did that happen? Amazing”.’
Luck has played a part, he insists. ‘I do feel incredibly fortunate. Yes, I’ve been very hard-working and all that sort of stuff, but there is a big dollop of luck that is not fair.
‘You put yourself in a position so that luck happens – I forget what that saying is, but I still don’t really subscribe to that. I think there is luck and you either have it with you or you have it against you,’ says Brammall.
While he’s been a mainstay on Australian screens for more than 20 years now, alongside a range of US projects before The Devil Wears Prada 2 – popping up in films Fun Mom Dinner and Overlord, a one-episode stint on New Girl, making an American version of No Activity, and a key part on supernatural drama Evil – Brammall hasn’t gotten to 2026’s everywhere-all-at-once status overnight.
‘And I guess there’s something in the ability, when the luck doesn’t come, to stand up and get into the fray again,’ he says.
Working internationally, but knowing there’s no place like home
Not just with Last Seen and Colin From Accounts, Brammall is patently committed to helping tell Australian stories on-screen, even as international projects have come calling. The same applies to Cowell, whose four-decade-long Aussie filmography includes Life Support, Love My Way, Noise, The Twelve, Plum and the upcoming second season of High Country, and international work spans the likes of Game of Thrones, Dune: Prophecy and two Avatar films – and that’s before getting to his stage resume.
Cowell lives ‘half the time in London, and [tries] to work onstage over there and develop TV series there, and at home,’ he says. ‘I love that balance between London and Sydney,’ he adds, joking ‘because it’s such an easy commute’.
‘But I love coming home to make stories, and I love going over to the greater world and seeing what’s going on. I don’t ever want to not do both.’
‘The balance is everything,’ says Brammall. ‘Honestly, if outfits like Apple came in and continued to invest in Australia, I’d be very, very happy to keep making Australian stories and exporting them to the world. Because I’m Australian. I understand that voice.’
‘There’s nothing between us and the best in the world. We’re right there. We just need the resources to be able to show it. And Last Seen does that.’
Deservedly, Brammall uses Colin from Accounts as an example. ‘Harriet, my wife and I, we’ve done that,’ he says. ‘We’ve been very committed to an Australian vernacular, but it’s a universal story.’
‘In fact, I remember when we were doing the first season of Colin and our marketing is “a brand new Aussie comedy”, and Harry was like, “Could we take the Aussie off it?” Because it’s a brand new comedy. Let’s stop trying to brand everything as “Australian” like it’s a different genre. It’s not.”
Cowell pipes in too. ‘I think there needs to be a moratorium on that – Aussie film, Aussie comedy – because it’s apologetic,’ he says.
Brammall adds, ‘I’ve spoken to people and they go, “I don’t watch Australian films”. It’s like, “Don’t you? What?” So I think it’s about telling stories with our voice.’
‘That is perhaps a cliche, but I really, strongly believe it.’
