Patrick Brammall has spent years perfecting the art of the self-deprecating quip — but even he might struggle to top the moment he accidentally told an interviewer that Anne Hathaway was the most beautiful woman in the world, only to watch his wife Harriet Dyer capture his marital betrayal on video from the front row.
The Australian actor, now 50, has vaulted from cult comedy stardom to the centre of Hollywood’s most anticipated sequels and a gritty Apple TV thriller in the space of a few short years. And as he tells The Independent, the secret to his success is remarkably simple: if it’s humiliating, it goes in the show.
The Comedy of Embarrassment
Colin from Accounts began with a flash — literally. Gordon (Brammall) is driving through Sydney when he locks eyes with Ashley (Dyer), who crosses the street flashing a smile and a breast. Gordon is so distracted by the sexy surprise that he hits a dog, a calamity that brings these two strangers together in hilarious and oddly affecting ways.
That Gordon is 12 years older than Ashley is a comic gift on telly and in real life — such as when a fan mistook Brammall for Dyer’s father. The show, which debuted in 2022, has become a word-of-mouth phenomenon, drawing praise for its ribald humour and emotional depth.
“If Harry and I find something funny, it doesn’t matter how embarrassing it is for us; it’s going in the show,” says Brammall, recalling an early scene in which he falls out of a bathtub fully nude after accidentally sending a dick pic. “It’s humiliating. But we have to do it.”
The third and final season airs in the UK this month, marking the end of a run that has seen the couple’s real-life relationship become the beating heart of the series.
A Dramatic Pivot
Last Seen, arriving on Apple TV next week, casts Brammall in a dramatically different light. He plays Ian Ridley, a grizzled ex-police officer struggling to cope after the abduction of his three-year-old daughter 11 years earlier. When Ian, now working as an emergency phone operator, receives a call from a girl he believes to be his missing child, he sets out on a mission to uncover the truth.
Brammall says fatherhood fed directly into his performance. He and Dyer have two adopted daughters, Joni and Mabel. “My eldest was three at the time we were filming, and I think that gave me a bit of a shortcut into the character that I wouldn’t have access to if I wasn’t a dad,” he says.
It also helped in a roundabout way that Brammall left home to start shooting the series just 12 days after the birth of their second child. “Crazy,” he grimaces. “I was fully abandoning my family to go and film this.” Dyer and the kids followed to Melbourne, where Last Seen was being shot, as soon as Mabel’s passport came through so they could be together as a family. “But still, it’s not what you imagine you should be doing as a father, so I let the feelings of being an absent dad help inform my choices as Ian, for sure.”
Brammall is completely convincing as a gruff, unshaven alcoholic — all repressed emotion and violent desperation. Ian is very much not Gordon. But Last Seen is not as much of a switch-up as it initially seems; Brammall is a classically trained actor who made his name back home with Glitch, a paranormal two-season tale that won Australia’s top drama-series awards.
The Devil Wears Prada — and Criticism
Perhaps nowhere more than his last gig playing the boyfriend of Andy Sachs in one of the year’s, if not the decade’s, most anticipated sequels: The Devil Wears Prada 2. As the lovely Peter, an Australian real-estate contractor living in New York City, Brammall is an antidote to Nate’s whiny dismissiveness in the 2006 original. He’s a nice guy. Too nice, some fans thought.
“The most criminally tedious heterosexual male to ever appear in a mainstream movie,” read a piece published in this newspaper, amid several others like it. Brammall is understanding of the criticism. “People are so connected to the character of Andy, and she’s been present with them for decades, so I think they have very strong feelings about what she should and shouldn’t do,” he says.
The role was also trimmed down some because, well, that’s showbiz baby. A consummate professional, Brammall is understanding of this too. “You’ve got so many characters to service, and you’ve got such a huge audience to service,” he says. “In the end, I understand the function of that character. He was a supportive guy. He was there. There was a bit of a skirmish between them […] but not really, and then it’s a nice soft place to land at the end. I totally get it, and I didn’t take it personally.”
The movie’s director, David Frankel, got in touch to let him know his scenes had been condensed before the premiere — something Brammall makes sure to do himself when he’s the one wielding the scissors as a showrunner on Colin.
Regardless of any criticism, Peter was a plum role, a part so coveted in Hollywood that Brammall didn’t think he stood a chance — which is why he flat-out declined the invitation to audition. He was still shooting Last Seen at the time, and the family was getting ready to relocate to Montreal, where Dyer was due to start filming a workplace comedy for US television, called DMV. “So even if I got the role, I would have had to do it while I was meant to be being dad. It was inconvenient for everyone, and so I said, thank you, but no,” he says. “Also, underneath all of that, I thought, I’m not going to get it anyway, so it’s a waste of time. One week later, I got a text from the director offering it to me. No audition.”
A little coyness goes a long way, I suggest. “It wasn’t a move on my part, but it turned out pretty well for me,” he says. “Once they offered it, I couldn’t say no, and so we had to adjust as a family. Harry was like, ‘Oh, what a nightmare! But yes, of course, you have to do that.'”
He repaid the favour at the film’s star-studded premiere where he accidentally agreed with an interviewer who called Hathaway the most beautiful woman in the world. Watching from home, Dyer shared a very funny video capturing her reaction to marital betrayal caught on live television. “I’d like to take this opportunity to rescind my comment,” laughs Brammall. “Anne is very lovely, but no one’s more beautiful than Harriet Dyer… I’m never going to get over that! But hey, I was on a red carpet talking to a man in a purple trench coat. The red carpet’s a crazy place.”
The End of an Era
With a mega blockbuster under his belt and now an Apple TV show, Brammall seems to be on his way to making good on an early comparison that The New York Times made to American superstars Chris Pratt and Ryan Reynolds. “I don’t think I’m living in the same size houses as those guys!” says Brammall, laughing. “Fortunately, I am not in the business of making comparisons of myself to anyone, so I do not have an opinion about that.”
When you’ve got two parents whose careers are on the rise, something’s gotta give, and with their second daughter now aged one, the idea of doing another season of Colin felt impossible to Brammall and Dyer both. “We’ve been making the show for as long as our eldest daughter has been alive and so she’s always had to share us with the show, and now we’ve got the younger one… there’s just too much to do,” he says. “And it requires Harry and I both, and so that’s not ideal.” As such, this third outing will be Colin’s last.
It was as much a creative decision as it was a practical one, notes Brammall. “The story we’ve been telling is about two people who meet in this chaotic way and whether they choose to embrace that chaos or not, which is what we find out at the end of the third season,” he says. “If we kept going, of course it’d be fun, but it would be a different show. It’s not a show we’d ever make.”
Would he and Dyer ever be tempted to cash in and let someone, in the UK or America perhaps, do a remake? “Who knows? If they backed up a garbage truck full of money, we might have a conversation,” says Brammall. “But we’d like to leave it there. It feels special. My favourite comedies did that, and it does feel like there’s an integrity to it that I really respond to.”
The end of Colin will be a loss to the TV landscape. The singular series flourished into something emotionally resonant, sometimes even devastating, while also remaining fun and silly — the kind of show that names a veterinarian character Yvette. In that way, it is sort of like Brammall, a seasoned actor who knows that a grown man falling out of a bathtub naked will always be funny.
Why it Matters
Patrick Brammall’s trajectory — from niche comedy darling to leading man in tentpole sequels and prestige thrillers — reflects a broader shift in how audiences and studios view character actors who bring authenticity and vulnerability to their roles. In an era where streaming platforms compete fiercely for subscribers with ever-larger budgets and marquee names, Brammall’s willingness to be self-deprecating, to mine his own life for material, and to walk away from a hit show at its peak offers a refreshing counter-narrative to the industry’s relentless hunger for more, bigger, and endless. His career suggests that integrity and commercial success are not mutually exclusive — and that sometimes the most compelling performances come from actors brave enough to be ridiculous.