WA-raised actor and Iranian refugee Phoenix Raei on his role in Apple Cider Vinegar

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

WA-raised actor and Iranian refugee Phoenix Raei on his role in Apple Cider Vinegar

Life doesn’t always take you where you think it will — no one knows this better than Phoenix Raei.

Born in Shiraz, Iran, his family was forced to flee into Turkey to escape persecution for their Baha’i faith, where they lived for a year before being granted refugee status in 1999, which allowed them to move across the world to settle in suburban Perth. It was a new life, thousands of miles, literally and figuratively, from everything he had known.

It was a monumental move that gave Raei, then in primary school, the opportunity to grow up in Western Australia, where he excelled and became a lawyer.

At age 26 he took another giant leap, leaving behind his career to pursue his passion for acting.

In the near-decade since, Raei has built his profile playing roles in Perth-filmed drama The Heights, the Cate Blanchett-produced Stateless,

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

’s Clickbait opposite Adrian Grenier, and guest roles in hit series Wentworth and Love Me.

Camera IconThe Rooster saw Phoenix Raei co-star with Hugo Weaving. Credit: Supplied/RegionalHUB

The past two years have been a whirlwind of back-to-back roles, including in the 2023 film The Rooster, with acting great Hugo Weaving, the big-budget Apple TV Plus drama Tehran alongside Hugh Laurie, the recently released second season of

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

’s The Night Agent, a return to WA to shoot the third season on Binge’s acclaimed drama The Twelve, and a job on the anticipated

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

series Apple Cider Vinegar, based loosely on the life of wellness scammer Belle Gibson.

Raei, now 34 abd based in Melbourne with his wife, actor and filmmaker Kate Lister, and their two small children, admits being in demand has given his life an even more frenetic pace.

“These past two years have been crazy,” he says. “I went straight from The Night Agent to The Rooster; I literally jumped on the plane and landed on the Sunday, shooting 6am Monday, and meeting Hugo.

“Then from there, it was straight off (to shoot) Tehran, then Apple Cider Vinegar and The Twelve.”

Apple Cider Vinegar, out next week, is already getting plenty of buzz. Described by

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

as “a true-ish story based on a lie”, the six-part series is a dramatised retelling of the story of **** artist Gibson, who famously claimed she’d cured her terminal brain ******* through nutrition, building an online empire in the early 2010s.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Camera IconKaitlyn Dever stars as Belle Gibson in Apple Cider Vinegar. Credit: Supplied/Courtesy Of

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Gibson, played by award-winning US actor Kaitlyn Dever, harnessed the power of newly emerged

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

to spruik her Whole Pantry app and cookbook, amassing fame, fortune and millions of followers before being exposed by journalists in 2015. Raei plays her American publicist.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Camera IconPhoenix Raei as Hek in Apple Cider Vinegar. Credit: Ben King/Courtesy Of

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

“(My character) is there to show the audience that even someone so super aware of the behind-the-scenes stuff (as he is) could fall for the intrigue and magnetism (of Gibson),” he explains.

“It was funny, because (Dever) is an American playing an ***********, and I am an *********** playing an American. It was so confusing during the breaks, because we’d have conversations using our natural accents.”

Apple Cider Vinegar has proved a tricky one for creators and actors to promote —

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

is clearly shying away from claiming the story is Gibson’s writ large, with the official synopsis describing it as: “Set at the birth of

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, Apple Cider Vinegar follows two young women who set out to cure their life-threatening illnesses through health and wellness, influencing their global online communities along the way”.

One of those characters is named Belle Gibson (and her story in the show closely mirrors real events); the other, played by Alycia Debnam-Carey, is a wellness blogger named Milla.

“I don’t think it’s a biopic in any sense,” says Raei, who had to read up on the story of the real Gibson before filming.

“It’s an expose of that era of natural healing; the early times of

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, where we didn’t really know what this thing was, and people got captured by it. That’s what (creator) Samantha Strauss wanted to portray: this idea of ‘hope in a bottle’.

“It’s not just about the one person, or anyone really ‘real’, although there is that story.”

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Camera IconApple Cider Vinegar is inspired by the story of wellness scammer Belle Gibson, who duped her fans into thinking she’d cured her terminal brain ******* through healthy eating and nutrition. Credit: Ben King/Courtesy Of

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

While we can’t speak about specifics due to an embargo, the drama is likely to strike quite a chord with viewers — and see audiences heading down the rabbit hole into the real events behind the drama.

And audiences will see more of Raei later this year, when he appears in The Twelve, which he shot in WA late last year.

“I’ve still got family (in Perth), and WA is something of a time capsule for me; I have a lot of memories of living there as a child, so when I come back, I feel like I am back in my childhood years again,” he says.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Camera IconActor Phoenix Raei. Credit: Sean Windsor

His time filming the Emmy-winning espionage thriller Tehran, in which Greece doubles for the Iranian capital, also marked a circular moment for the actor, who left his home country three decades earlier.

“It felt so weird working on Tehran, having to speak the language (I’d learned as a child),” Raei says of his role, in which he speaks Farsi.

“I speak it sometimes, but my wife is ***********, so it’s mostly English at home. Then I was on set, speaking it, and starring alongside (celebrated British actor) Hugh Laurie.”

As his career takes off, Raei says he is increasingly selective as he balances work with family. Apple Cider Vinegar was a role he knew was worth taking.

“I’m proud of this show,” he says.

“I was 26 when I got my first major role, for Australia Day, and now it’s been a decade almost. I have been very lucky.

“I started really passionate, I was so committed at the start, and I gave it everything. Now I have kids, and I’m scared to leave them, and I’m saying no to projects.”

But if Raei knows one thing, it’s that life can take you in unexpected directions, so he’s just trying to enjoy the ride.

Apple Cider Vinegar is on

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

on February 6

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#WAraised #actor #Iranian #refugee #Phoenix #Raei #role #Apple #Cider #Vinegar

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up