I was the personification of empathy when The Rake’s interview with Russell Crowe began. An odd thing to say, perhaps, but you see, I am a terrible traveller; I can barely do the school run without needing a restorative nap. Mr. Crowe had lately spent a lot of time crossing time zones. He had also been clear in a recent interview, with Joe Rogan, that he had exhausted himself by working hard on a bunch of projects that had converged at the same time, and the experience had played quite the number on his mind and his energy. So when, just 24 hours after flying from Los Angeles to Sydney, he had to “crawl out of the [jet-lag] dip” to jump on a Zoom call with yours truly, he was looking eye-to-eye at a sympathetic face.
That being said, what came through the screen was gale- force Crowe. He spoke with an assuredness that bypasses most politicians — his speaking voice is the kind of tempered roar that we have not heard since Richard Burton or Paul Robeson — and he was also warm, welcoming and kind to someone who could have taken the conversation in uncomfortable directions. I had recently watched Nuremberg, a film I think is more timely and important than Oppenheimer, and as a not-so-closeted world-war-II enthusiast, I was ready to dive in with my questions, but we began with something gentler and more wholesome and personal: farming.
