How Julian McMahon kissed and made up with ex-sister-in-law Kylie Minogue on Swinging Safari

IN all the fuss surrounding the reunion of Kylie Minogue and Guy Pearce in new Aussie comedy Swinging Safari, it’s largely been forgotten that the movie also facilitated another, potentially far more awkward reunion: that of Minogue and her former brother-in-law Julian McMahon.

“That was an impromptu moment,” says McMahon of his lunge towards Minogue’s lips. “Steph (Elliott, director) said ‘Do what you want, Julian!’ and I thought, ‘Bugger it, I’ll get up and snog my ex sister-in-law’.

“She had this great reaction,” he says, pulling a horrified face, “like she was being attacked by some kind of creature. It was very funny”.

McMahon was married to Dannii Minogue for 18 months spanning 1994-95. He’s spent the two decades since living and working in the US and one would hope there’d be enough water under the bridge to not have any great discomfort in working with Dannii’s big sis.

“Oh look, I never had any weirdness to be honest,” says McMahon. “First, it feels like another lifetime ago, so it’s hard to relate to it completely.

“But Dannii and I loved each other — the relationship didn’t work but we had an incredible relationship when we had it. And Kylie was an amazing sister-in-law. She sung at our wedding and that was pretty fricking special.

“The sad thing is that it didn’t last ... it’s just what happened, you know. You always feel a little bit weird when you’re breaking up with somebody, but I didn’t really think about it (while making the movie).”

While McMahon has worked in Australia several times in recent years, shooting two projects for US TV network Syfy in Melbourne, the Swinging Safari shoot was a proper homecoming — taking him right back to where he grew up on the Gold Coast.

“I grew up on the Isle of Capri, right in the middle of Surfers Paradise. Surfers Paradise was a podunky town, no high rises when we first moved there,” he recalls. “So for me it was really a flashback because everywhere I went was: ‘I remember that ...’ The vibe of that area of Queensland is very particular.”

Literally taken back to his childhood, McMahon slipped easily into the “1970s groove” of Swinging Safari.

“Everything’s to a T, exactly the way that it happened,” he says of the film’s look. “You start with the hair and the moustaches and the sideburns, you put on those garish outfits in fantastically flammable materials, then you go on to the sets ... you’re there. It was immaculate.”

You’d have to be slightly worried, however, if the chaos going on in the households depicted in the movie was mirrored in that of Australia’s Prime Minister at the dawn of the 1970s, William McMahon — Julian’s dad.

“Yeah, look,” McMahon begins with a laugh, “it was certainly a period of time where people were attempting to develop this cultural understanding of where they were. After the revolutionary scream in the ’60s, the ’70s came along and people were a little lost in regards to, how does everything fit and who are we?

“So it wasn’t that extreme (in the McMahon house), but my parents were still working out how to parent. My Dad for example, he was born in 1908 — that’s a very different time to what it was when he was raising me. He must have gone through a strange misunderstanding of how you were parented in 1908 versus how you parent in 1972; it would have been so conflicting.

“Also how you be a husband in that period of time would have been different. That’s what was really interesting to me.”

“I’m so used to taking the dialogue from a script and turning it into an American thing — I just do that automatically now,” he explains. “So a couple of times I was like, ‘I don’t even know how to say that in Australian’. I was completely lost.”

But with guidance from his co-stars — “You don’t say it like that mate!” — by the time McMahon left, he says, “I was as about Australian as it gets”.

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