‘Les Norton’ Actor Hunter Page-Lochard On The Time He Literally Pissed Himself Laughing

Writer and actor Hunter Page-Lochard, star of ABC’s First Nations superhero series Cleverman, laughs a lot. The 26-year-old laughs warmly and easily, rattling off stories from his life and from his career, describing moments that are embarrassing, cringey and uncomfortable, but most of all, funny.

“I'm a very weird dude that like something that wasn't funny yesterday could make me piss myself today,” Page-Lochard says. 

People’s mannerisms can pique Page-Lochard’s sense of humour, and become fodder for both his acting and writing practice. 

“When someone just does something in the heat of the moment, I'll just laugh. But if you're standing next to me you won't laugh – it's not a funny mannerism at all, it's just something quirky that I've just noticed myself and I relate to something in my past that I thought was funny.

“I think you do kind of take and put [mannerisms you see] in your own little cauldron when you're creating characters on stage or on screen.”

Page-Lochard doesn’t hesitate to admit that he, like the rest of us, laughs when people fall – he’s not saying he laughs at people getting injured, so much as at the movement itself. With family, he's laughing with them. At strangers, it's more of a "church laugh", where you kind of stifle the noise. 

“When we would play footy and my sister would trip as she's running to the try line to score her first try and everyone's going, 'Yes, she's finally doing it!' and then she falls on her face just in front of the try line – that is hilarious.”

But Page-Lochard isn’t always laughing at/with others – he’s often, quite literally, the butt of the joke.  While at high school in Sydney, Page-Lochard admits he may have accidentally mooned a teacher. 

“It was just one of those days where it was raining and so we couldn't do the outside stuff, so all the kids were cooped up inside watching movies for the 20-millionth time . We all just started laughing in the back of the class for some stupid reason, we didn't know what the hell we were laughing at, and then we got separated. I got sent to the front of the class. 

“So to continue the joke, I mooned my friends from the front of the class. I just lowered my pants and gave them a quick moon. I didn't realise the teacher was sitting with them, so she thought I was mooning her, and it was a female teacher so it was even worse. They all started laughing at me and then she was like, 'Right, that's it, out!' 

“I got sent to the principal's office and my year coordinator and they just looked at me because they knew I was an ok student, I was in the arts and stuff, they knew I wasn't a ratbag, and they just started laughing. 

“'Are you an idiot or an idiot?' 'I am so sorry, this is a complete misunderstanding, it was raining, it was just pent-up stupidity, I'm sorry.' They were like, 'Just don't moon a teacher again, you idiot.'” 

"Life is so dull, just fuckin' smile.”

Heading to Berlin International Film Festival with Cleverman in 2016, Page-Lochard desperately needed to go to the bathroom while the seatbelt sign was on. He’d downed a few Stellas at his stopover in Abu Dhabi, peed before boarding, and then sat through an interminably long period – he reckons about three hours – stuck on the plane waiting for the flight to finally take off. 

“By that time, me and brother boy that’s on the plane are just cracking up at the fact that I've got my legs crossed so tightly. And I'm just like complaining to the flight attendants – it's like, 'Can I please go to the toilet?' And they wouldn't let me go the toilet. 

“So then the plane finally takes off. And my mate says something so stupid that I start laughing. And when I start laughing I start peeing my pants and I can't hold it... And I was in the middle seat of the middle aisle, so I had these two Indian dudes next to me on my left and my mate on my right, so I was like dead centre and these guys knew exactly what was happening, so they started pissing themselves laughing. 

“So you've got this whole row of complete strangers basically pissing themselves laughing while one of them's actually pissing themselves. And then I'm freaking out so I grab one of those blankets that they give you, and I wrap it around me like a sarong. I finally ask a flight attendant, 'Can I please go to the toilet?' And he's fed up with me, and just as he's about to say something he looks down and sees that I've wrapped the blanket around my waist and then he realises what's happening. He just slowly nods his head. I get up in front of the whole plane with the sarong around me. I walk to the bathroom, and when I come back, there's paper towels sticking out of my waistband – I've basically made a human nappy. 

“But then the stupid thing is that we arrive in Berlin and I'm so shocked with how stupid that was and how funny that was that I don't care about the situation. We have this Berlin Film Festival guy that grabs us from the airport, and I didn't even introduce my name, I literally started my introduction with, 'I pissed myself on the plane.' And that was our relationship. And now whenever I tell that story, when I'm drinking, I bring myself to tears.” 

Page-Lochard seems to relish telling stories from his childhood, and of his family. There’s stories about cousins taking advantage of his stutter to call dibs on playing PlayStation next, and stories about his late uncles, composer David Page and dancer and choreographer Russell Page.

Laughing in the face of loss helps Page-Lochard to remember them both as a “bright beacon of laughter”: “Most of the time whenever we're thinking of Uncle David or Uncle Russell we're always cracking up.”

He describes sitting on the lounge with his cousins, as Russell told them a horror story about a doll called Chuckie. 

“He goes to the kitchen while he's still yarning, talking, talking, and we can still hear him. Then he comes back from the kitchen with one of my little cousin's dolls with a knife in its hand and he gets to the punchline of his story and he comes running around the corner of the kitchen going, 'And Chuckie!'

“My cousin Rhimi went backwards over the couch. My sister ran outside. [Russell]'s on the floor laughing – you've got this 35-year-old man on the floor with the doll and a knife, pissing himself laughing. But he's got these 12-year-old kids just mortified. 

“There's some pretty pretty fucked up and funny things in my upbringing that are quite hilarious and kind of shaped the person I am now and the way that I see situations and humour and laugh at things. Life is so dull, just fuckin' smile.”

Page-Lochard recalls David driving up the “huge” ramp in the Broadway Shopping Centre car park with he and his cousins in the back of the car. 

“Whenever [David] would have all of us kids in the back, without a fucking doubt he would always go up that ramp, and then break, and then go, 'Oh my God, guys.' We'd be like, 'What?' And he goes, 'The brakes aren't working!' And then let go and pulls his foot off the brake, and then the car would start rolling down the ramp a bit. He'd have all these Black kids in the back just going, 'Ahhhh!' He would just quickly put the brakes back on and he's pissing himself laughing because he's just traumatised these four Black kids.”

Page-Lochard now features in ABC’s 1980s Kings Cross drama Les Norton, alongside Rebel Wilson and David Wenham, as Billy, a former professional boxer turned casino doorman. In terms of his career as an actor, he says he’s rarely been offered roles with an in-built sense of humour. 

“My whole acting career, unfortunately, because I tick a box of Indigenous heritage, a lot of my characters are very dark for some unknowable reason that we all kind of know. So a lot of Indigenous characters at the start of my career were either homeless, foster kids, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, or they witnessed suicide, or they're about to commit suicide, which are all really dark motherfuckin' things. 

“It got to a point where I did Soulmates for ABC, I did a little character on that, and I didn't know what the fuck to do. I was like, 'What the fuck do I do? Do I sound funny? Is this line ok? Am I doing this right?’

“I'm such a light, funny person in real life, so to play all these dark roles is uber depressing for me. When Les Norton came about I was like, 'Oh my God. Yes!' And I could bring a sense of humour into it that has been around me my whole life. David was a drag queen. There's a sense of humour right there. 

“I was being dressed in a fucking wig and a dress when I was five to then perform in front of the whole family. That's my humour, that's my sexuality, that's what I find natural and funny. So then I can bring that to Les Norton. I can have a little bit of charisma there, trying to bring that larrikin out and bend my shoulders a bit more forward and kind of have a bit of a shrug. There's this element to it that's fun. I've never really been able to bring humour into the fold until now, so yeah, it's exciting.”

Les Norton airs Sundays on ABC.