Zac Garred in ‘The Seance.’
While most actors around the world are having an enforced rest due to the pandemic, Zac Garred is in demand. After shooting the horror film The Seance in Pennsylvania, the LA-based actor is heading to Montana next week for the drama Zero Road.
“I’m very grateful for the opportunities as it has been a sad state of affairs here in the US,” says Garred, who first went to LA for pilot season in 2014. “I had a few mates in the industry who had to bail and head back to Australia.”
In first-time director/producer Chance Sanchez’s Zero Road he is cast as Josh, a fat drug dealer described as a 1990s boy band reject.
The semi-autobiographical tale centres on a gifted teen who struggles to survive poverty while supporting his mother who suffers from a meth addiction.
The cast includes Jackson Rathbone (Jasper from the Twilight movies), Brandon Thomas Lee, Cornelia Guest and newcomer Olivia Rouyre.
Sanchez and cinematographer Mark David are planning a three-week shoot in the town of Kalispell and the surrounding Flathead Valley, adhering to stringent COVID-19 precautions.
“We have to follow union guidelines so it is imperative that our crew members wear all the proper personal protective equipment at all times,” David told the local paper.
“That means wearing masks on set, when we are in common areas at the hotel and when we are out in town. Everyone is tested before they leave to come here and again when they arrive. Safety is a big responsibility and we are taking it very seriously.”
US writer-director Chris Cramer’s The Seance follows Nate (Michael Minto), an infamous medium who claims it is scientifically possible to contact the dead through seances.
A YouTube skeptic played by Aussie Miranda Skerman sets out to debunk him but quickly finds his claims are not smoke and mirrors.
Garred plays Sean, Nate’s frat boy roommate who eggs him on, thinking it’s a lark, but soon regrets it when Nate’s invoking the dead becomes all too real.
Zac Garred in ‘General Hospital.’
Cramer told local media: “For the first two acts, it’s more of a commentary on the genre as everything he’s doing she is poking holes in it. Then the house turns on her for saying that none of it is real and it turns into a survival story.”
Last December Zac completed filming Occupation Rainfall, writer-director Luke Sparke’s sequel to his 2018 sci-fi thriller Occupation, on the Gold Coast.
Garred, who was in the original, which is screening on Netflix, plays Dennis, whom he describes as a cheeky and occasionally shonky homeless artist. “From the bits I’ve seen it is really impressive,” he says.
Three weeks after arriving in LA in 2014, he landed a recurring role in the soap General Hospital as an Aussie hippy named Levi Dunkleman, who was revealed to be the American Peter Harrell out to avenge his late father.
“It was an absolute blast and can be real hard yakka, with around 40 pages a day sometimes,” he says. “It was a fantastic initiation. I had to learn fast with remarkable actors.
“I was voted by the audience as their favorite villain for that year. They loathed me when I was a a manipulative, passive-aggressive hippy. I actually received a letter addressed to my character saying if I kept it up, this person was going to find me and belt me. I took it as a compliment.”
Straight after General Hospital he played an ex-IRA mercenary on NCIS: LA. Soon after he moved into a home in the Hollywood Hills where he has been based ever since.