Alex Williams Aussie ALL-ROUNDER

THE HOMEGROWN STAR TALKS ABOUT HIS BIGGEST TEST YET TAKING ON CRICKET LEGEND AND CULTURAL ICON, SHANE WARNE

- Sara Tapia

He’s no stranger to stepping into a real-life on-screen role, having played controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Underground, INXS guitarist Kirk Pengilly in Never Tear Us Apart, race car driver John ‘Slug’ Harvey in Brock and key witness Paul Onions in Catching Milat. But Aussie actor Alex Williams admits stepping into the shoes of sporting icon Shane Warne in Nine’s two-part biopic was “intimidating”.

“I’m playing him over a period of 20 or more years. Things change, body shapes change, voices change, ideals change. So I had to kind of really mark things into certain eras,” the 32-year-old tells WHO on tackling the beloved Aussie sportsman in Warnie. “So that was a challenge – you didn’t feel like you were creating one character, it felt like creating about four or five.”

The premiere of the new mini-series comes just 15 months after the tragic death of Warne, who passed away unexpectedly in March last year, aged 52, while on holiday in Thailand. The news sent shock waves across the nation, as family, friends and fans came to grips with the loss of the cricketing legend, who had made an enormous contribution to sport and entertainment over the decades.