Beloved New Zealand actor and winemaker Sam Neill is in Sydney filming Australian courtroom drama The Twelve at the moment.
Uncharted with Sam Neill tracks Captain James Cook's voyage around the Pacific. Photo: Supplied
The 74-year-old Jurassic Park star is enjoying his time back across the ditch, especially the interactions he's had with the local birds that flock to the balcony of his Surry Hills hotel room.
The Twelve is a ten-part series that follows a jury made up of ordinary Australians, as they decide on the case of a woman accused of murdering a child.
"I play an old windbag of a barrister who appears for the defence," Neill says. "And I get days off, which I like a lot, that's when I spend time with the birds here."
While there have been plenty of films centred around juries, what makes The Twelve different is that it also follows the personal lives of the jurors involved, he says.
"Of course most of these jury films you're sort of locked up in a room and a court for two hours," Neill says. "This is ten hours and what makes it different is that each one of these jury members has their own life.
"And a lot of the things that are happening, there's domestic abuse and one thing or another, these are lapping into the case itself.
"I've never served on a jury but it must be a fascinating thing. And I know some juries, actually people become very good friends and they have reunions afterwards because you spend such intense time with 12 strangers.
"I think that's what makes this different, is it really goes into other people's lives, the intersection of that."
The visit has also given him time to think about Australia and why it uses 26 January, "the date the English dumped a bunch of convicts on the shore in Sydney", as the day to signify the birth of its nation.
While Neill says he gave up on arguing about politics on Twitter some years ago due to its "toxic" nature, he recently came out with a post on Instagram supporting calls to change the date of Australia Day.
"It's not called Invasion Day by First Nations people here for no good reason," he says.
"Maybe they should celebrate perhaps January the 1st which is Federation Day, when Australia actually became a nation in 1901 - or maybe they should be celebrating a treaty, as in when they actually have a treaty as we do in New Zealand."
However, Neill also turns a critical eye towards his home country and says New Zealand needs to open its arms to more refugees.
"I met someone who worked for United Nations last year who told me the number of refugees in the world has gone from 50 million to 70 million and we in New Zealand, we take a pathetic 1500 people a year," he says.
"That makes us 67th in world ratings for what people do for refugees. Now it seems to me that this is a prime time for doing something more.
"Why we aren't doing more in a humanitarian way for all these displaced people all over the world, it breaks my heart."
Neill also talked to Jim Mora about the best song ever written. In his case he's picked the most important song ever written even if it's not his favourite.
"It's easy to forget now how each successive Beatles album, how much we looked forward to them because they were always breaking new ground."
The one that side blinded him the Sgt Peppers album, he told Jim Mora.
"That first track, that's the song I've chosen 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'
Pop music was throw away stuff before The Beatles, he says.
"With that song, and that record, you realised that pop had moved into something completely different."
