EXCLUSIVE: Erik Thomson reveals why he will never play Dave on Packed to the Rafters again

It’s hard to imagine Australian TV without Erik Thomson. Who would have had a tragic romance with Georgie Parker’s Terri in All Saints? Who would have headed up the beloved Rafter family with Rebecca Gibney? As for Aftertaste, that most likely wouldn’t have existed at all.

The unimaginable nearly happened. Erik had only been on All Saints a couple of months when he got the call that could have changed his life.

“I got offered an audition for Lord Of The Rings and I turned it down because I’d just signed a two-year contract with All Saints,” he tells TV WEEK.

“In retrospect, I should have done the test, and if I got it, I probably could have got out of All Saints, because I would have been doing Lord Of The Rings, and that would have launched an international film career.”

Of course, sticking with All Saints turned out pretty well for Erik.

“My chemistry with Georgie and the Mitch and Terri thing set up my career here in Australia. But I look back at that moment where I said to my agent, ‘Oh no, I won’t put [an audition] down,’ and I go, ‘I wonder what would have happened if I had?'”

Growing up in New Zealand in the 1970s, Erik didn’t dream of becoming an actor.

“I loved doing school plays and reading things out loud in class, but I never really thought, ‘Oh, I’ll make it a career.'”

But, after doing a bachelor of arts, he decided to go drama school. He kept getting roles, including a stint as Hades in Xena: Warrior Princess.

“It just kind of happened. I wasn’t driven to be an actor.”

Moving to Australia, his first major role was as a gigolo in Pacific Drive, which was Australia’s answer to Melrose Place.

“I think Pacific Drive wasn’t a great TV show,” Erik, 55, admits. “It wasn’t really what I expected it to be.”

Pacific Drive led to All Saints, and from there he went on to The Alice – where he co-starred with his wife Caitlin McDougall – Packed To The Rafters and 800 Words.

Last year he got back together with Rebecca and the rest of the gang for Back To The Rafters, but he won’t be playing Dave Rafter again.

“Rafters will never come back,” he says. “I was really proud of what we did, with the difficulties that we had with Jess [Marais] not doing it at the last minute and COVID in the middle of it.

“I think we made a really good show, but I think it was just evident that time had moved on. It was hard to recapture the magic that we had.

“Personally, I won’t be involved in any more. I think it’s done. Done, completely.”

Last year marked the beginning of a new chapter in Erik’s career, when Aftertaste, the first series he produced, made it to air, with him starring as bad boy chef Easton West.

“Being my age and being at my stage in the industry it’s a natural progression to want to tell stories and be more part of that side of things,” he explains.

For Aftertaste to get a second season was “really exciting”.

“Then we had to go about the process of writing it,” he adds. “After the initial elation you suddenly go, ‘Okay, we gotta do this again.’ It’s the classic difficult second album.”

Despite his long-lasting success, Erik still isn’t sure how “driven” he is to be an actor.

“Some actors work it really, really hard,” he says. “I live away from the mainstream. I’m not on the red carpet all the time. I have a fairly low profile and a fairly normal life.”

Erik’s “fairly normal life” is lived in Port Willunga, just south of Adelaide, with Caitlin and their children Eilish and Magnus.

Although work takes him away for weeks at a time, he tries to make up for it when he’s home, volunteering at school like any other parent.

“Last year we had the school fair and I knew I was going to be there so I thought, ‘Well, I’ll cook all the wood-fired pizzas,’ and I cooked 240 pizzas. I did that knowing that I might not be able to do anything for the rest of the year.”

Eilish, a talented violinist, is 14 and Magnus is 11. Erik says they’re reaching the age where he needs to “let go”.

“You’ve got to accept as a parent that the majority of your work is done. I look at my kids and I go, ‘They’re both good people, they’ve got consciences, they’ve got hearts, they’re nice.'”

Caitlin, who starred in Always Greener as well as The Alice, has established a new career as an artist. Erik says she’d like to get back into acting but “the same women” tend to get the roles for women of a certain age.

“It’s very difficult if you’re not in that inner sanctum of the Miranda Ottos and the Rebecca Gibneys and the Claudia Karvans. If you’re not those people it’s hard to get in there because they’re the ones that people will sign off deals on.”

As for Erik, he’s got a role in a new series he can’t talk about just yet, plus a few other ideas for shows “bubbling away”.

He’d still love to work overseas or star in a “massive international blockbuster”. But he doesn’t want to say he has any regrets.

“If you say you regret something then it means you might not be happy where you are. I’m happy where I am.”