For six years actor Jesse Spencer was a regular fixture in loungrerooms around the country, starring as the the popular Billy Kennedy, son of Dr Karl and Susan Kennedy, in the long-running soap Neighbours.
But in 2000, Spencer quit the show and relocated to the United States, landing his big breakthrough role in 2004 on House alongside Hugh Laurie.
Since then, he hasn’t worked on an Australian project, despite always being on the the lookout for one.
Now, after finishing shooting Last Days of the Space Age, Spencer has made a promise to himself – it will not be another 21 years before he returns home to work.
He’d been away from an Aussie set for so long that the 45-year-old was worried his American accent, honed over 18 years in leading roles on House and then Chicago Fire, would fight to be heard.
“Being in front of the camera, it becomes like an automatic response that you’re going to kick into American,” Spencer, back home in the US with his wife, Kali, and 2-year-old daughter, tells WHO over Zoom.
But there was no need to worry. Once immersed in shooting the eight-part series, he felt right at home.
“It was all very, very familiar to me in an uncanny kind of way,” he says. “I did have to fight it a little bit, but luckily I came in a few weeks early so I just integrated myself back into Australia and took my time and then it just flowed.”
The highly watchable series is set in a Western Australian town in 1979 where a power strike threatens to plunge the region into darkness, a Miss Universe pageant is making headlines and Skylab is about to crash-land.
Spencer stars as union boss Tony Bissett, who finds himself on the opposite side of an ugly power strike from his wife, Judy (played by Radha Mitchell).
Spencer tells WHO he loved making the series, delving into the history of the union movement at the time and connecting with his character.
“The character I play is an ex-army, strong union guy,” he says. “He genuinely believes and adheres to fair work for fair pay, a fair go, that classic colloquialism, and so I looked back through the history of unions. He’s fighting for his family and for the unions, and his wife is working at the company that he’s picketing, so there’s that very awkward, difficult relationship with his wife. He’s caught between a rock and a hard place. He’s a family man, he’s a strong man, but when the power dynamic shifts [to his wife], it’s a swift kick to the balls, you know.”
Now that it looks like we’ll be seeing more him, let’s look back at what’s been keeping him so busy and his biggest roles.
Neighbours (1994-2000)
Spencer was still in high school in 1994 when he auditioned for, and won, the role of Billy Kennedy on the Aussie soap, staying until 2000.
Swimming Upstream (2003)
Spencer starred as Tony Fingleton, opposite Geoffrey Rush, in the Russell Mulcahy-directed family drama. It was based on Fingleton’s true story to become a champion swimmer. This was the last project Spencer did in Australia until Last Days of the Space Age came along.
House (2004-2012)
Spencer starred as intensive care specialist and surgeon Dr. Robert Chase on the hit medical drama House, opposite Hugh Laurie. It was a massive breakthrough for him. He played Chase for the show’s entire run, becoming the second longest-serving member of the team.v
Chicago Fire (2012 – 2021)
Spencer starred as fearless firefighter Matthew Casey in the drama Chicago Fire for 10 season and a whopping 200 episodes
Is Jesse Spencer married?
Yes, Spencer began dating neuroscientist Dr. Kali Woodruff Carr in 2014 after they met at a music festival in Chicago, and they were engaged in 2019.
On June 27, 2020, they married in a private ceremony in Florida. “Despite a spike in COVID, a venue change, a Saharan dust plume, not to mention a torrential thunderstorm, we made it across the line on our wedding day, and I’m a very lucky man,” Spencer told the Daily Telegraph at the time. “What a silver lining to 2020. She’s smart, pretty and way ahead of her years. We’re very happy. She is my port in every storm, and we’re already excited to be moving on to the next phase of our lives.” The couple share a two-year-old daughter.
What is Jesse Spencer doing now?
Now that he is no longer tied to a US TV series, Spencer says he hopes to return to Australia more often to work. It’s why he loved his latest project so much.
“I’ve been looking for a project for a long time but network TV schedules are quite gruelling. I had 18 years of straight network TV and then I started a family and I had a little bit of time [off] and then this project came up and it was great. My family hadn’t met my daughter, so she came down at the end [of shooting]. And then we had big family gatherings and they all met my daughter.”
