Rob Mills’ Unchained Melody

Coral Drouyn talks to Rob Mills as he prepares to open in the biggest challenge of his life…the role of Sam Wheat in Ghost – The Musical.

“My manager asked me what I wanted to do next…and I said – Everything!”

Not surprisingly the speaker is Rob Mills, who generates more energy in a single sentence than most of us do in an entire day. That was his response when he finished Legally Blonde. He’s a born entertainer and in fact can’t remember ever wanting to do anything else. “I’m game to try anything. I just love having new experiences. As long as I am entertaining someone, it’s all good.”

‘Millsy’ (as he is known to fans and the industry) is arguably the most bankable current Leading Man in Musical Theatre. He took time out from rehearsals for a quick sandwich and a million miles an hour interview.

“It is about bums on seats, sadly,” he says. “Yes there are better voices out there, and no matter who you are there is always going to be someone better. I’d never say that no-one could play the role of Sam (the Patrick Swayze character in Ghost) better than me – but for producers it’s about filling up theatres, and they’re trusting me to bring people in. I don’t really get scared, just a little nervous, but it’s a double responsibility. I mean, I’m opposite Jemma Rix, who is awesome, and this is a dramatic role and a lot of people think of me as a clown – and I guess there’s some truth to that. So I’ve got to act my socks off to do Jemma and the show justice, and I’ve got to bring the fans in to justify everyone’s faith in me, but I love this show so much and we haven’t even opened yet. It’s witty and sad and got such a big heart.”

The show, based on the Patrick Swayze/Demi Moore/Whoopi Goldberg film, has been a hit on Broadway and in the West End. Critics have raved about the special effects and the romance. It boasts one heck of a book by Hollywood writer Bruce Joel Rubin and music and lyrics by Dave Stewart (Eurythmics) and Glen Ballard, as well as Rubin. But what about ‘Unchained Melody’, the beautiful music that Alex North wrote for the 1955 prison film Unchained, for which Hy Zaret wrote the lyrics, one of the most recorded songs of all time? Though Al Hibbler had the original hit in 1955, and Bobby Hatfield of The Righteous Brothers made it one of the biggest songs of a decade later, it is indelibly stamped on audiences’ psyche as being the theme from Ghost. So is it in the show, and does Rob sing it.

“Two answers” says Rob, “Yes it is…and …I’m not telling you, you have to come and see for yourself.”

Rob spent the past year or so doubling up on his drama classes (“I need to become Sam, to make the audience believe in me as a ghost. In short I have to prove I can really act”), continuing his vocal classes and even getting in some dancing classes, though he doesn’t have to dance in Ghost.

“Aaaah, my dancing,” he says ruefully. “I got voted off Dancing with the Stars a few years back in just week two.” It would have been enough to stop many performers in their tracks, but Rob is charmingly self-effacing. “Look, I’m never going to be a triple threat, I didn’t have that kind of training. But I work hard and I can at least move like I know what I’m doing now. And guess what? I can even pick up chory now. The first time I tried to follow a choreographer it was like a bad Jerry Lewis routine. I’m much better now. Maybe not good…but better.”

Rob has also been hitting the gym regularly. “I have to get my shirt off in this show. Let’s face it, I’m a ghost for 90% of it, so I need to look as good as I can when I’m not a disappearing spectre,” he laughs as he tells me.

It’s this willingness to try, even if he looks foolish, which has won Rob so many friends as well as fans, but also his detractors. ‘He doesn’t have the training,’ some say, ‘He’s just been lucky.’ So many of our best Musical Theatre talents have spent years in Performing Arts academies, and it seems to some that Rob has had an easy ride from celebrity to star.

“I have been lucky…but we all need luck. I haven’t had the training some of the people I work with have had. I never would have made it into WAAPA or VCA, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t worked hard. From the age of 13 I was out gigging with bands, playing in pubs and clubs, doing cabarets. I learned a different set of skills… how to get people in a noisy room to listen to you; how to cover if the sound system dies; what to say to someone trying to pick a fight; how to work – and hold - an audience, fix a faulty mike….most of all how to connect with people. So I don’t apologise for not finding my way to Musical Theatre through the usual channels. But I’ve loved Musicals since I was a kid. There aren’t any show people in my family, but I used to watch The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins in re-runs on the tele and sing all the songs when I was very little. Mum would sing along with me and we’d have a great time. Maybe that was a signpost to the future, but I was too young to know it.”

A Melbourne boy through and through, Rob joined a series of bands through high school and was always part of Brentwood College’s Battle of the Bands concert. By the time he finished his senior years at Box Hill Secondary College he was gigging regularly with his group The Megamen. Then came the first series of Australian Idol.

“I didn’t need much convincing to enter,” Rob says, “but it was all about the experience, not the winning. I made it to the finals but I learned so much. I was like a sponge, soaking everything up. Did I think I would be a Rock’N’Roll Superstar? I didn’t really care as long as I was singing, entertaining. Okay…maybe I dreamed it sometimes. Hell, if no-one wanted to pay me I’d even go and do Karaoke, and yes I do realise that makes me sound like a total nerd, not a cool guy in any way shape or form. I still love Karaoke. What better thing is there to do than sing songs you love with your mates? And some of them were show tunes and I started thinking about musicals. I just wanted to be on that big stage.”

Rob became ‘Millsy’ during his television days. “I hosted a couple of shows, and then there was Dancing With the Stars and Celebrity Apprentice. I’d jump at anything I hadn’t done before, just to experience it. I wanted to know how the cameras worked, how to find my mark, which was my best side. Did you know I even did the weather on the morning show? I wanted to learn how the whole blue screen thing worked because you’re talking about highs and lows and there’s nothing there.”

When Rob got the chance to play Johnny Casino in an Arena tour of Grease, he jumped at it. “Who wouldn’t?” He sounds genuinely awestruck. “On stage with John Farnham, Natalie Bassingthwaite and Craig McLachlan. I walked around with my mouth open even when I wasn’t singing.” Later he got to play Claude in a Perth production of Hair and he was hooked. “Every signpost was taking me towards musical theatre. I’d have to be a perfect idiot to ignore them. And I’m not that perfect!”

When Rob heard the music from Wicked he was blown away. “I had to be in that show…I just had to be. Okay, Grease and Hair had rock scores, I understand why they took a chance with me….but Wicked? That’s a REAL musical, and I just wanted it so badly. I would have got down on my knees and begged if I had to, and I did several auditions before I landed Fiyero in the Australian Premiere. What a buzz…I can still feel it.”

Other shows followed, The Last Five Years, Legally Blonde, and now the iconic Ghost. It’s not by chance that Rob sends himself up by calling his cabaret show Surprisingly Good. “Critics are always saying it, no matter what I do,” he says, “Rob Mills is surprisingly good,” as if they somehow expect me to be bad even after all these years, as if they want me to fail for being a middle-class Melbourne boy and not an ‘Artist’. The truth is I will try anything IF I think I am right for it. I’m never going to audition for Phantom or Sweeney Todd. I do know my limitations….but I still keep pushing my boundaries.”

After we make a date for a Karaoke night during the Melbourne run, I ask him one last serious question. What if he accepts something because he thinks he can do it but it turns out he can’t? What if he fails?

Rob answers without hesitation. “If I can’t do it, then I do it again….and I keep on doing it until I CAN do it.”

And that’s why we love him.

Ghost - The Musical plays at the Theatre Royal, Sydney from March 16, and Crown Theatre Perth from May 21, having already played seasons in Adelaide and Melbourne.

Images: Rob Mills and Jemma Rix.

Related Reading

Musicals in 2016 and Beyond

Our earlier Ghost coverage

Article originally published in the January / February 2016 edition of Stage Whispers.