Shane Jacobson.
Camera IconShane Jacobson. Credit: Supplied/David Baylis d442894

Shane Jacobson spills Oddball film set secret

Julian WrightEastern Reporter

IT happened with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner and Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan, but there was an on-set romance with a twist for Australian film Oddball.

Star Shane Jacobson dished the dirt to Community Newspaper Group that during the making of the feel-good film about a dog, Oddball, who protects endangered penguins from foxes, sparks flew between his co-stars: two penguins.

“Penguins mate for life and the truth is that two penguins in the show have mated, so we had an on-set romance,” he said.

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“So the penguins we pretended in the film were going to be together, are together.

“If they split up, he will have to give her his burrow.”

Keeping the set gossip to a minimum, Jacobson, who plays Oddball’s owner Swampy, revealed it was the story that appealed to him.

“If someone says ‘You’re going to work with an animal and it’s that great big fluffy white dog that inherently has it in them to protect animals that are weaker than them’, then that’s a pretty good thing,” he said.

“These dogs are bodyguards, they are the protector of the weak and innocent and when they sign up to protect sheep, chickens and penguins, they do it at all costs.

“They don’t get paid to do this; they don’t get a king suite at the hotel every weekend for a break.

“Wouldn’t the world be a better place if all humans were like that?”

He said while working with animals made the filmmaking process a little longer, it was worth the challenge.

Despite 13 projects currently in the works, Jacobson, who also appears in student short films to give back to the filmmaking community, said one of them was not a sequel to his most popular hit Kenny.

“Or Kenny Number Two as it should be called,” he said.

“We did Kenny’s World which is a TV series and we pretty much, we reckon, answered everything in that that was left to be answered.

“We treated him like a real person, so if a film crew came back to Kenny, if it was real, and said ‘We want another movie about you’ he would say (Jacobson puts on the Kenny lisp) ‘Well you’ve already shot it, I’m still cleaning toilets, I’ve done a ******* world tour’.”

Oddball is in cinemas September 17.

Community Newspaper Group has 25 family passes to give away to Oddball. Enter here before September 18.