A millennial actor living in a Melbourne share house has revealed he would consider selling his kidney just to be able to buy his own home.
Jack Braddy, 30, said many people of his generation would consider resorting to extreme measures just to be able to buy a property with a mortgage deposit.
“People would think it was too ridiculous, but maybe with the way things are now, people can look at it and say, ‘Maybe I can cope with a lost kidney and pay the deposit on the house,'” he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘Housing crisis, cost of living… this could not have been written 20 years ago.
‘I live in a four-room shared house with six people: I would gladly change the situation.’
Braddy is so disenchanted with the plight of young people that he co-wrote and starred in a 97-minute dark comedy, The Organist, about an ethically compromised young man, Graeme Sloan, who makes a living by persuading poor people to sell parts of their vital organs.
“There is a quiet anger and desperation that is growing, particularly in my generation. This speaks to that, to what one needs to do to secure their future, whether it is giving up an organ or being the person who traffics them,” she said.
‘He buys them from the poor and sells them to the rich. It’s ethically very ambiguous, but he thinks he’s doing the right thing.
Jack Braddy, an actor who lives in a shared house in Melbourne, has revealed that he would consider selling his kidney just so he could buy his own house (pictured, right, with The Organist cast member Jess Ciancio)
‘The organic system is failing, so the best we can do is, so to speak, distribute the wealth.
“You can remove a lung. Livers are a very hot commodity – you can remove about 80 percent of the liver and it will grow back, so it’s basically all kinds of body parts.”
Tickets for a screening of the comedy at the upcoming Melbourne International Film Festival sold out in two hours, at a time when homes in Australia’s big cities are out of reach for people on average incomes.
“There’s camaraderie building between everyone who’s going through tough times and I hope this film speaks to that,” she said.
“We have no solutions, we only have levitations and laughter.”
The film, which Braddy co-wrote with director Andy Burkitt and Xavier Nathan, was made on a shoestring budget of thousands of dollars (about the cost of a used Toyota).
“Let’s say a used Camry,” he joked.
In between acting roles, Braddy worked as a waiter and applied for jobs on Airtasker making furniture or assembling Ikea items.
“I worked in bars, hosted trivia contests, did odd jobs around the place… I do whatever I can with the free time I’m given,” he said.
‘Any small job that doesn’t take much time and can be done quickly.’
In between acting roles, Braddy worked as a waiter and applied for jobs on Airtasker making furniture or assembling Ikea stuff (he’s pictured, left, in Bloody Tradies with director Andy Burkitt, who also directed The Organist).
Braddy is the son of former Queensland Labor policeman and Education Minister Paul Braddy, and studied acting at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth, where he befriended Hugo Wran, son of former New South Wales Labor Premier Neville Wran and half-brother of 1970s Young Doctors actress Kim Wran.
Hugo Wran’s sister, Harriet Wran, was jailed for two years for being an accessory to a drug-related murder in Sydney in 2014.
Jack Braddy said meeting his father’s political enemies in the Labour Party as a child made him aware of the dark tendencies of politicians to put on a front, like actors on screen.
“I remember as a kid going to a lot of barbecues and shaking hands with politicians and seeing a fair amount of smiling faces who I knew had, at one time or another, tried to betray my father,” he said.
“I definitely think there’s a world to explore there and I definitely see similarities between a salesman and a politician, I probably couldn’t tell them apart if you put two in the room with me.”
Braddy, the son of a former Queensland Labor minister, studied acting at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts under Hugo Wran (left), son of former New South Wales Labor Premier Neville Wran. His sister Harriet Wran (centre with Labor Premier Tanya Plibersek) was jailed for complicity in murder.
Braddy said there were parallels between the organ-selling character he plays on screen and the dark elements of many politicians who delude themselves into thinking they are doing the right thing.
“He’s a scoundrel, a scoundrel. I think he means well, he’s deluded himself into thinking that if he can get the organs to the right people, he’s an egalitarian,” she said.
‘He’s just using his charm, his little snake-like gestures to get where he needs to be.
‘Appearances can be deceiving and he does a very good job of showing one side of himself and keeping the other hidden.’