We Just Realised Corey From ‘Big Little Lies’ Starred In A ’00s Aussie Kids Show
It turns out an addition to the Season 2 cast of Big Little Lies has a deeply interesting Australian kids TV backstory, and no, it is not Nicole Kidman.
I am here to remind you about the existence of Out There, an ABC show about teens living in rural Australia that ran from 2003 to 2004. Do you remember it? Probably not.
It even won the AFI Award for Best Children’s Television Drama Series in 2003. Impressive.
Well, Out There was real, and it bred a big shot star.
Out There was about an American boy called Reilly (Douglas Smith, in his first lead TV role) who moved to a small country town called ‘Wollemi’ in Australia, to live with his aunt who was the local vet.
Her job meant that Reilly and Aggie, an English girl who came to Australia to effectively ‘intern’ at the Wild Spring Veterinary Clinic, were always holding Australian animals/dogs.
Basically, the whole TV show was these kids, plus their local mates, Miller (Richard Wilson) and Fiona (Molly McCaffrey) expressing their teen angst to each other, tepidly flirting/not really kissing, and also nurturing Australia’s wildlife.
Oooft, clock that teen, ‘I don’t want to be here’, fish-out-of-water energy. Riley was cool because he had a stick mp3 player – a major coup in the ’00s. He was also cool because he did not want to engage with the excessive amount of animal poo at a vet’s office (relatable).
And let’s note that iconic theme song of vanilla Aussie soft-rock from Connie Mitchell, ‘Doin’ What I Do’, made palatable for kids with such tween-empowering lines as: “You be you doing what you’re doing, I’ll be me, doing what I’m doing. I’ll be wearing my shirt doing what I do.”
While the rest of the younger cast has largely faded into obscurity – although there was a mid-’00s period where Richard Wilson was in everything, from 48 Shades to Deck Dogz – Douglas Smith moved on to a major role on Big Love and was most recently seen in Big Little Lies.
Yep, he’s the dude that plays Jane’s love interest Corey in Big Little Lies season two. He loves aquariums, surfing and hanging out with kids, but not in a creepy way. And he spends most of the season trying to understand and navigate Jane’s trauma.
So just try to watch Big Little Lies again now and not think about this ’00s teen heartthrob who truly earned his page on Teen Idols 4 You.
We were all tweens once, ten-year-olds trying to comprehend our emerging crushes. Can we be blamed for fangirling over a blonde guy with an accent who was always cradling kittens? (My thing was more the slightly odd dude with glasses and a guitar who was always jumping at how he had somehow made new ‘cool’ friends, but that is neither here nor there).
And for extra intel, this is what the official Out There website looked like in 2003. There were blogs! Unfortunately now it seems the URL has since been bought by an influencer I have never heard of. I do not understand why the ABC/BBC would not keep that domain on lock forever.
While you are here, I would also like to remind you all of how shook I was when Reilly’s replacement in season two, Tom, played by Cody Kasch, turned up on a show my mum was watching: Desperate Housewives.
In summary: Douglas Smith owes all his fame/adult acting skill to his turn in small budget Australian kids television.
Nah, probably not. But isn’t it fun to reminisce about all the weird things we used to watch as kids?
