The closing scene of their Great Australian Road Trip to the red centre may look like a romantic movie, but don’t expect Nazeem Hussain and Melissa Leong to oblige.
When Nazeem Hussain and Melissa Leong finally sit down atop King’s Canyon in Central Australia, after a very long drive and hike, it looks so photogenic it could be the end of a romantic movie.
But like a question raised in When Harry Met Sally these two are just platonic friends. If the scene is screaming out for a pash, it isn’t coming anytime soon.
“I don’t know what the opposite of sexual tension is, but that’s what me and Mel have,” Hussain tells TV Tonight.
“There was tension about playlists to be honest, when I’d run out of mine and there was no Wi Fi.”
Hitting the road for new SBS series Great Australian Road Trips, the pals furst met in 2020 as guests on Hughesy We Have a Problem.
“I remember she was the newly announced judge on MasterChef. She’d done some SBS stuff, but was about to explode in Australia’s mainstream screens. I think we took a cab to the airport together, or we were hanging out at the airport lounge in Sydney. We just got along real quick, a similar sense of humour.
“We both felt like we somehow were the glitches in the matrix being on mainstream television as people of colour from SBS. Like, we had somehow broken through. Well, I felt like that anyway. Something happens when two people of colour from mainstream television meet. There’s a bit of a head nod, like, ‘Hey, we’re in here. So how’d that happen?’ But, she’s just really fun and we just clicked straight away.
“We’ve never really had a proper chance to spend good time together. During covid, we used to go on lots of walks. She’s met my family, we’ve had sporadic catch ups here and there, but it’s always been busy. So our friendship has been held back by our busy schedules which is why, when this show came across my table, I was like, ‘Awesome. I finally get to actually hang out with Mel.’”
The series, sees them undetake 3 road trips including to Tasmania’s western coast and Arnhem Land NT, while Bump‘s Claudia Karvan & Steph Tisdell tackle Great Barrier Reef Drive in northern Queensland, Kangaroo Island in South Australia and the iconic Grand Pacific Drive south of Sydney.
Filming for Mint Pictures, the commitment became the most amount of time Hussain and Leong had ever spent together.
“Up until the point, I thought, ‘I’m pretty happy with this friendship,” he admits. “So it was big risk deciding to travel with each other, I guess because we could have really stuffed the friendship. They say, if you want to know someone, travel with them or do business with them, then you really know what they’re like.”
And you know, part of me was like the better to to, you know, to not trouble with her, in case we just hate each other.
Travelling along the iconic Red Centre Way from Uluru through Arrernte Country to King’s Canyon, shooting comprised about 10 hours per day, with a skeleton crew and stopping around every 2 hours. They visit Standley Chasm, a Desert Song Festival in Ormiston Gorge, Aboriginal community Hermannsburg (Ntaria) and undertake a camel ride.
Hussain admits he thought much of the trip would be cheated for the cameras, but it wasn’t the case.
“Before I did I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here I actually thought it was going to be a very heavily produced TV jungle, where it’s all just smoke and mirrors. And I thought the same sort of thing for this show, in a way. I was like, ‘I will be driving around, but we’re not going to be doing all the driving all the time,’” he recalls.
“But actually it was very much ‘Here’s where we’re going, the cameras are set up. Go!’ and then we’d just talk for hours and stop whenever we wanted to stop. We’d point out the window, distract each other. It was a genuine road trip. We’d be reminded that we wer filming TV, when sometimes the GoPro would start beeping that it ran out of battery. Or they’d talk to us on the two way radio and say, ‘We’ve been trying to tell you you’ve taken the wrong turn!’”
It wasn’t long before they let down their guard on the open road.
“For that amount of time, it’s too tiring to kind hold that up constantly be using a filter. So we kind of dropped it. I guess we just trusted the editors and probably ourselves that our real tired selves can come out and do without what you will. From what we’ve seen, they’ve done quite a good job with what they’ve gotten.”
While the six part series showcases Australian landscapes, history and culture, the long road trip didn’t implode the friendship between Hussain and Leong, nor make them decide to leave their respective partners either. Hussain reckons the friendship outweighs all.
“There’s so many people that you meet on a fleeting basis, but you don’t actually have, a genuine, trusting friendship. It’s kind of hard to know that you can rely on someone else, in this industry. It’s pretty cut throat.”
Great Australian Road Trips screens 7:30pm Thursday on SBS.