He’s a paralympic gold medalist, winner of tennis’s uber-rare Golden Slam, and current Australian of the Year, yet Dylan Alcott still cringes when he sees himself on screen.
“My stupid face pops up and I’m on the news, and you’re like ‘Oh my God it’s me,’” he says, laughing. “I still get weirded out by it because I just never thought it would happen.”
Dylan Alcott: “At the moment I don’t want to play [tennis], and it’s liberating.”Credit:Simon Schluter
And yet the retired athlete and disability advocate has plans for the future that would see his immense public profile rise even more – no mean feat for a man who recently got a giggle out of Queen Elizabeth II on a video chat, and was able to help steer a federal election campaign with a single tweet.
“I really want to do some acting, just to see if I can do it. So if anyone’s listening …” he says, before revealing intriguing veiled plans for a new foray into entertainment. “I can’t talk about it yet, but I had my first gig the other day for an animated feature.”
The talkative Alcott, voice raspy from an events calendar groaning under the weight of 200 requests from individuals and organisations per day, would obviously make an amazing cartoon bilby, or perhaps another larrikin canine character on Bluey? “It was a voice thing. And I went all right! I’ve already said too much!”
Alcott during the recording of Good Weekend Talks.Credit:Simon Schluter
Alcott was chatting on the relaunch episode of Good Weekend Talks – a weekly podcast featuring conversations between journalists from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age with extraordinary people from across the country and beyond – in which he discussed everything from promoting disabled intimacy with his partner, sexologist Chantelle Otten, to his work so far as Australian of the Year, including everything from lobbying for free RATs for vulnerable disabled people to his plans to help review and reform the NDIS.
“It’s such an awesome, incredible scheme, which has changed the lives of so many, but too much money is getting lost in the red tape to lawyers to people that are working on it [who] don’t know what they’re doing,” he says. “We need people’s lived experience back at the heart of making decisions.”
The former quad tennis star also revealed that he hasn’t felt the pull of the court at all. “I miss it zero per cent, which is such a good feeling. I haven’t got the rig – I’ve put on some kegs, baby,” although in saying that he also learnt a valuable lesson from his post-playing period of rest. “My physical health wasn’t too bad, but you know what got affected? My mental health, because I’ve trained every day, forever. I was like, ‘Why am I feeling flat?’ and ‘What’s going on here?’”
He missed the structure but also the endorphins, and is now back in training. “I’m feeling better for it as well. And I realised I’ll train forever now – just going to the gym, go for a run, go shoot some basketball, whatever it is. But tennis? At the moment I don’t want to play, and it’s liberating.”
Alcott during this year’s Australian Open.Credit:Getty Images
He’s using his platform judiciously, too, carefully considering everything he does, including sponsorships. Does he have a blacklist? “Bloody oath, and you can guess who they are,” he says. “We had an offer the other week for a great opportunity for remuneration, exposure, and you absolutely could not pay me enough to be anyone near it, because the way they treat my community is not on.”
Those he has partnered with include winemaker Grant Burge, which has appointed him an ambassador for its Leave Your Mark campaign and will put $2 from select wine sales later this year towards establishing tertiary education scholarships in partnership with the Dylan Alcott Foundation.
“That’s huge. That changes perceptions, right, because we’re not just advertising medical products and hospitals,” he says, while urging more advertisers to get onto our Paralympians. “Not for the warm and fuzzies, because it’s bloody good business, because we are great ambassadors who train our arse off, put on a show and give a return on investment to ticket holders, broadcasters and sponsors.”
He wants greater representation in all spaces, of course, from mainstream schools to dating apps, from parliament to boardrooms, and suggests his potential future life as a silver screen icon could help.
“I want to look back in five years, and across everywhere there’s just heaps of people with disability and we’re laughing that we were even talking about it like this now. That’s what I dream of,” Alcott says. “Why couldn’t Brad Pitt be in a wheelchair and win an Oscar? I’m serious.”
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