Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer met in a cafe, not a vet clinic. But the line between their lives and their characters’ is “pretty porous.”
Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall blew past will-they-or-won’t-they years ago. A couple since 2017, the Australian actors married in 2021, adopting their first child that year and a second child in 2025.
On “Colin From Accounts,” the Paramount+ show they cocreated, cowrite and star in, the dynamic is a little different. Ashley (Dyer), a trainee doctor, and Gordon (Brammall), a brewpub owner recovering from testicular cancer, meet terrible: Ash flashes a nipple; Gordon, distracted, runs over a dog. They adopt the dog, naming him Colin From Accounts.
After two seasons of breakups and makeouts, the couple splits. The third and final season, which arrives on Thursday, jumps forward three years. It finds the couple apart, though not exactly over each other. Or their dog. This is not Dyer and Brammall’s story, though their relationship inevitably informs it.
“There is a wall between us and those characters, but that wall is pretty porous,” Brammall said.
In late August, the couple joined a video call from Los Angeles, where they now live. They showed off matching loafers and ribbed each other with love and profanity. “We Australians swear a lot; it’s our punctuation,” Dyer explained.
During the chat, they discussed chaos, romance and spiders. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
How did you two meet?
BRAMMALL At a cafe. Harri recognized me from an insurance commercial.
DYER A really funny insurance commercial where he’s up in a hot-air balloon. I said, Oh, I’ve seen that commercial. Then he took his flat white and walked away and I’ve never stopped crying.
You then worked together on the improvised comedy “No Activity,” and became a couple. How did you start writing together?
BRAMMALL I was in Los Angeles, making the U.S. version “No Activity,” which no one saw. Harri came over and she was like, I don’t know if I fit into that scene.
DYER Like, I didn’t get into acting through modeling. And I was so bored because I was used to working across film, TV and theater. Patty was like, “You have a really great head, you should write something.” Out of that, the pilot for “Colin” was written.
What is the division of labor now?
DYER It’s really 50-50.
BRAMMALL We plot everything together, we come up with all the ideas together. Then we divvy up the scripts.
DYER Because we don’t have a writer’s room, it’s just the two of us. It allows both of us to be a bit feral. There’s no social face.
Which is good for the scripts. Neither of these people are great at giving social face. Often in romantic comedies, there’s a strait-laced character and a messy character. Here, everybody’s messy. Why?
BRAMMALL Because that’s real.
DYER Sometimes he’s the messy one. Sometimes she is. That fits more with what our relationship is, with a real relationship. They are constantly [expletive] up a little bit, but they’re both also fixing it.
Who plays Colin?
DYER His name is Zak; he is a Border terrier. He’s just, you know, a good boy.
BRAMMALL We were given a flip book of dogs. We were like, Too fancy, too fancy. Then this guy looked like a good scruffy fella, just a scruff boy. We didn’t realize he was purebred. But he’s very chill.
DYER So chill. Like, I’ll have what he’s having. He comes on to set, not bothered. I’ve never seen him act really like a dog. He’s very human, just does the job. He’s owned by a 10-year-old boy. Lives in the country.
BRAMMALL He has no idea he’s the star of a hit show.
Maybe he does, deep down. Between the two of you, not the dog, who’s funnier?
DYER I think you’re a funnier actor, and I’m funnier in life.
BRAMMALL Harri, don’t tell her this, she’s the funniest person I know, and thank [expletive] because you want to laugh through life, through the chaos of life. The show is about embracing the chaos of life. That meet-terrible? That’s chaos. And they both say yes to it. You can only really do that when you’re laughing.
Are there ways in which the show borrows from your own relationship?
DYER It’s tricky because if we plot something, we have to write it, then shoot it. So if it was an issue a year ago, it might not be anymore. But what is fun is hashing stuff out on camera and being able to give it to each other a little because in life, we’re much more respectful to each other than Gordon and Ashley are. There was a great fight in Season 1. We had pressures on us. We had a baby at that point. My grandmother had just passed. And I loved just ripping into Gordon. Because he had my husband’s face, do you know what I mean? That felt good.
I was also thinking about the male infertility story line.
BRAMMALL For sure. The parallels are obvious. I’ve never had testicular cancer, but I’ve had my own issues. I was a sick kid, and one of the legacies of that is I was unable to have kids naturally. But I think it got into the story unconsciously. And it felt like something we could have fun with.
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Who plays Colin?
DYER His name is Zak; he is a Border terrier. He’s just, you know, a good boy.
BRAMMALL We were given a flip book of dogs. We were like, Too fancy, too fancy. Then this guy looked like a good scruffy fella, just a scruff boy. We didn’t realize he was purebred. But he’s very chill.
DYER So chill. Like, I’ll have what he’s having. He comes on to set, not bothered. I’ve never seen him act really like a dog. He’s very human, just does the job. He’s owned by a 10-year-old boy. Lives in the country.
BRAMMALL He has no idea he’s the star of a hit show.
Maybe he does, deep down. Between the two of you, not the dog, who’s funnier?
DYER I think you’re a funnier actor, and I’m funnier in life.
BRAMMALL Harri, don’t tell her this, she’s the funniest person I know, and thank [expletive] because you want to laugh through life, through the chaos of life. The show is about embracing the chaos of life. That meet-terrible? That’s chaos. And they both say yes to it. You can only really do that when you’re laughing.
Are there ways in which the show borrows from your own relationship?
DYER It’s tricky because if we plot something, we have to write it, then shoot it. So if it was an issue a year ago, it might not be anymore. But what is fun is hashing stuff out on camera and being able to give it to each other a little because in life, we’re much more respectful to each other than Gordon and Ashley are. There was a great fight in Season 1. We had pressures on us. We had a baby at that point. My grandmother had just passed. And I loved just ripping into Gordon. Because he had my husband’s face, do you know what I mean? That felt good.
I was also thinking about the male infertility story line.
BRAMMALL For sure. The parallels are obvious. I’ve never had testicular cancer, but I’ve had my own issues. I was a sick kid, and one of the legacies of that is I was unable to have kids naturally. But I think it got into the story unconsciously. And it felt like something we could have fun with.
DYER Call time is 5:30 in the morning. We’ve left the kids with someone. We’ve been answering emails all night. Then it’s hard to turn on the love thing. And also it’s hard to share. I’m very private, and my love for Patty feels special and private and I don’t want people thinking they’re seeing it. It’s easier to do the heavier stuff. That’s probably why we write more of it.
Are you going to give them a happy ending?
DYER I hope it’s satisfying. I hope it’s good. I hope that it makes people happy. I wanted to do something a bit more psychotic, but we’ve realized that people need us to take care of them. We don’t want to hurt people.
BRAMMALL We can hurt people with other shows.