When Amy Shark performed at Groovin the Moo Canberra over the weekend, she was unable to bring out her collaborator Mark Hoppus to perform her song “Psycho”, with the blink-182 star rocking out at Coachella at the same time.
Instead, Shark casually invited Hollywood legend Russell Crowe onstage to fill in for him, with the pair’s duet making for one of the festival’s highlights.
And despite being one of the world’s most famous actors, Crowe revealed that Shark was worried people wouldn’t recognise him when he performed at Groovin the Moo.
“She’s like, ‘I’m gonna introduce you and you come on,’ and I’m like, ‘we’re doing the song “Psycho” right?'” Crowe recalled to Fitzy & Wippa with Kate Ritchie.
“The male voice doesn’t come in ’til one minute into the song. I’m like, ‘hey, you introduce me, I come out, stand there scratching my nuts. Probably not the coolest option. So why don’t you just start the song, I’ll just walk out and start?’ And she goes, ‘yeah, but what if people don’t know it’s you?'”
Crowe agreed with Shark. “‘I’m like, ‘ah, you know, they might. But if you want to say something, say are you not entertained?'” he said, referencing a line from one of his most renowned films, Ridley Scott’s Gladiator.
“She said, ‘just to make sure people know who you are, can you come out as Maximus is that okay?'” Shark said to Crowe backstage. And fans might not have witnessed Crowe as Maximus in Canberra but all hope is not lost. “I might actually end up doing that again with her somewhere down the track,” Crowe insisted. “You’ve given me an idea now.”
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Crowe also performed with Shark at the beginning of the year onstage at his own Indoor Garden Party in Coffs Harbour. “This is how much Russell Crowe likes my song,” Shark captioned a clip of their duet in an Instagram Story at the time, tagging Hoppus and calling Crowe his “understudy.”
But Shark and Crowe are far from strangers, with the Gladiator actor once inviting the singer-songwriter to his New York City penthouse to be introduced to none other than Nicole Kidman.
“‘We’re having the best time, and then the doorbell rang and he said, ‘Oh, your guest is here.’ Nicole [Kidman] just comes in and before I knew it, she was sitting next to me and saying hi,’” Shark revealed in an interview after it happened.
