“It’s a common issue with people who start young and are thrust into things and jump on the ride and then realise later they’re on a roller coaster they don’t like, but they’re strapped in and have a little freakout,” he says. “I’d had my fill.” Basically, he wanted to figure out who he was as an artist by playing his own guitar tracks and writing his own more soulful music. Less Joe Jonas, more Jack Johnson. In 2014, he left Atlantic Records to form his own label – Coast House Records – and in 2015 released an album with an intentionally apt title. He called it Free. We haven’t really mentioned swimming yet, but it’s obviously central to Simpson’s story. Turns out sluicing through the water is in his blood. His mum, Angie, was a 200-metre breaststroke champion – once in the world top 10 – whose dreams of competing at the 1988 Olympics were dashed only by injury. His father, Brad, also swam for Australia at the 1994 Commonwealth Games. Simpson grew up in the pool and had clear and abundant talent. Close family friend and Australian Hall of Fame coach Denis Cotterell earmarked the 2016 Rio Olympics as a realistic goal for Simpson, so it’s no surprise that when Simpson actually went to the games in Brazil – as a spectator, watching former childhood teammates such as freestyle sprinter Cameron McEvoy – he felt the pull of the pool keenly. “I hadn’t been around swimming for a while, and I felt that buzz,” he says, nodding. “It really sparked those thoughts: ‘This is possible for me.’ That was the trigger.“ He thought about it more in 2018, while preparing for a six-month stint in his first Broadway show, Anastasia. There was just something familiar about the regimentation and discipline required for performing on stage. “The nerves are very similar to racing,” he explains. “You get the one shot, and if something goes wrong you have no choice but to adapt and keep going and not let it shake you. There are a lot of parallels.” But the idea of returning to swimming became unshakable in 2019. The “princeling of pop” was preparing for the inaugural season of The Masked Singer and watching the world swimming championships, in which US star Caeleb Dressel – five months older than Simpson – broke a world record. All Simpson could think was: “Why am I not there?” He started looking for pools the next day and began training in 2020 under former Australian Olympian Brett Hawke. Hawke initially sent Simpson sessions to complete alone, then moved to Los Angeles to train him – even flouting a few COVID-19 restrictions along the way. “We were literally jumping fences to swim in empty pools,” says Simpson, “getting in as much training as we could before someone saw us and a security guard kicked us out.” He began leaning on famous friends, too, looking for tips on technique from Michael Phelps and calling Ian Thorpe for training advice. By 2021, he was back in Australia and training full-time. His mum was bemused: “‘Oh Codes, why would you wanna go from being really successful in your world to looking at a black line six hours a day?’ ” she remembers asking him. “It surprised me that he was happy to do a 360, but once he said he would regret it one day if he looked back and didn’t give it a shot, I was with him 100 per cent.” ‘I just enjoyed the pain of [swim training] – it made me feel alive … I was searching for some self-imposed adversity.’ Swimming was harder mentally than he remembered and certainly more physically intense than what he had experienced in entertainment. But it also led to a simplified, streamlined, newly domesticated life. He found pleasure in knowing exactly what was happening from Monday morning to Sunday night, down to the hour. “It doesn’t make sense, does it?” he says. “But it tickles two different sides of my brain.” Mostly he enjoyed testing his limits and settling in with his discomfort. In the early part of his return he would train until he vomited, then train some more. He talks about loving that hurt. “I wanted to find parts of myself that I didn’t know were there, and you do that when you’re in the trenches,” he says. “I just enjoyed the pain of it – it made me feel alive. It sounds a bit privileged to say life was too easy before swimming but in a lot of ways it probably was, and I was searching for some self-imposed adversity.” He joined the Gold Coast squad coached by Michael Bohl, whose team eventually included Emily Seebohm, Kaylee McKeown, Lani Pallister and Mack Horton. The latter saw stories about the Simpson comeback and could only think “good luck” because he was going to need every ounce of it. “I’d been in the sport 17 years and I know how much it takes to get anywhere, but Cody is annoyingly gifted,” says Horton. “It wasn’t until you were alongside him that you’d see he was having a very, very solid crack. You think of a normal athlete’s progression from 10 years old – building up their weekly sessions from three to four to five to 10 – and he’s gone straight into an Olympic level without that bridging pathway. It’s impressive.” The other notable member of the squad, of course, was McKeon. The pair became friends quickly but were both spoken for at the time. It wasn’t until 2022 that they were freshly single and couldn’t deny or ignore the connection. “It was hard, though, because you don’t want to cross that line with someone you’re training alongside because if something goes to shit, you still have to see each other every day,” says Simpson. “But I just got to that point where it was, like, ‘What harm could it do?’ ” The partnership became a source of support for both. They were even on the same training program, gearing up for similar events. He loved her diligence and grace. “And I thought it was really interesting how softly spoken and reserved and shy she was, and yet super-gnarly and competitive. I was like, ‘That’s complex – I like that.’ ” The work was all worth it in 2022, when Simpson was selected to swim at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. Whatever else happened from then on, he had tangible vindication of the choice to return to the pool. Naturally, he got a new tattoo – the coat of arms, with his swim team number (838) – on the inside of his left bicep. “People train their whole lives and never make an Australian team. It wasn’t lost on me how special it was and still is. It’ll always be a highlight of my life.” The flipside came two years later when he missed out on the 2024 Paris Olympics team. “What goes up, must come down,” he says. “You’re so vulnerable, but you get up there knowing two outcomes are possible – success or failure – and you have to be OK with either one.” Simpson worked extensively with a performance coach and a sports psychologist to be ready for that moment – content with whatever outcome after giving everything to the effort. “In a weird way there was also a layer of relief because – win or lose – something is off your back. But you couldn’t deny the sadness and disappointment.” I wonder whether he regrets not coming back to swimming a year or two earlier. “All the time,” he answers. “I also have the thought of ‘What if I never did any of the entertainment stuff, and just swam? How far could I have gone?’ But it’s sliding-doors stuff. I could keep myself up all night with that shit if I wanted, but at some point you have to accept that you’ve made decisions when you did and the dice fell where they did.” He wasn’t jealous of McKeon. After all, she had her own struggles, not so much booking a trip to Paris but competing in the specific events she wanted to defend from Tokyo. “We felt the same way at trials, actually,” Simpson says. “We had different goals and both fell short, so we confided in each other about that a lot.” If anything, the shoe is on the other foot now that they’re living together and both retired from swimming, because his transition was so much smoother than hers. McKeon has enjoyed her downtime, and knows what life looks like sans serious swimming schedule. But she’s also ready to find what’s next, which is tricky for a 30-year-old who’s been a professional swimmer half her life. “I’m like, ‘You’re gonna have to suck at stuff for a bit,’ ” Simpson says. “And if you’ve been the very best at something, you’re not used to that.” For Simpson, this was a golden opportunity to look at his career with objectivity and a little perspective. “You know how you look back at old Facebook photos, and you’re embarrassed by them? That was almost like me looking at songs and stuff from when I was younger,” he says. “But now I feel like an accumulation of everything I’ve been, rather than rejecting any phase I’ve been through. I’m the full whole sum of my parts.” This rehearsal space for Guys & Dolls is not your usual theatrical stage. It’s actually a vast back room at the Quaycentre arena in Sydney Olympic Park. Simpson’s first intimate reading takes place on folding chairs beside a basketball court. But before that, director Shaun Rennie wants to know how he’s feeling, and what scares Simpson most on day one. “What are you thinking?” Rennie asks. “Talk at me. Say things.” “Honestly,” says Simpson, “I feel nervous about getting on the floor because I’ve just done so much rehearsing in a tiny room by myself. I’ll just say candidly I’m nervous about getting up there and trying to fill that space.” Rennie doesn’t think that will be a problem, although he tells me later that he was initially “quite sceptical” of a celebrity joining his show. “I didn’t want to do any ‘stunt casting’, but Cody walked into the room and without a doubt he has star power,” Rennie says. “And he’s come with this idea of ‘I want to be good at this, help me be good at this,’ so there’s no resistance or defensiveness to ideas.” Annie Aitken, the co-star who plays his love interest, first met Simpson at a “chemistry read” and knew straight away they would be casting him – for his charm and presence and crooning voice. What she probably didn’t expect was his preparation. “He memorised the entire piece – line for line by day one – which I can’t say anyone else in the company had done,” Aitken says. “He was so prepared at every turn. It was like he had brought his sporting background to the task.” Indeed, in this informal read-through, Simpson puts his copy of the script on the floor so that he won’t be tempted to lean on the printed dialogue. (He learnt every word using an app that takes a screenplay and reads out everyone else’s lines while muting his own, eliminating the need for a reading partner: “I just did that over and over until I didn’t have to look at the script. It’s as simple and boring as that.”) Despite living in America for almost as long as he has in Australia, he did need help from a dialect coach for that specific 1920s Noo Yawk accent. After that, it was just a matter of embodying Sky Masterson: a transient gambling playboy and risk-taker with a soft side. “Sky’s addicted to the game, and that’s where he gets his kicks – putting himself in a position where he doesn’t know if he’s going to make it out or not – and I can relate to that. But he’s also a dickhead,” he says, laughing. “He’s a worse guy than me in general.” Simpson’s looking forward to bringing him to life on stage – an early review declared his performance a “deadset charmer” – and after that? He’ll be back in the recording booth and also on screens, including a small part in an Australian limited series dramedy for Stan, and a fun cameo he just filmed for a new Netflix movie, Zombie Plane, alongside Vanilla Ice, Sophie Monk and Chuck Norris. Ever the chaser, there’s always something new. His mum has the same circular conversation with him every few weeks. “I have to give him the ‘stop and smell the roses’ talk,” she says. “He’ll do it for a few days, but then gets antsy and needs to get back amongst it. He’s just not a guy who can sit still.” If he did though, he knows exactly where that would be. Right now, Simpson lives near the Gold Coast Aquatic Centre, close to his former training base, but in the future he sees himself creeping down to some leafy coastal corner of northern NSW, and splitting his time between there and the hustling heart of Los Angeles. He’s happy to sing and dance and prance and act wherever he goes. “It’s a juggling act, but I feel lucky to be able to do it all, even if I do get a bit stressed and frantic sometimes,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I’m a bit of an all-or-nothing person, but that’s OK. I’d rather be all-in than half-arsed.” To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.