Actor Alex Williams wore all of musician Kirk Pengilly's original stage garb for the INXS mini-series, but not his glasses.
"There's a reason he wears glasses, it's because he can't see anything and when I wear his glasses I can't see a thing," Williams told AAP.
"They had to make replicas of his glasses."
INXS: Never Tear Us Apart tells the story of the rise and fall of one Australia's most internationally successful bands.
The two-part series launched on Sunday with 1.974 million viewers and the final instalment, which deals with the tragic death of lead singer Michael Hutchence, airs this Sunday.
Luke Arnold plays Hutchence, who died in 1997, and Williams, who was the lead in Network Ten's telemovie Underground: The Julian Assange Story, plays saxophonist and guitarist Pengilly.
It wasn't only Pengilly who offered his 1980s wardrobe to Williams - all the INXS band members loaned out their clothes to the cast.
Hugh Sheridan plays bass guitarist Garry Gary Beers, newcomer Nicholas Masters plays Tim Farriss, Ido Drent is Jon Farriss and Andy Ryan is Andrew Farriss.
Williams, who is 23-years-old, says he had heard of INXS and knew several of their hits, but he had no idea just how big they were at the height of their popularity.
It was only when he auditioned for the bespectacled Pengilly that Williams started to grasp the band's world wide appeal.
"They were a bit before my time ... I thought their music sounded cool and then I did a bunch of research and realised they were massive," he said.
"I didn't realise they were such an international band and big in the USA and the UK and they were pioneering a certain sound at the time."
Williams has had to do some quick fire 1980s history lessons over the last two years.
Immediately after graduating from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts he landed the role of Assange which was set in 1989 when the WikiLeaks founder was hacking computers.
Now he's partly back in the 1980s again in another made for TV production.
"I think the 80s was great, but I really have no idea because I was born in 1990," he said.
"For me I have to research the time just as I would if I was doing a show set in the 1800s."
The INXS mini-series stretches out beyond the band and takes in Hutchence's very public love life in which he dated models, actors and pop stars.
The X Factor's 2012 winner Samantha Jade has been cast as Hutchence's one-time love interest Kylie Minogue, Georgina Haig is Paula Yates and Mallory Jansen plays supermodel Helena Christensen.
Damon Herriman is INXS manager CM Murphy.
* INXS: Never Tear Us Apart, part two, airs in on Sunday, February 16, at 8.30 pm on the Seven Network
