‘Imposter syndrome’: Boy Swallows Universe actress reveals Confidence struggles
Recent NIDA graduate Sophie Wilde has been marked as one to watch. But she’s revealed her battles with self confidence on and off set.
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If you had a portable door that could take you anywhere in the world, in an instant, where would you go?
That was understandably a common question on the Gold Coast set of feature film The Portable Door in June, 2021, the world feeling small and difficult to navigate during the ongoing global pandemic.
And Australian actor Sophie Wilde – who was wielding the magic door’s power in character each day – always struggled to answer it simply, all the world’s possibilities flooding her mind at once.
When she was studying acting in Sydney at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA), daydreaming at the same local Japanese restaurant after class each day, it might have been this: filming her debut movie role on an oversized Gold Coast film set alongside accomplished actors Christoph Waltz and Sam Neill.
But as she speaks to us over Zoom in March, almost two years later, she is in a luxe hotel room in Paris, having enjoyed an invitation to Chanel’s fall-winter show during Paris Fashion Week – “you know, just casually” – and her creative horizons are quickly broadening.
“It would have to be somewhere you couldn’t really go to otherwise, like the top of Mt Everest or Antarctica,” Wilde, 25, says, contemplating her options.
“You know what, I thought about this the other day – I would get into the Louvre after hours with a bottle of wine and a picnic. Controversial,” she adds slyly. “But I would be respectful of the art.”
Wilde is touted as one of Australia’s most exciting new talents and while the rest of the acting world was seemingly slowing down over the past three years, the Ivorian-Australian actor was racing into the global film industry at full speed.
She graduated from NIDA in 2019, played Ophelia in Bell Shakespeare’s 2020 production of Hamlet and was named a 2020 rising star by the Casting Guild of Australia. She made her screen debut in Stan series Eden, followed by another leading role in gripping BBC miniseries You Don’t Know Me, filmed in Birmingham in the UK.
It was from there, a British accent under her belt, that The Portable Door – filmed in Queensland but set in London – provided a magical return to Australia in 2021, in yet another lead role.
Soon after there were two more major signings with Netflix; she was cast as crime reporter and love interest Caitlyn Spies in anticipated Brisbane series Boy Swallows Universe, based on the Trent Dalton novel, followed by British series The Fuck-It Bucket alongside Stephen Fry to end 2022.
She had just finished additional recording on the Netflix series in London in March when she was ushered across the Channel to Paris for her first ever runway show – which just happened to be Chanel.
“I really started out with a bang,” she laughs. “I actually loved it. It’s chaotic, there’s a lot of people, there’s a lot going on, but I kind of thrive in that environment, so to me this is the greatest thing in the world.”
When we chat, she is preparing to jet off to Texas to attend the prestigious South by Southwest Film Festival, where she will represent another Australian film, horror flick Talk to Me, which has incredibly been picked up by film distribution giant, A24.
“The last few years have been very back to back, popping into Sydney when I can in between jobs. It’s been pretty full on,” she says. “Sometimes I don’t feel like I’ve actually had the time to sit down and properly process everything.
“I had a moment the other day where I was back in Sydney and I drove past NIDA and this restaurant I used to sit in after school and I was like, wow, if Sophie could see where I am now I don’t know that she would necessarily believe it.”
Wilde grew up in Enmore in Sydney’s inner west, and while she now has a five-year-old brother, she was an only child then. Her family didn’t work in creative industries; her father worked in his family business in property development.
So, she describes herself as “the wildcard”, a captivated toddler gleefully joining her grandparents in the stands of the Sydney Theatre Company and Symphony Orchestra, or catching a performance of The Wind in the Willows at a local park.
“I don’t necessarily come from a creative family,” she explains. “But my grandparents loved to consume a lot of arts, so my family very much cultivated my love and passion for it but aren’t necessarily artists themselves.”
She enrolled in drama classes at NIDA when she was five and later attended Newtown High School of the Performing Arts. Her family never pushed her to consider a traditional career but Wilde felt an internal pressure to pursue a more stable alternative after high school.
“I think I put pressure on myself, like, ‘Oh, I should have a backup,’” she explains.
“So I was going to go to Sydney University and do international studies and become a member of the UN. A very Sophie move,” she adds with a smile.
“Then my grandma passed away and my dad was like, ‘You should audition for NIDA; I think this is what you really want to be doing, and you should give it a shot.’”
It was her grandmother’s passion for the arts that had planted the acting seed for Wilde as a child and the sudden loss gave her the courage to pursue the dream she had shared with her. So, she auditioned for Australia’s prestigious arts school – which has trained the likes of Cate Blanchett, Mel Gibson and Baz Luhrmann – and got in.
“After that point, I’d committed,” she recalls. “It felt kind of right in a way, that I should be doing it.”
Her new-found self-belief has driven every bit of success she’s had in the years since graduating.
“I think it’s natural to have anxieties and there’s something so unpredictable about this job you can never truly anticipate what life is going to look like, but I think I’ve always had an inherent belief that it would be OK,” she continues.
“I definitely struggled with impostor syndrome in the past … but I think you really do have to back yourself in this job, even in those moments of insecurity or lack of self-belief.”
Wilde felt like she manifested her role in The Portable Door, an adaptation of the first book in Tom Holt’s J.W. Wells & Co, a popular and humorous fantasy series revolving around a fictitious firm of magicians in modern London.
She was filming You Don’t Know Me in Birmingham at the time, isolated during the harsh UK lockdown and working on a series about a man accused of murder, which grew heavy on her shoulders.
“It’s a skill to let go for work, but definitely if you’re doing it for eight or 10 weeks, being in a certain emotional state does weigh on you after a while and it creates a kind of mood, and because we were in lockdown it was a very isolating experience too,” she explains.
“I kept being like, ‘I want to do a fun film, because this has been one of those gut wrenching jobs’ – and so it was kind of perfect when this film came to me. It felt like everything I’d wanted – just to do something fun and play … and come home for summer.”
The virtual audition was for Sophie Pettingel, a young intern conveniently with the same name as Wilde. Pettingel and lead character Paul Carpenter start working at mysterious London firm, J.W. Wells & Co, under charismatic villains, played by Waltz and Neill, who are disrupting the world of magic by bringing modern corporate strategy to ancient magical practises.
It was filming in Australia, on the Gold Coast, appearing like a magic portal back home during the pandemic’s challenges.
She did a chemistry read via Zoom with Irish actor Patrick Gibson (Carpenter), and was jetting back to Australia for her second “brutal” hotel quarantine in Sydney before filming was due to begin on the Gold Coast in June, 2021. Jeffrey Walker, who has helmed the Young Rock series also filmed in Queensland, signed on as director and Wilde’s co-stars included Waltz, a two-time Academy Award winner, Neill, Gibson, and Australian stars Miranda Otto and Damon Herriman. Arriving at Pinnacle Studios on the Gold Coast, she recalls seeing Walker’s name on a director’s chair on the mammoth set, along with large crews.
Despite her self-belief, starring in such a major film weighed on her.
“I definitely had impostor syndrome at the start,” she admits. “I was by far the most inexperienced and youngest and you’re working with some of the most incredible actors. But Patrick was such a beautiful support. I remember having a bit of a freak out before and he sent me a list of YouTube videos of actors talking about their experience with impostor syndrome and it was such a generous gesture. I watched it and I was like, ‘Viola Davis has impostor syndrome? She’s the queen of acting!’”
Walker hosted games nights for the cast to wind down, and they all spent time together on the Gold Coast. Wilde, Gibson and Neill even took in a performance by a local Queen cover band during their first night out together.
“It was amazing,” she laughs. “It was the best thing ever.”
Wilde then shifted to film Boy Swallows Universe in Brisbane last year where she joined a cast of Anthony LaPaglia, Phoebe Tonkin, Simon Baker, Travis Fimmel, and Bryan Brown on the screen adaptation of Dalton’s top-selling book.
“It’s been amazing to watch actors be so liberated on set and improvise and really play,” she says. “It’s a nice reminder of, oh yeah we are here to play, and that’s our job at the end of the day, to bounce off each other and have fun on set.
“I feel like I used to never have fun, because I was so stressed. But our job is to have fun because that will be projected into the film. So I think that was an amazing thing to learn and to watch.”
With the help of her co-stars she learned to let go during her wild days filming The Portable Door, shoving Gibson through the magical door, only to open it and find him soaking wet from wherever far off place it had taken him – the crew deliberately not telling her he would be actually drenched and sending her into fits of real laughter captured on film.
“We’d be running around and there’d be things exploding – it’s so energetic and so fun and exciting and you really feel like you’re an actor, and a kid at the same time,” she says.
It showed in the film, and Walker was full of praise for Wilde in her debut film role, which will be aired to audiences around the world this month.
“She lights up the screen,” he says.
“Sophie’s so talented and so wonderful, she’s brought a spark to our film that I think exceeded all our expectations for that role.”
It was an acting world she remembered dreaming of as a child sitting with her grandparents watching a world of creativity and play.
Wilde is excited about where the acting portal will pop her out next and she’s proud to represent Australian content wherever she goes, from Texas to Mt Everest or even, hopefully, a picnic in the Louvre.
“It is just so surreal but it feels amazing to be kicking goals,” she says.
“What I love so much about this job is you’re exposed to the most amazing people and you get to go to Paris for three days and then go to Texas. It’s pretty incredible and it feels very special.
“I’m always open to anything, but I love Australia and making Australian work and championing Australian artists … and I think it’s something that’s always going to be injected into the work I want to do.”
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