Samara Weaving: ‘I’m flattered that people mistake me for her’
SAMARA Weaving is successfully forging her own path in Hollywood with star turns in both film and television. Yet life in the spotlight means constant comparisons — and to one actress in particular.
Stellar
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AIMLESS students of Australia, take heart. While stories abound of high-achieving adults recalling how they knew what they wanted to do from their very first day of kindergarten, not all successful adults had such an early sense of direction. And, despite starring in one of the most acclaimed and Oscar-winning films of the year, a role in a breakout television series, and a part in the upcoming reboot of an iconic Australian tale, Samara Weaving is one of them.
Despite the hat-trick that has placed her atop the heap of highly sought after, up-and-coming actors making their mark on screens big and small, the 26-year-old Australian admits she isn’t sure how it all came to be.
“When I was around 10 or 11, I realised that [acting] was my favourite thing to do. But I didn’t think of it as a career until last year,” Weaving tells Stellar before letting out a laugh. “I was one of those students who if I wasn’t in love with the subject, it took me a really long time to get motivated to get good grades in it.”
Speaking to Stellar from LA, her accent remains unmistakably Australian — even after months spent playing Americans. The US city is now home, and also where she was based during the recent awards season, which found her jetting from event to event as she promoted her Oscar-winning film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. It was a dizzying experience for the 26-year-old, who admits, “I didn’t realise I was a working actor until after high school. I just kept acting, and getting work, and I was lucky enough that I could keep going. I never really had that conversation to myself: ‘Should I do this? Should I do that?’ It just fell into place — randomly.”
Still, her backstory indicates that Weaving may have been better placed for her career than she knew. Aside from the fact that acting runs in her blood — and more on that in a moment — as a child she led the kind of nomadic lifestyle that can trigger the necessary curiosity that drives plenty in her chosen profession. She was born in Adelaide, but in her youth Weaving’s family lived in Fiji, Indonesia and Singapore before moving home to Australia’s capital city, where she attended Canberra Girls Grammar until her HSC year.
It was there that as a “shy” student she delved into drama and the arts — science and maths were not her forte, she admits — before moving to Sydney in 2009 to take up the role of Indi Walker in Home And Away. Weaving would stay put in fictional Summer Bay until 2013, becoming a familiar face to millions of viewers.
Weaving credits her upbringing for the lack of what-am-I-doing anxiety as she moved from Sydney to London and then, eventually, Los Angeles as she pursued new opportunities. They finally started to arrive in 2015, when she won a few episodes on the horror-comedy series Ash Vs Evil Dead; last year, she had a key part in the first season of the bruising television series SMILF, which stars Rosie O’Donnell and Connie Britton, and airs in Australia on Stan. While she says she enjoys life in LA, there are the usual downsides — namely, the distance from friends and family. “It’s really hard,” she admits. “But I try and get back [to Australia] as much as possible. So that’s good.”
As for those family connections to the industry, her father Simon Weaving is a director and scriptwriter, while her uncle is veteran actor Hugo Weaving, who first made his name locally in the 1989 mini-series Bangkok Hilton and 1991’s Proof, for which he won an AACTA Award. Beyond Australia he came to notice for the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, The Matrix and, of course, The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert. Yet just last month, Weaving told Women’s Health magazine that she didn’t even realise her uncle was a household name when she was growing up.
But as Hugo recently told Stellar, he’s not holding a grudge that his fame was seemingly lost on his niece. “When you’re a kid, you’re locked in your own world,” he says. “It’s a wonderful state when you’re more innocent, more immediate, more instinctive and less aware of other people. If Sam grew up seeing me as daggy Uncle Hugo, then that’s good, isn’t it?”
Yet there was no such nonchalance when she met Frances McDormand, this year’s Best Actress Oscar winner. What eventuated was a masterclass in how to handle fame — and the presence of younger actors eager to take a few cues. “[McDormand] gave me a big hug and said, ‘Oh, welcome!’” Weaving recalls of the first time she met her Three Billboards co-star. “She was so friendly and she knew everyone’s name on set. She took everyone under her wing. It was just such fun. She really made you feel comfortable.” She was, Weaving says, “like a really cool mum”.
The ride for Three Billboards — in which Weaving has a small but scene-stealing role — took her to every major ceremony along the months-long awards circuit, including the Oscars, the Golden Globes (where the film took out the Best Motion Picture — Drama gong) and the Screen Actors Guild Awards, where she and her co-stars earned statuettes for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture. Standing onstage with the rest of her castmates at the SAGs was, Weaving says, a real “pinch me” moment. “I’m just so grateful I was there,” she says now. “I think I’m still in shock and denial about it really.”
As for those after-parties teeming with A-listers — the ones that look like the most exclusive and exciting gatherings imaginable? Weaving likens them to an awkward work Christmas party where drunk colleagues wreak havoc on the dance floor and spill too many truths. “I have one drink and then I go home because I’m a bit overwhelmed,” she says. “I don’t want to say something stupid to someone that I admire.”
Weaving was also inducted during a season that, while celebratory, was also tempered with a sombre mood and reflection given the numerous sexual-harassment scandals that blew wide open in Hollywood late last year. From the all-black dress code and Oprah Winfrey’s rousing acceptance speech at the Golden Globes, to McDormand’s own thought-provoking mention of an equity-ensuring “inclusion rider” at the Oscars, Weaving had a front-row seat to an industry in the midst of a revolution. And it forced the young actor to reflect — perhaps more than she may have expected when she first landed in town.
“There’s this darker underbelly of all these horrific stories coming out about the abuse of power towards women. But I think the silver lining is how we’ve all come together. We’re trying to make a change,” she says. “And we really need to make those changes. [Seeing] just how loyal women are, how fierce they are, how they’re not backing down, and really trying to figure out what the solution to this problem is... We should tell our stories and make sure we prevent it from happening again.”
As her star rose, Weaving also experienced another unwelcome rite of passage — by being pitted against another young blonde woman and former Australian soap star who has experienced great success in Hollywood.
As the accolades for Three Billboards started to flow in, so too did the inevitable comparisons to another homegrown darling of the Academy Awards, Best Actress nominee Margot Robbie. “Move over, Margot! Robbie risks being outshone by another blonde Australian as Samara Weaving’s Three Billboards beats I, Tonya at the SAG Awards,” read one such headline.
Rest assured, Weaving tells Stellar, no such rivalry exists. Instead, she insists, the whole thing is “very mundane. [She’s] really lovely. She’s a great actress. I’m flattered that people mistake me for her. That’s a great compliment. I hope that people realise pitting two women against each other is just silly. It’s bizarre, really.”
Rather than buying into the drama, Weaving is letting her work do the talking: her latest project, a re-imagining of Joan Lindsay’s 1967 novel Picnic At Hanging Rock, follows three young women who mysteriously disappear on a school outing on Valentine’s Day, 1900. Peter Weir’s eerie 1975 film of the same name has long been considered one of the best Australian movies of all time. But this time around it’s a bold, candy-coloured and fiercely feminist rethink for a modern-day audience. In the new six-part series, set to air on Foxtel’s Showcase channel, director Larysa Kondracki pivots away from the iconic film and uses the lengthier run time to delve deeper into the novel. The series boasts a smattering of dark comedy, elaborate costuming and production design — not to mention a litany of strong, complex women as its lead characters. Weaving says that last bit is exactly what drew her to pursue the project in the first place.
“A period piece like this brings awareness to the audience what these women and men had to go through. Especially for the women — just how oppressed they were, yet it was the norm,” she says. “These were teenage girls; they wanted to wear pretty dresses and break free of all restraints society put on them. They were stuck there, and all they had was each other. It’s wonderful that the friendships between the women were so strong. I think that’s a good reminder of what women who came after them fought for, and how lucky we are to have everything we do now. But we should keep fighting for equality.”
Series director Kondracki considers Weaving a “knock-out talent” who made the character of Irma her own. “There is such a fierce drive to be creative and challenge herself,” Kondracki says. “She’s not there for the wrong reasons and she’s hungry. To me, that’s the best thing you can hope for in an actor — someone who wants to be there and comes to play.
There was nothing that she wouldn’t explore, and this was a challenging role, so to have that kind of partner was exciting. I’m excited to see what kind of choices she makes next, and for a long time. She’s the real deal.”
Picnic At Hanging Rock premieres 8.30pm Sunday, May 6, on Foxtel’s Showcase channel.