Chevalier star Samara Weaving reveals what she misses most about Australia
Home and Away star turned Hollywood scream queen Samara Weaving has revealed what she misses most about Australia.
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If Aussie actor Samara Weaving ever gets around to writing a book about her career, she already has a working title.
After establishing herself as a modern-day Scream Queen – yes, she’s fine with the title – thanks to a recurring role on Ash Vs Evil Dead, her 2017 Hollywood breakout role in The Babysitter, and following it up a year later with the acclaimed splatter-comedy Ready Or Not, Weaving was afforded the ultimate horror accolade earlier this year in Scream VI.
Following in the footsteps of Drew Barrymore and Jada Pinkett in earlier films, Weaving kicked off the sixth entry into the long-running franchise by (spoiler alert!) meeting an early and very bloody end at the hands of the masked killer, Ghostface.
“Bumped off by Ghostface,” she says, with a laugh over Zoom from her adopted home of Los Angeles. “That’s the title of my memoir. It was awesome. I love Radio Silence, the directors. We worked together on Ready Or Not so being able to work with them again on Scream was just really, really exciting. When they called me and asked me to do the opening, it was truly an honour.”
Having cut her teeth on Home And Away for four years before heading overseas, Weaver says she had no plans to become a big wheel in the horror scene, but one thing led to another – and she’s glad it did.
“The Babysitter got a lot of eyeballs from other horror directors,” says. “From that I got Ready or Not, and it kind of just snowballed after that in the horror community. That’s where the offers were coming in. But I’m so lucky – the horror fans are the greatest fans in the world.”
But as much as she loves her horror fan base, Weaving says she’s wary of being pigeonholed and works hard at making eclectic career choices, such as the superhero action film Snake Eyes and comedies Bill & Ted Face the Music and last year’s The Valet.
Right before Scream VI, she appeared in the 1920s Hollywood drama Babylon, playing real life actress of the era, Constance Moore. Despite its A-list pedigree – Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie starred, with La La Land’s Damien Chazelle behind the camera – Babylon failed to make its $115 million budget back, but Weaving says making the lavish, polarising production was its own reward.
“It was so magical walking on that set and being able to work with Margot was so nice because we’re good friends,” she says. “That was good fun. Damien is one of my favourite directors, so being able to get to know him a little bit was really cool. I’m still baffled that it didn’t do better – it’s really weird.”
Weaving also turned back the clock for her most recent film, period drama Chevalier. Set in 18th century Paris, it tells the story of bi-racial, Caribbean-born musician Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint Georges, a violin and composing prodigy who battled the entrenched racism and class barriers in the turbulent years leading up to the French Revolution.
Weaving plays the feisty Marie-Josephine de Montalembert, a forward thinking opera singer trapped in loveless marriage to a brutish nobleman, who begins an affair with Chevalier after being cast in his opera.
“I loved her strength and vulnerability and her bravery to challenge the social norms of that time at great personal risk,” Weaving says. “Whether that was brave or naive or, I think, a bit of both. I just thought it was such a well-rounded character – when I read the scene where she’s in the pub, and they’re having the secret meeting about politics and she stands up on a table and chugs a beer and says, ‘What about women?’ I was sold.”
Even though a real opera singer was dubbed over her, Weaving took two months of singing lessons to prepare for the role. Though she found it frustrating at first, enjoyed it so much that she continued after the production had finished (although she promises not to follow the well-worn soap-star-to-singer road).
More challenging, she says, was the wardrobe and make-up. Strapping into a tight corset every day made her feel like a princess, but “it’s not the most comfortable thing to wear”.
“It was really helpful though,” she says. “It helped get into character because it was so restricting and a good reminder of what women had to go through back then even just to get dressed that morning. It’s all consuming and you can barely breathe. You can’t use the bathroom without someone helping you. It just reminded me of how much women relied on everyone else to do anything.”
Weaving is switching gears again in coming months: she’s just signed up for the heist thriller Eenie Meanie and is prepping to play Hugh Hefner’s former girlfriend Holly Madison in the miniseries Down the Rabbit Hole (“she’s so open and vulnerable and incredibly inspiring”).
She just wrapped filming on the Netflix comedy Little Sky and is also awaiting the release of the thriller Borderline, written and directed by her husband Jimmy Warden.
“I hope we get to make lots and lots of movies together,” she says of the marital collaboration. “It was so much fun. I’ve seen snippets of it and I am obsessed with it.
“He was working non-stop – director’s schedules, they just don’t sleep. I would see him on weekends and we set good boundaries so that we would talk about other things at dinner. But I barely saw him unless I was on set and then that was really fun.”
Weaving last worked in Australia on the star-studded, Byron Bay shot TV series Nine Perfect Strangers, opposite Nicole Kidman, Melissa McCarthy and Asher Keddie. And though she’s well ensconced in Hollywood, she literally misses the taste of home more than anything else.
“I miss snacks,” she says with a laugh. “Australia has mad snack game – Shapes and Toobs and Tim Tams. Honestly, you’d think in America they have good snacks but I’m obsessed with Australian snacks. I LOVE a Toob.”
Chevalier is in cinemas on August 3.
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