‘I’m sensual and empowered, I won’t apologise for that’: Maria Thattil poses in daring ‘naked’ shoot

Former Miss Universe Australia Maria Thattil has bared all in a revealing shoot, as she opens up about her new acting role, romance with Moana Hope, and why she is living by her own rules.

‘We’re both very protective.’ Maria Thattil has opened up about her relationship with former AFLW star, Moana Hope. Picture: Sam Bisso for Stellar

Through her memoir, social media following and appearances on TV, Maria Thattil has offered up her life for self reflection – as well as public examination.

Now, the 31-year-old former Miss Universe Australia and Stellar columnist is ready to open up about a new acting role, her romance with Moana Hope, and why she is happy to push the envelope: “I don’t need to shrink myself to bolster someone else’s perceptions of me”.

This issue marks your second appearance on the cover of Stellar, and this time you’ve posed nude for the cover photo. What was it like to make that happen?

I love that, over the years that I’ve been with Stellar, we’ve always been committed to pushing the boundaries. [Stellar has] always gotten behind how I want to self express and the ways that I feel strong and confident and powerful. I loved the shoot. It is definitely in line with what I said three years ago when I became Miss [Universe] Australia – I said I came to shake things up, and I feel like the shoot embodies exactly that energy, so I love it.

Picture: Sam Bisso for Stellar

This shoot is unapologetically sexy, but you often talk and write about serious and important issues. One surely doesn’t have to discount the other, right?

It is just not in my nature to worry about how someone else might perceive that, [or to feel] like I need to shrink myself to bolster someone else’s perceptions of me.

I think women are held to standards of scrutiny that make us feel like, to be taken seriously or to get ahead, we need to be palatable, but we can’t be too sexy and we can’t show skin. It is this concept of society wanting us to believe that bodily autonomy will devalue us, or it will cancel out our intelligence, our vision, or our capacity for impact. We’re not allowed to just exist as we are. And so, for me, I love that I can come down to my bare bones for the

shoot because I want to, because I’m confident and I choose to.

That choice and agency has always belonged to me, even if there was a period of time in my life when I was convinced that it didn’t. So, yes, I’m a sensual, physical and empowered being, and I’m not going to apologise for embodying that.

Maria Thattil is on the cover of Stellar, out today. Picture: Sam Bisso for Stellar

Picture: Sam Bisso for Stellar

How do you think your family will react? You know what is great about my parents?

They just get behind anything and if they don’t understand it, they will sit and have a conversation with me. I love that.

Being that you are so open about your life, how do you choose what to reveal

and what to keep private?

I’m an open book, and I think so much of my personal life, relationships or family stuff has been the subject of columns on my blog or my work, and I’ve loved them because I really think that it is through storytelling that we connect with people – that people understand you or feel impacted by something you say. So I think it is important to share.

Something I’ve learnt is the importance of protecting certain parts of your life and keeping something sacred. In this digital world that we live in, strangers do feel entitled to you; sometimes they can have parasocial relationships where they feel entitled to ask me things.

I always think to myself, these people would never walk up to you in the street and just, point-blank, to your face, ask you this stuff. And I feel like I don’t want that undue pressure.

You’ve been very protective of your relationship with former AFLW player and two-time Australian Survivor star Moana Hope, after going public with former partners. Is there a particular reason for that

So while I do share my relationship – because my partner is an incredible woman who has got her own profile and she’s built her life and done things in her own right and I admire her and I love to share that – we’re both very protective about how much we share about our relationship. It is fine if people, from [seeing] a video or a photo, want to make inferences.

At the end of the day, we choose what we share, and what we share is surface.

People don’t know the ins and outs of our relationship. It is important to keep certain things sacred. She’s incredible and I’m proud of her, and I feel so lucky to learn from her and so I don’t mind sharing that admiration. But the intimacy and the sacredness of our relationship, that’s between us.

Picture: Sam Bisso for Stellar

Not so secret has been your move into acting, notably in the ABC comedy Mother And Son last year. Had you been thinking about that move for a long time?

When I was young, I trained at Stage School Australia [performing arts school] and I loved it. I loved performing, but that fell to the wayside when I went to high school. My perception of what opportunities would be like for someone like me was that the only way I’m going to have success is by pursuing a conventional route. So I went to uni, I studied and got a corporate job. I just didn’t think I fit what I thought I needed to be, to cut it in this industry. So once I chose to do Miss Universe [2020], I knew I was going to use that as a platform to do all the things I wanted to do, and I always knew that acting was where I wanted to end up.

This year you’re joining the cast of Neighbours in the role of Amira Devkar, older sister to Shiv Palekar’s character, Haz. That is big, especially given you’ve often spoken about not seeing yourself represented in mainstream media when you were growing up.

It is huge. When you turn on the TV and there is only a certain kind of person telling you stories, or when you’re watching movies and you only see a certain kind of person representing what Australia looks like, or you’re in the supermarket aisle and you’re going to buy make-up and it’s only certain shades of beige, I think all of that stuff, you start to form an idea in your head of what “Australian” is, and it doesn’t include you.

For many of us, myself included, it means that we chase security and safety because we’re scared to take chances. People like my parents, for example, they didn’t come to this country with that luxury. They couldn’t pursue unconventional paths because they weren’t allowed to be curious about their creativity, they didn’t have that representation, and neither did we.

Picture: Sam Bisso for Stellar

Maria Thattil and Moana Hope pictured in December last year. Picture: Getty Images

You’re doing your bit to change that. Do you think you’re making a difference?

Over the past three years, I got to be a brown face representing Australia at Miss Universe, I gave a TED talk [at a TEDxSydney event in September] I became an author [Thattil’s book Unbounded was released in February 2023]. And so with Neighbours, to make my debut as the first gay Indian female character the show has ever had in its history, I think I’m just living and proving to myself – and I hope to others – that, no, I don’t have to choose one lane. I can create my own highway. I think that shows other people they don’t have to compress themselves into a box to get ahead. Whether that’s in my career or on the cover of Stellar, I don’t have to people please.

I’m going to go after my ambitions and do it my way – that’s my compass. I think it’s pretty cool to get to now foray into acting when that has been my personal motto.

And of course, Neighbours featured the first same-sex wedding on Australian TV

in 2018, and in the mid-1980s highlighted Kylie Minogue’s character, Charlene, as

a female mechanic.

When you think of Neighbours, it is such a longstanding, influential, much-loved Australian show, and it has been pivotal over the years in telling Australian stories and it is embedded in all of our childhoods. It is actually coming to the table and trying to make tangible, real change, because these characters in these stories were not just boxes to tick or fun storylines – they represent real Australians whose stories haven’t been told in the mainstream. I don’t think I have a memory of seeing a gay, female South Asian character on Aussie TV in my childhood, so I always wonder how that proper representation – if I got to see that in a way that wasn’t tokenism or just an exaggerated caricature – might have changed my experiences with racism or homophobia, or feeling like I didn’t belong or wasn’t “Australian” enough.

Is Hollywood in your sights?

What a dream that would be. I will say, one of the things

I have learnt is the importance of presence and appreciation for what and where you are. So, yes, it is not lost on me that the Neighbours gig could lead to the next one and I’m excited and open for that adventure. But what I really want to focus on at the moment is getting involved in Australian film and screen, because I think we have so much to offer.

Yet in a recent Stellar column, you wrote about not overextending yourself. How

is that going for you?

It isn’t easy. I carry this fear of, if I’m not working myself to the bone, it is all going to be taken away. I feel like I share this with women broadly and we have this desire to prove ourselves worthy, and sometimes it leads us to the point of imbalance; that’s what was happening with me.

So this year, it’s about staying true to my work ethic but acknowledging I need to live and love, too. Balance and boundaries are critical. As much as I will aggressively continue to chase my ambitions, I will also enjoy just living.

For more from Stellar, listen to the latest episode of the podcast, Something To Talk About below:

Originally published as ‘I’m sensual and empowered, I won’t apologise for that’: Maria Thattil poses in daring ‘naked’ shoot