‘I don’t think I’ve ever had to deal with an invasive level of fame’: Maddison Brown on Hollywood, finding herself and her new role

After a decade in Hollywood, Maddison Brown has returned to Australia with a new role and a fresh take on life in the spotlight, saying: ‘I don’t think I’m famous enough to have haters’.

After more than a decade away from her hometown of Sydney, Maddison Brown was ready to come home.

Having impressed US audiences in her role as rebellious Kirby Anders on the five-season reboot of Dynasty, she packed up her life in West Hollywood in October with a full portfolio of experience – and a thriving company, Outside Beauty & Skincare, which she co-founded in 2023 with her older sister Allyson Popovic.

“I lived in the US for 11 years, then the [writers’] strike happened and it felt like there was so much instability,” Brown, 28, tells Stellar of her return to Australia.

“At the same time, my business took off and it felt like I needed to be here. It felt like the right time to hit pause, and take a breather [from LA].”

Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

Within three weeks of being home, Brown had hit the ground running.

As Stellar can exclusively reveal, Brown will make her debut on Home And Away early next month as new Summer Bay arrival Jo.

“Right after I came back, [the role on] Home And Away came up,” she says.

“It was everything I’d ever wanted – to be in Sydney and be with my family.”

Although she can’t share much about her character, Brown teases that Jo has family in the Bay and a complicated backstory.

“I’m having a really, really good time playing her – shooting in Palm Beach is a pinch-me moment every time I’m on set,” she adds.

“I’m an Aussie girl. I was in Atlanta for over four years [shooting Dynasty] and there’s no beach. I was very homesick at that time in my life.”

Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

Acting aside, Brown is also preparing for her upcoming wedding to New Zealand actor Simon Mead after he popped the question last year.

“I’m not saying much,” she adds. “I’m very low-key about my private and personal life.

“I’ve always been that way. I don’t think people really speculate because I haven’t given people anything to speculate about.

“I feel like people don’t really pry. I’ve never put it on the table to be discussed.”

Personal matters rarely surface on any of Brown’s social media, even though she has amassed more than 770K Instagram followers.

“My fiancé is on my Instagram – once we got engaged, [that] was the first time I put him on my Instagram.

“He was a ‘hand’ shot [before that],” Brown adds, referring to the trend of soft-launching a relationship online by revealing a partner slowly over time, often with just a hand in the frame. “And then we got engaged and I was like, ‘OK, I’ll post you now!’

“I just feel like my Instagram and my public persona is so much about work that it just organically doesn’t come up. I’m not shy about it either, though.”

Hard launch! Maddison Brown, right, with her now-fiance, Simon Mean (left). Picture: News Corp Australia

Picture: News Corp Australia

Something else that Brown isn’t shy about is the success of Outside Beauty & Skincare.

“In a world where there are so many celebrity and influencer beauty brands, I wanted to do something different,” she says of the sunscreen-focused range.

After the brand’s SPF 50+ Face Crème launched last year, it became its “highest rated product ever”, she says, adding, “We had 10,000 people on the waitlist for that one.”

Having started acting when she was five, Brown added modelling to her portfolio when she was 13 and now works with brands such as Dior Beauty.

Her film and TV career took off when she was 16, after she played Nicole Kidman’s daughter in the 2015 drama Strangerland. Between the two professions, she says acting is more challenging.

“When you’re a model, you show up on time, stand there, do some poses, go home,” she explains.

“It’s a career, don’t get me wrong. But with acting, a lot of the time, you have to work yourself into an emotional [state] and that can be quite draining. Modelling on a day-to-day basis is a lot more chill.”

So is the privacy-loving Brown prepared for the attention that will come with her new role on Home And Away? “I don’t think I’ve ever had to deal with an invasive level of fame. I feel like I can still be a normal person,” she says.

“There are levels [of fame] and I feel really happy with the level that I’m at. But I’ve seen first-hand the intensity around it – [people who] can’t leave their house without security, they can’t go to dinner. That doesn’t sound like fun.

“When I was on Dynasty, I got into a bad habit sometimes of reading good, bad and ugly things. I don’t think I’ll do that now – I’ll just live my life … I don’t think I’m famous enough to have haters.”

Maddison Brown will make her Home And Away debut in early June on the Seven Network. See the full shot with her inside Stellar today, via The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA).

For more from Stellar, click here.

Originally published as ‘I don’t think I’ve ever had to deal with an invasive level of fame’: Maddison Brown on Hollywood, finding herself and her new role