Angourie Rice brings Hollywood star power to the Sydney Writers’ Festival

Angourie Rice did not want to aggravate fans of Jane Austen when she sat down with her playwright mother Kate to write a romantic comedy inspired by Pride and Prejudice.

But the 23-year-old actor, podcaster and novelist wanted to offer Austen’s characters such as Mrs Bennet a richer life beyond an obsession with marrying off her daughters.

“And also the issue of the man who acts appallingly and goes unpunished,” she said.

Angourie Rice (right) and mother Kate discussed their novel Stuck Up & Stupid at this year’s Sydney Writers’ Festival.Credit: Nikki Short

Their debut novel Stuck Up & Stupid, written in longhand over one summer in the family beach house, begins with mother Lydia assessing the marriage potential of a handsome Hollywood actor for her unimpressed daughter Lily.

Meanwhile, the mother-and-daughter writing team proceeds to challenge prejudices about pushy mothers and arrogant actors in their novel, billed as Jane Austen meets the 21st century.

They were part of The Austen Formula panel discussion on the enduring popularity of the novelist on Saturday at Carriageworks as part of the Sydney Writers’ Festival.

Mothers often get a raw deal in popular culture – seeking fame or fortune by marrying off their daughters or pushing them onto the stage – but the boisterous Lydia was inspired by Angourie’s father Jeremy.

Angourie Rice and Jennifer Garner in The Last Thing He Told Me.Credit: Apple TV+

“Well, you know, she’s a very exuberant person and I think my dad is, too,” she said.

Another trope the duo were eager to dispel is the fraught relationship often portrayed between mothers and daughters.

“I worry about when we see so many teenage daughters having a really difficult relationship with their mothers in lots of stories,” Angourie said. “I worry that it becomes this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Angourie, whose film credits include Marvel’s Spider-Man movies, Mean Girls and Ladies in Black, said the notion of Hollywood actors as vain and arrogant is not entirely fair, either.

Kate Winslet, her co-star in the television show Mare of Easttown, is “amazing”. So, too, is Ryan Gosling, who she performed with in action-comedy film The Nice Guys.

Angourie’s acting won plaudits before she was a teenager, yet mother Kate was initially very wary of letting her daughter perform.

“I was quite against it because of my own experience, which hadn’t been great,” she said. “But Angourie loved it. And she had some really wonderful experiences very early on.”

Angourie grew up around storytelling; as a young child she recalled her mother speaking the dialogue of characters she was writing for the stage.

“I think I liked telling stories. I liked acting, I loved dancing and singing,” she said. “We would put on shows and I would drag my sister into doing a dance show.”

Besides writing and acting, Angourie also has a podcast about reading, The Community Library, that she began after graduating from high school in Melbourne.

“I love it because I get to connect with other readers and I guess there’s something really sort of fulfilling about doing something all by yourself and just for fun and not to make money from it,” she said.

She said the rise of social media communities focused on books – BookTok and bookstagram – showed literature remains integral to popular culture.

“I don’t think reading is dying,” she said. “I have a lot of positivity about people continuing to read.”

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