Hollywood can’t get enough of this Aussie star. Why is she overlooked at home?

Geraldine Viswanathan was 15 when she realised the local screen industry held no hope for her. She’d caught the acting bug during a family trip to Los Angeles, where her parents had agreed to let her do a teen acting workshop, and upon returning home hooked up a casting workshop with prominent casting director Thea McLeod, who flew her to Melbourne to audition for Neighbours when an Indian family moved into Ramsay Street in 2011.

She got close, but didn’t get the role – perhaps serendipitously, for the Indian family’s stay in Erinsborough was short-lived, too. A Daily Mail article from the time reported a “nasty race row” erupting among “fans angry a non-Anglo-Saxon family would become show regulars”. “I think they got death threats,” Viswanathan recalls. “The audiences were just not about it.”

That near-miss seems emblematic of Viswanathan’s early experience with the local industry. In a story deploringly common for actors of colour or ethnic backgrounds in Australia, she found that onscreen opportunities here were severely limited.

Geraldine Viswanathan: “I was told that I can’t play Australian.”Credit: Louie Douvis; styled by Jana Bartolo

“I was told that I can’t play Australian,” Viswanathan recalls. “Like, in audition rooms, they’d tell me ‘well, you can’t play Australian.’ I’d be like, why not? I’m the f—ing most Newcastle bitch you’ll ever meet, I promise you! It was confusing. So I was just like, okay, I’ll go to LA then.”

At the time, the local industry was still years away from recognising its own white bias, and early attempts at increasing onscreen diversity, like the Neighbours debacle, felt tokenistic. “Ethnicity, they always made a point of it here, whereas in America it felt like a non-issue,” says Viswanathan. “In America, I was able to just play American.”

The frustration hastened her departure to the States for work. “It became apparent that America had open arms for me and that’s where I needed to be. From 15 on, I was sort of like ‘get me to LA’. So that’s where I went.”

Dressed in a throwaway rugby jumper and crocs (to be fair, she’d just been shot in Versace) and casually sipping on the same iced matcha for more than 45 minutes, Viswanathan is promoting the new Prime Video comedy You’re Cordially Invited, in which she stars opposite Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon. At 29, she’s become one of our top Hollywood exports, with a steadily growing profile following strong turns in films including Cat Person (2023) and Drive-Away Dolls (2024).

Geraldine Viswanathan: “I value the experience of my life and feeling normal.”Credit: Louie Douvis; styled by Jana Bartolo

These days, she splits her time between LA and Sydney in the summer, having recently bought a place for herself in Newtown, along with a storefront for her sister’s fashion line. If Los Angeles means work, Sydney’s the respite: she doesn’t get recognised here at home, she says, not by locals, anyway. “I was in Bondi and this American guy was like ‘oh my God, I love Miracle Workers!‘” she says of the cult TV series she starred in for four seasons with Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe. “And then he was like ‘you’re just walking around?’ It’s nice – [Australia] feels like a haven for me to retreat to if America ever gets too much.”

Viswanathan grew up in the outside ’burbs of Newcastle, a “big old beach rat” with an Indian dad and a Swiss mum (her family’s still based up there). “It’s beautiful, and I feel so lucky to have grown up there … But it’s changed a lot. The ’90s and noughties in Newy hit different,” she deadpans.

Looking Indian but speaking Swiss-German: in Newcastle back in the day, this could short-circuit people’s brains. “It was such a strange dichotomy. When people saw my mum and I together, they thought I was adopted,” Viswanathan says. “I felt like an outsider, always. But then comedy felt like a bit of a superpower, because funny is funny, you know? It doesn’t matter what you look like.”

Jenni (Geraldine Viswanathan) in You’re Cordially Invited.Credit: Glen Wilson

While she’s showcased her versatility across roles, from the heightened bawdiness of Drive-Away Dolls (2024) with Margaret Qualley to the intimate drama Hala (2019), in which she learned both Urdu and skateboarding to portray a Muslim teen’s coming-of-age, comedy has always been a saviour for Viswanathan.

“When I was in primary school, I never got the lead in plays. But eventually I did get a comedic part in year 5 and I very much remember telling a joke and just crushing. I think I’ve been chasing that high ever since.”

Viswanathan had moved to Sydney for uni, enrolling at UNSW to do international studies and journalism. By this point she’d already been taking regular trips to LA to pursue acting but, minus a working visa, she got intimidated when all her friends signed up for uni so followed suit. Between auditions and gigs in indie theatre, she missed a lot of classes. She dropped out and gave herself an ultimatum. “I said, okay, I’ll give myself the same amount of time as my uni course would have been – five years – to really go for it, to just see what I could do. And if it doesn’t work, I can always go back to uni later.”

Were her parents supportive? “They were. My dad is such a rebel, worships Steve Jobs and, you know, the ‘mavericks’,” she laughs. “He was like, yeah, drop out of uni, go on your own path. He’s like that with my sister, too. We’re very lucky in that sense.”

Geraldine Viswanathan, left, and Margaret Qualley in a scene from Drive-Away Girls.

Viswanathan had been a comedy nerd growing up, worshipping the likes of Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Mindy Kaling, and after dropping out of uni took a proper shot at the Sydney standup circuit. One night, while performing a set at Hermann’s Bar, the student bar at the University of Sydney, she caught the attention of Vic Zerbst and Jenna Owen of sketch group Freudian Nip (regulars on SBS’s The Feed). “They saw me at the show and were like ‘we want to work together.’ And so we just started making sketches together,” says Viswanathan.

In 2017, as the group hit its stride – they went to the Melbourne Comedy Festival to do a run of shows, and were in the middle of working on the TV series The Slot for Foxtel – Viswanathan got the call for Blockers (2018), her Hollywood breakout alongside John Cena and Leslie Mann. “We were up and running, and then it just was like – sccrrrt! – off to America.”

The group still work together, she says (they have a TV series in the works, yet unannounced, so she can’t talk about it), and Viswanathan and Owen are housemates. What I wanna know: what was in the standup set that so captured their attention? “Hmm, what was I even talking about?” Viswanathan laughs, racking her memory. “I was just a 19-year-old, so I think it was very introductory, just my point of view as, like, one of the only people of colour in Newcastle. That was sort of my vantage point. But I was also just very silly and absurd. I don’t know. It was a vibe.”

Viswanathan (centre) with co-stars Phillipa Soo and Molly Gordon in The Broken Hearts Gallery.Credit: AP

For Viswanathan, silliness is second nature and, fortunately, in her job description. It’s an interesting career trajectory when a day at work involves jumping on Will Ferrell’s back while doing a ludicrously choreographed father-daughter karaoke number to Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers’ Islands in the Stream, but here we are.

“He is actually the funniest man in the world and everything he says is funny, so it’s really stressful working opposite him because you’re just trying not to laugh,” says Viswanathan of working with Ferrell. “But it’s kind of the best feeling in the world when you make him break, because he’s just so good. There was one day on set when I had food poisoning and we had a scene where we were screaming at each other and I was trying really hard to not throw up on him, and he was like, ‘It’s fine, you can throw up on me.’ He’s just a king.”

Geraldine Viswanathan as Taylor and Emilia Jones as Margot in Cat Person.

This is the world Viswanathan finds herself in. Imagine just casually having a personal Will Ferrell anecdote. Or something like the infamous story she told Seth Meyers of having Taylor Swift give her her purse just because she complimented it. Does every day bring a new pinch-me moment? “It’s definitely pinch-me, but that facade falls down quickly because they’re just a person standing in front of you,” says Viswanathan. “It’s very humanising. And everybody I’ve met has been an absolute dream; I haven’t had that ‘don’t meet your heroes’ moment.”

Does she keep in touch with these people? Jim Carrey, for example, who she starred with in a Super Bowl ad for Verizon? “Yeah, we’ve texted a bit. He’s so f—ing wonderful,” she says.

OK, what’s Jim Carrey texting about? “Well, he called me and I didn’t have his number saved, so I was just, like, watching The King of Comedy and I got a call from an unknown number, and it was like, ‘Hey, it’s Jim.’ And I was not mentally prepared for it, but he was just so wonderful, I loved talking to him. And that’s when I was in Atlanta doing The Beanie Bubble (2023) with Zach Galifianakis, and he was like, ‘Tell Zach I said hello,’ and I was like, okay: ‘Hey Zach Galifianakis, Jim Carrey says hi.’ If you told my 18-year-old self I’d be doing that, I think her head would fall off.”

Geraldine Viswanathan in Hala.Credit: Apple TV+

Later this year she’ll appear in her biggest project yet, the Marvel flick Thunderbolts, in which she plays assistant to Julia Louis-Dreyfus (for the record, they text each other dog videos and pickle-related snacks). Does it feel like a big thing? “It does,” says Viswanathan. “My first day on set was 200 extras and a helicopter and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and I was just like, wow, this is unlike anything I’ve done before.”

It’s also a different way of working for someone raised on loose improv. “Yeah, not many fun runs on a Marvel set,” says Viswanathan. “You really gotta know your damn lines. You can’t mess up or they have to reset the helicopter.”

She has another movie set to debut at Sundance this month, too – the indie Oh, Hi, written by and co-starring Molly Gordon (The Bear). If, like me, you know your prevailing alt-comedy girlies, you’ll know Gordon is part of the wider improv collective that also includes Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri. It’s a crew I’d sell an organ to hang with, but Viswanathan is well-embedded, like an LA analogue to her local friends in Freudian Nip. “That’s me,” she laughs, “just collecting my comedy girls wherever I go.”

Geraldine Viswanathan alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Steve Buscemi in Miracle Workers.Credit: Stan

She first met Edebiri in 2018 while doing standup in New York; worked with Gordon on 2020’s The Broken Hearts Gallery; while Gordon introduced her to Sennott, who she’d worked with on the much-loved Shiva Baby (2020). “During COVID, we were all in LA and this little crew formed; it’s really nice to have that camaraderie and that support. And it’s so exciting and wild to see what’s happening to everybody’s trajectory,” says Viswanathan, noting Edebiri’s breakout success with The Bear, for which she’s won Emmys and Golden Globes. “Ayo was looking after my car when I was in between places and I didn’t have a garage! I’m so, so proud of her.”

For someone who values her quiet summers in Newcastle, does viewing Edebiri’s massive success up close redefine her own career goals? Does she want that level of success, or does it feel like a lot? “I actually love the zone I’m in,” says Viswanathan. “I definitely don’t crave fame to that degree, because I value the experience of my life and feeling normal. I think that’s a big part of why I always come home; it’s so grounding for me and I feel I really get to reconnect with my true self. So that is something to be a little apprehensive about, but that’s why I just keep doing what I’m doing. I love not getting recognised on the street, I think that would really stress me out. I just want to keep doing good work with good people.”

She’s also seen the local industry change for the better since she was forced to make her mark elsewhere. “I think definitely they’ve caught up with the tide,” says Viswanathan. She’s in the midst of developing projects at home, and doing local theatre, “really sinking my teeth into something”, is a current goal.

But even the smaller successes can feel monumental. After Gordon asked her to star in Oh, Hi, Viswanathan had a request the film’s team instantly agreed to. “I get to debut my Australian accent,” she says. “First time.” To see the face of that casting agent who once said she couldn’t.

You’re Cordially Invited premieres on Prime Video on January 30.