Boy Swallows Universe star Phoebe Tonkin on finding love and screen success
She’s recently married and hit a major rhythm in life and work on camera – and soon behind it. Phoebe Tonkin’s star is burning bright.
The best partnerships don’t bring on nerves, they aren’t forced, they just flow. “It’s really funny, and I’m sure everyone’s more or less had this in their love life as well, but sometimes when you just know something’s meant to be, there’s a lot of peace that comes with it,” says Phoebe Tonkin, speaking about two significant paths in her recent life. Neither has brought her anything but a serene conviction that things are exactly as they should be. “In the same way I feel about meeting my husband, I have the same feeling about Boy Swallows Universe,” she says of starring in 2024’s hit Netflix adaptation of the wildly successful novel by Australian author Trent Dalton and marrying art advisor and curator Bernard Lagrange in New York on May 10.
When we speak, in the weeks prior, the 35-year-old is negotiating Manhattan’s streets, running errands, apologising for the interruptions of the urban cacophony, and ticking off final to-dos before the wedding, a spiritual ceremony in a non-denominational uptown church followed by a reception at Eleven Madison Park. Living in New York between visits to Australia – one impending, having a job on the horizon she is excited about but not yet at liberty to divulge – Tonkin is awaiting a final fitting for her wedding dress in the coming days. It was created at the Chanel couture atelier in Paris, where adjustments were made when Tonkin visited during the autumn/winter shows. She is building on a relationship with the French house whose insouciant elegance coincides with her own classic style, grounded in an undone ease. “I’m right now on the streets of New York in a pair of jeans and sneakers and a ballet wrap,” she says, laughing.
Her wedding follows another major milestone: winning her first AACTA Award – Best Lead Actress in a Drama – for the role of Boy Swallows Universe’s Frankie Bell. Tonkin played the ravages of Frankie’s drug withdrawals and the lionhearted love of a mother with equal ferocity. Dalton was emotional as Tonkin, dressed in an embroidered white Chanel gown – she is a house ambassador – described how he changed her life as she accepted the award in February on the Gold Coast. She felt this partnership, too, was kismet. “I just kept thinking, ‘I think this is meant to be my job,’” she says of wanting the role, based on Dalton’s own mother. “And it didn’t mean that I didn’t fight for it and think about it and obsess about it a little bit, but there was definitely a peace that came with it. So, by the time I got it, I was just like, ‘Oh, everything clicked into place the way it was meant to.’”
Part of this comes from investing in Australian storytelling. Although the actor moved to Los Angeles in 2011, taking roles in The Vampire Diaries and The Originals, she found herself enmeshed in local narratives, working alongside Jacki Weaver and Bryan Brown in 2019’s sci-fi mystery Bloom. It’s an instinct that’s paid off and evolved with time. “In my late 20s I realised there were so many amazing creatives in Australia that were doing some really interesting work,” she says. “And I think my mentality changed from, ‘I need to be on the biggest American show,’ even if it’s not something that I really align with story-wise or character-wise, to ‘I would rather work with really incredible directors,’ tell really incredible stories and work with amazing actors.” Tonkin jokes there have been times she’s called her agents to ask after a smaller role, based on the integrity of the overall project. “[I’ve] said, ‘There is this role of a bank teller in this really interesting movie. Hear me out …’” It was what she loved about her role in Babylon in 2022. “It was a small scene at the beginning, but it was an absolute delight to work with Damien Chazelle and have Margot [Robbie] in the same movie.”
Working alongside director Glendyn Ivin and actors Ewen Leslie and Leeanna Walsman in 2018’s Safe Harbour, which follows friends whose sailing holiday collides with the plight of Indonesian asylum seekers, affirmed this for her. “The subject matter was really grounded and really serious and really complex, and a long way of saying I really align with the way Australians make film and television,” she sums up. “The quality of Australian drama and Australian TV in general is just so high, and I want to keep being part of that conversation.”
Playing roles like these requires a hard-wired sensitivity and empathy, something instilled in Tonkin, who grew up on Sydney’s affluent Lower North Shore. “My parents travelled a lot when we were younger,” she says. “So I think they had a real acute awareness of what other people around the world were dealing with. And we were always reminded of how lucky we were. That sentiment, even as a kid, really stuck with me.” Today she is a national ambassador for humanitarian organisation Plan International, advocating for gender equality, access to education and protection against violence for women and girls.
Indeed, the dark and light of life factors into her next role as detective Gemma Woodstock in The Dark Lake, based on the pacy novel by Sarah Bailey. Returning to her hometown to excavate the whys behind the murder of her high school rival, Gemma tussles with morality. “What I always find really interesting in these stories is a woman who is in some level of power and is very flawed, and is making some really questionable choices in her life,” Tonkin explains. “And she’s not necessarily the hero or the villain – she falls somewhere in between.”
For the production, she’ll work with UK-Australian Brouhaha Entertainment, the same team behind Boy Swallows Universe. Tonkin’s looking forward to it. “There’s a level of comfort and there’s a shorthand that comes with working with someone you’ve already created that relationship with.” This time she also gets to flex a new muscle: producing. “I think I’ve always been really interested in the lead-up to jobs and the research, and the bigger decisions that are being made,” she offers.
This confidence, Tonkin says, is not necessarily indicative of a flash point in her career but, as she sees it, an evolution of skills she has built after she began acting at the age of 16. “It’s all led to the place that I’m at right now,” she says, a place where she doesn’t listen to commentators. “If you start listening to the good, you also start listening to the bad.”
Generally private about her personal life, Tonkin posted photographs of her and Lagrange, with the caption ‘film back from the summer of love’, on Instagram last October. In them, an engagement ring winks in the light. It is these out-of-frame moments, she says, that ground her. “I mean, I am such a homebody,” she says. “Everyone asks what we’re doing on our honeymoon and I’m like, ‘Our honeymoon is staying home and being cosy.’ I love having my own little bubble, and seeing my family and friends and my partner.” It helps that her sister and her sister’s children, with whom she has regular dinners, also live in New York. “I went over yesterday afternoon,” she says.
That calm she’s created, along with a honed confidence, is the centrifugal force in her career right now. “I believe in the power of manifesting what you want and that starts with the way you think about yourself and your own abilities,” she says of feeling out each project. “I’m also focused on the kind of filmmakers I want to work with and prioritising the stories that are being told.” On taking the role that earned her highest accolade, she wasn’t nervous at all. For whatever comes next, she’ll skip the nerves – and find that peace.
This story is from the June issue of Vogue Australia featuring Lila Moss. Phoebe Tonkin covers the Vogue Wedding Special inside this month’s issue. On sale June 2.
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