gq hype felix mallard
Starring in one of the biggest shows on Netflix has made the Aussie actor famous to millions. But does he really want to be?
In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a sorcerer named Prospero is stranded on a remote island for 12 years with his daughter Miranda. He’s spent his time mastering the magic of the island and how to wield it, but his powers are of little use. He’s isolated, cut off from the rest of the world.
When Felix Mallard explains this to me, it’s like seeing the sun glint off the water at the bottom of a well, revealing its true depth. Mallard is talking — and talking passionately — about Davis, his character in the upcoming film adaptation of Turtles All The Way Down, a novel by The Fault In Our Stars author John Green, which is coming to Binge later this year.
Davis is the son of a missing billionaire, and at first seems to have everything. The teenager writes poems on a secret blog, often quoting The Tempest. “That’s why John used Prospero,” Mallard explains. “That’s how Davis feels. He feels like [his wealth] is worthless; he just wants someone to connect with.”
Even though The Tempest references didn’t make it into the film, the connection gave Mallard the foothold he needed to figure out a character that felt otherwise opaque. In Prospero and Davis, we see great power rendered useless. But Mallard has found himself grappling with another paradox: the isolating power of fame.
His hair has grown since Mallard first surprised his 3.7 million Instagram followers with a fresh buzzcut last December (and since this photoshoot), and he’s currently sporting a scruffy beard that he tugs on while he’s thinking. When we speak, he has just been for a surf at Hermosa Beach in LA, and if you didn’t know better, you might think he’s just another Aussie transplant looking to catch some waves.
At 25, Mallard has already been in LA for six years. He arrived in time for pilot season after a stint on Neighbours as a fresh-faced 15 year old, and is still finding his way in a city that can chew you up and spit you out or, worse, make you famous.
“When I moved I was 19,” he says.
“I’d given myself a few months, but I was like, ‘I’m going to be here and if I don’t get anything then I’ll come home, but if I do, I’m going to be here 100 per cent’.”
His first break was in TV series Happy Together, where Mallard was cast as a teenage pop star who moves in with his accountant (Damon Wayans Jr) to escape paparazzi stalking his every move. The role was based loosely on Harry Styles, who executive produced the show alongside Ben Winston and others. It was Styles who called Mallard to tell him he’d landed the part. “I was expecting Ben and then I got Harry bloody Styles,” he told James Corden on The Late Late Show. But that was nothing compared with the phenomenon of Ginny & Georgia.
When it was released on Netflix in 2021, Ginny & Georgia looked like another quirky young adult show in the streamer’s vast catalogue. Then it became a smash hit. It follows 15-year-old Ginny and her 30-year-old mother Georgia, who spends as much time figuring her life out as she does caring for her daughter. Mallard plays Marcus, Ginny’s aloof love interest with long hair and beaten-up sneakers. He soon became the subject of an avalanche of adoration.
Ginny & Georgia was originally pegged as a Gilmore Girls imitation, but quickly won over millions of fans with its easy charm and surprisingly sharp depictions of growing up. It was the most-watched show on Netflix in the first half of last year.
“It was exciting that the material had resonated with so many people, but at the same time, super, super scary and super daunting,” says Mallard. Not only did his social media following skyrocket, but he soon found himself front row at fashion shows for Saint Laurent in Morocco and Dior in Paris. He was quickly becoming one of the hottest young stars in Hollywood. The question was, did he want to be?
“It’s an interesting thing … [just] because you might be interested in acting and performing doesn’t necessarily mean that public life is something that’s for you,” he says. “So finding that balance of how much of myself I need to give to the public ... is a question I think I’m still wrestling with and probably will for the rest of my life.”
But if you don’t want to be famous, why act? For Mallard, there are two reasons. One is to help people understand their place in the world and see that they are not alone, something Mallard learned early, during his stint on Neighbours.
In one scene, his character was grieving the death of his father. “It’s your job to communicate to the 5000 kids who don’t have a dad that it’s OK to go through those feelings,’” Mallard recalls the director saying. “As soon as he said that to me, I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life’.”
The second isn’t as much about the audience as it is about Mallard himself. He discovered this on a personal level through his character’s arc in Ginny & Georgia’s second season. As the audience realised that Marcus’s brooding was a symptom of his depression, Mallard began to understand his own relationship with mental health. “[Playing Marcus] really opens up this connection to who I was at 15,” he says, “I was going through a lot, and I was certainly facing my own mental health stuff at that age, and it unlocks that for me. It helps me wrestle with questions I have about masculinity and questions that I probably continue to have about what it is to be a man in the world.”
Mallard’s approach is a rebuke to the idea of some that YA is not “serious acting”. “I would say, ‘What is serious?’,” Mallard counters. “It’s one of the hardest things in the world to be a teenager, and the genre brings empathy to a time that every single person goes through ... So I think for someone to say it’s not serious, I would completely disagree.”
When the novel Turtles All The Way Down came out, it held a mirror up to young people suffering from anxiety in a way that few contemporary works had before. That’s why it was so important for Mallard to take on the role of Davis, one he described as “a challenge as an actor”. He wanted to understand this teenager, who the world sees as a rich kid with everything he could ever want.
“How do you then make that kid likeable? How do you make someone who’s cast out on an island surrounded by wealth … how is that interesting?” he asks. “You just understood that this kid is so lonely, he doesn’t know who is his real friend or not. He hasn’t had anyone come into his life genuinely ever … it really is just a story about love and seeing people for who they are rather than anything else.”
Figuring out who your real friends are is a challenge for everyone, whether you are a billionaire’s son, an all-powerful ruler or a famous actor. When someone comes up to you on the street full of praise or floods your Instagram with adoring comments, is it really real? “What does this attention come from? Is it for you or is it for the thing that you’re selling?” Mallard asks. “I think the hardest thing is to not buy into that and to consistently keep yourself humble and on the ground and recognise that it’s not necessarily me, it’s the work that they’re connecting with.”
It isn’t easy, but Mallard has found what he needs to stay grounded. He’s moved to Mar Vista, a laidback suburb near Venice Beach where he lives with his partner, some other actors and his cavoodle Smudge. He surfs a lot, which connects him with nature, but also with a community of people who care more about what he can do on a wave than a screen. He stays creative — as a trained guitarist, pianist and drummer, he plays a lot — and searches out inspiration at galleries and in books. Apart from the occasional lick on the guitar, he doesn’t share any of this with the world.
“The more you sell of yourself, of your personality, of who you are, the harder it becomes to not buy into it and believe that you do deserve all this love,” he says. “If I put my phone down, my life hasn’t changed too much, and I’m really, really grateful for that.”
Sitting in his car, talking excitedly, tugging on his beard, it’s clear that Mallard wouldn’t trade his fame conundrum for anything. He simply loves the work too much. For a moment, as we talk about his dream directors, the Coen brothers, Mallard indulges in some film nerd talk. “They have a reverence for stillness and timing in scenes that I just love. For someone to be able to sit [with it], for a director to be able to choose such a wide shot … I think it’s in Fargo where you just see that car going across …”
Mallard keeps going. “Especially with streaming, we spend less and less and less time on those sorts of things. I think that’s what we’re losing with streaming. Everything is catered to an audience and everything is as much information as quickly as possible. So to work with directors who understand the industry that we’re in, but also take their time to create an atmosphere is the stuff that really lights my fire. I love that.”
Who knows? The next time we’re talking to Mallard it could be for a role with a Coen brother. Though if that does happen, he’ll be even more famous than before. He’ll have to contend with millions of people knowing of him without actually knowing who he is, about what he thinks and feels in those moments away from the cameras, when he’s out in the surf or playing his guitar. They will know his name and his work, but they won’t see the sunlight reflected at the bottom of the well. He’ll save that for the people who look a little deeper.
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Charlie Calver is GQ Australia’s head of brand.
A version of this story originally appeared in the March/April 2024 issue of GQ Australia with the title “Felix Mallard’s next act”
PRODUCTION CREDITS:
Photography by Jesse Lizotte
Styling by Miguel Urbina Tan
Art Direction by Giuseppe Santamaria
Hair by Kyye
Skin Mikele Simone
Production by Charlotte Rose