Rising Australian star Geraldine Viswanathan on Hollywood, Marvel and Thunderbolts
Australian actor Geraldine Viswanathan reveals why she had to move to the US to get the parts she wanted – including in Marvel’s hugely anticipated Thunderbolts.
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It would seem that the universe knew that rising Aussie star Geraldine Viswanathan was going to enter the world of superheroes long before she dared to dream it herself.
“My mum saw a psychic when I first came to LA to pursue acting and the psychic said ‘I have a feeling that your daughter’s going to be in superhero movies,’” the Newcastle born and raised actor recalls over Zoom call from Los Angeles, where she’s promoting Thunderbolts*, the 36th movie in the hugely successful Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“She was right. It was meant to be.”
Since her breakout role playing John Cena’s daughter in the raunchy 2018 sex comedy blockers, Viswanathan has steadily raised her profile and earned plaudits in movies including Bad Education, with compatriot Hugh Jackman, Drive Away Dolls, opposite Margaret Qualley, and this year’s Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon rom-com You’re Cordially Invited.
Even so, it look a touch of serendipity for Viswanathan to land the role of Mel, the personal assistant to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ scheming, amoral CIA director Valentina Allegra De Fontaine in the eagerly anticipated team-up of Marvel antiheroes including Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), John Walker (Wyatt Russell) and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen).
The part originally went to Viswanathan’s good friend and star of The Bear, Ayo Edebiri, who had to drop out when the movie was delayed due to last year’s writers and actors’ strikes but gave her blessing and some practical advice when the baton was passed to the Aussie.
Now 29, Viswanathan was just 13 when the Iron Man had its world premiere at the Sydney Opera House in 2008, so to now be a part of the biggest movie franchise of all time is something she can barely compute.
“I dreamed but I didn’t think it would happen,” she says.
“It’s crazy, I have a line in this movie that says ‘I was in high school when the Avengers came’ and it just dawned on me that, yeah, I was in high school when I went and saw the Avengers movie up at Westfield.
“I did grow up watching these movies so it’s really insane to be on the other side.”
When Viswanathan first contemplated a career in acting in her teens, her ambitions were just “to perform and work with great people”.
However, her early efforts in her home country – including a close call landing a part on Neighbours when she was 15 – were met with frustration.
With Indian Tamil heritage through her father, she was told that she couldn’t play Australian and her ethnicity was a stumbling block here in a way that she quickly discovered wasn’t an issue in the US once she started auditioning there.
“I think that’s fair to say,” of the lack of diversity in the Australian industry at the time.
“I found out pretty early on the roles that were available to me in Australia versus America and it just felt clear that in America there’s more breadth of opportunities.
“There was this sense of ‘yeah, why can’t you play John Cena’s daughter? Why can’t you play Will Ferrell’s daughter?’
“It felt like there was just more openness around that and that felt really exciting. I just always kind of knew that this is where I would end up.”
That said, Viswanathan says it was her background on the Sydney stand-up comedy circuit that helped prepare her for her shot in Hollywood when it finally arrived. The self-confessed “comedy nerd” also performed at the 2017 Melbourne International Comedy Festival alongside Vic Zerbst and Jenna Own of the sketch group Freudian Nip and the trio were making a show together when Viswanathan was summoned to LA for Blockers.
“I think stand-up really trained me for being okay with embarrassing myself on a large scale and dealing with nerves under pressure,” she says. “That’s the main thing. It kind of put everything into perspective a little bit. I think it helps especially doing more comedic roles – improvising with Julia Louis-Dreyfus – I’m glad that I had those Sydney stand-up days to really whip me into shape.”
Viswanathan is now at a level where she’s working with some of the people she idolised growing up – and treating them as friends and peers. She starred with Jim Carrey in a Super Bowl ad – he’s still in her phone – and the experience of having Ferrell as her on-screen father left her in no doubt she he is “the funniest man in the world”. And now she can add Veep and Seinfeld star Louis-Dreyfus to that list. Viswanathan’s Thunderbolts* character is both scared of and desperate to impress Louis-Dreyfus’ casually terrifying Valentina and the Aussie actor says that she could very much relate.
“Oh my god, she’s the dream,” she enthuses of the multiple Emmy-winning actor. “I really grew up watching her and just have always thought that she’s the one of the greatest performers of our generation. So it was pretty easy for me to tap into the dynamic of being really intimidated by her and wanting to impress her and do a good job.
“But she is so disarmingly lovely and warm and instantly put me at ease and I feel like we’re friends now, which is really cool. Doing these big scenes with her and then sitting in our chairs and sharing puppy videos was one of those ‘pinch me’ moments.
“She’s so thoughtful. She found out that I love dill pickle flavoured stuff and she sent me pumpkin seeds with dill pickle flavours and potato chips and she snacked me up. So that’s my girl forever.”
As to whether she will ever go back to her stand-up roots, or if she still gets the urge to jump on stage at an open mic night when she’s back in Sydney, she says she’s “curious … but it’s just easier not to” now that her profile has risen so dramatically.
“I do get the itch every now and then,” she admits. “I do miss the live component of doing stand-up and live sketch comedy. I would love to get back on the stage, absolutely.”
Viswanathan still splits her time between Sydney, LA and wherever she happens to be working and says while she misses the beach and her family and friends when she’s not here, she also relishes the relative anonymity.
“I do love to come back, and I would love to work in Australia,” she says. “I am trying to desperately – and I will. It’s such a beautiful place to shoot and live and there’s such a well of talent there that I really hope to tap into soon, hopefully.”
Thunderbolts* is in cinemas now. Read the full interview in Stellar on Friday, inside The Daily Telegraph (NSW), Herald Sun (VIC), The Courier Mail (QLD) and The Advertiser (SA).
For more from Stellar, click here.
Originally published as Rising Australian star Geraldine Viswanathan on Hollywood, Marvel and Thunderbolts
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