Danielle Macdonald: Moving on up - ELLE May 2020

Danielle Macdonald is a breath of fresh air: entirely charming, exceptionally thoughtful and brave as hell. She talks to ELLE about finding meaningful connections with women from the past, while looking firmly to the future

When Danielle Macdonald graced a limited-edition cover of ELLE in 2018 as one of the year’s biggest rising stars, the Australian actor was experiencing a bona-fide Hollywood breakthrough. She’d blazed onto the scene as a Jersey girl with rapping aspirations in Patti Cake$, then firmly won everyone over in Dumplin’ as Willowdean, the Dolly Parton- obsessed teen trying to disrupt the beauty pageant industry, and had just finished filming Netflix’s psychological thriller Bird Box with Sandra Bullock. Bird Box went on to be a box office hit (and a viral one, thanks to the “Bird Box Challenge”), and Macdonald’s trajectory continued sharply upwards accordingly.

Since then, she’s had a role in Netflix’s Unbelievable, alongside Kaitlyn Dever and Toni Collette. Based on a true story, the mini-series was widely heralded for the way it intelligently shone a light on how rape victims are treated in the aftermath of a violent assault. “I read the pilot and could just tell instantly that this was the right way to tell this story. It was a gut feeling,” she says. “You really see it from these girls’ perspectives, which is so important. We don’t even really see the perpetrator – we see him as the girls see him: he’s there and he does these things in a scary and intense moment, and then he’s gone and you don’t even have anyone to pin it on. I was so happy to be able to be part of such an incredible story, giving voices to these women.”

While Macdonald has seemingly pinballed her way through real-life stories and “fun and quirky” roles, strong female characters has been the common thread. “It’s fun to dive in and see that people aren’t perfect in any way,” she says down the phone from LA, where she has lived for the past 10 years. “We all have flaws, we all have amazing qualities and we all lie somewhere in between and that’s okay, that’s the human experience. Playing a complex person means you can explore that.”

Macdonald will continue her exploration of the human experience in the Helen Reddy biopic I Am Woman when it’s released later this year. She plays Reddy’s closest friend, Australian music journalist Lillian Roxon, and while the film centres on Reddy’s story from broke single mother trying to make it in New York to feminist-anthem superstar, it’s the glimpses of Roxon that are truly captivating. Roxon left Australia in her late twenties to work as the New York correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald, before carving out a career as one of the most acclaimed music journos of her time. Flowers delivered by “a young David Bowie”, a phone call from Linda who wants to know if Paul McCartney is single, a quip about the Easybeats never leaving her alone (“There’s a reason they’re called the Easybeats”) – Macdonald holds her own as a powerful force moving the story forward. The real-life Reddy also credited Roxon with making her aware of the women’s movement. Without Roxon, thousands of women at an abortion-rights rally at the Lincoln Memorial in the late ’80s would never have joined Reddy in belting out “I am woman, hear me roar”.

“I love that we get to see these Australian women who were badasses, who a lot of younger people don’t even know about. They paved the way for a whole new generation,” says Macdonald. “I absolutely loved playing Lillian and I learnt so much from her, and I weirdly felt a lot of connections to her.”

Roxon was born in Italy, grew up in Australia and moved to New York after graduating from the University Of Sydney. Macdonald, whose mother is Italian, grew up in Sydney and left university to move to Los Angeles. Roxon had been in the States for about 10 years when Reddy showed up on her doorstep looking for a friend. Macdonald was coming up to a decade in America when the script showed up on her (figurative) doorstep.

While discovering little similarities with her character was special for Macdonald, she hasn’t shied away from telling other stories that don’t align with her experiences or beliefs. “If I’m scared of trying something completely out there and different to anything I’ve done, that’s exciting to me.” “Terrifying” is the word she chooses to describe her role in the dark neo-Nazi drama Skin, in which she plays Julie Price, a single mother of three who married Bryon Widner, a white supremacist trying to change his ways. “You can’t be judging the person you’re playing, but how do you relate? You have to take yourself into such a different mindset, and it’s really, really difficult to find the human connection,” Macdonald says of taking on the role. “We all want the world to be peaceful, we want the hatred to stop, but how does that happen if we don’t allow people who have had hatred to let go of it and find love and peace and then do the right thing? The cycle of hate goes around because we decide, ‘No, I’m turning my back on you, you’re not allowed to change,’ but if they’re not allowed to change, then nothing ever will. Now there’s another generation – Price and Widner’s kids – who would have felt the same way, but now they don’t believe what he used to believe. They have a whole new direction in life, and sharing that was important to me.”

Her next steps are lighter ones – French Exit with Michelle Pfeiffer and Falling For Figaro with Ab Fab’s Joanna Lumley – but that’s not to say she’s moving away from psychological dramas for good. “I don’t get a project and say, ‘This is too similar to the last one so I won’t do it,’” she explains. “I would love to do a film in every genre because that sounds fun.” If that’s anything to go by, the next few years are set to be even more prolific than the last.

This story originally appeared in the May 2020 issue of ELLE magazine. Image: Getty Images.