Having played a Satan-worshipping babysitter, a pistol-whipping bride, and, next, a Playboy bunny, Australian actor Samara Weaving is settling into her toughest role to date: a real Hollywood star
WORDS BY GRACE O’NEILL. PHOTOGRAPHY BY BEN MORRIS. STYLING BY JILLIAN DAVISON
WHEN THE HARPER’S BAZAAR crew arrive on a cold, damp Sydney morning to photograph Samara Weaving for this cover, they’re unaware that it isn’t actually the Australian actor on set. It’s Bridget, Weaving’s alter ego.
“When I first realised that photoshoots were part of the job, I found it really uncomfortable and awkward,” says Weaving, a self-described introvert who suffers from anxiety. “So I came up with this character so it wouldn’t really be me doing it, and we called her Bridget.”
It may seem like a grand irony — the starlet with a striking old-Hollywood beauty, a CV that includes projects with the producer Ryan Murphy, screenwriter Martin McDonagh and director Damien Chazelle, and who is a friend of the Louis Vuitton house, struggles in front of the camera. But Bridget is just a codename for the role Weaving is reluctantly familiarising herself with: that of a bona fide movie star.
When we speak, Weaving is back in Los Angeles, her adopted home for the past seven years, and is gearing up to start the press circuit for her latest film, a romantic comedy called The Valet. Adapted from the 2006 French film of the same name, The Valet sees Weaving play Olivia, a self-absorbed actor having an affair with Vincent Royce, a married billionaire played by Max Greenfield. When the pair are papped outside a hotel following a midnight tryst, Vincent convinces Olivia to cover for him by pretending she’s actually dating Antonio, the valet who inadvertently appeared in the picture. The valet, played by Eugenio Derbez — a God-like megastar in his native Mexico who has been making waves in Hollywood, particularly for his turn in the Oscar-winning film Coda — agrees to go along with it because he thinks it will help him win back his estranged wife. Hilarity ensues, with Weaving and Derbez emerging as an unlikely comedic double act.
I love playing not-so-nice people. They’re just really FUN and JUICY, and so BROKEN. It’s boring playing someone who has their sh*t together
“I love playing not-so-nice people,” Weaving says with a grin. “They’re just really fun and juicy, and so broken. It’s boring playing someone who has their sh*t together.” A traditional comedy may seem to be new territory for Weaving. After all, she made her name in horror and action thrillers including 2017’s The Babysitter, in which she plays a babysitter-cum-leader of a demonic cult, and 2019’s Ready or Not, in which she marries into a wealthy family, only to be hunted on her wedding night by her in-laws as part of a satanic game of hide-and-seek. But in all her roles, Weaving has shown a deft and largely underrated gift for comedic timing.
In Three Billboards Out of Ebbing, Missouri, she plays Frances McDormand’s ex-husband’s new girlfriend, an airhead called Penelope. Her scenes were fleeting but memorable, cutting through the film’s oppressive darkness with moments of easy lightness. In last year’s TV adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s hit book Nine Perfect Strangers, Weaving plays Jessica, a veneered, fake-tanned influencer looking for spiritual fulfilment, and the actor holds her own alongside trained comedians Melissa McCarthy and Regina Hall. In one memorable scene, Jessica is tripping on a psychedelic smoothie and hallucinates pulling off her own nose. Weaving needed to hit dozens of subtle notes within seconds: dopily high, self-absorbed, self-loathing, genuinely terrified, giddily subdued. She nailed each seamlessly.
“Doing comedy is really hard, I would say it’s harder than drama,” says Weaving, who grew up with a cinephile father who’d make his two daughters watch The Three Stooges, Charlie Chaplin and Monty Python. “I love comedy podcasts and trying to figure out the kind of math behind a joke: How does it actually work? How do you lay the groundwork for a punchline and make it really land?”
I’ve been told, ‘Oh no, DON’T BE FUNNY, AMERICA’S NOT [READY], we don’t want that.’ Essentially being told, ‘JUST BE PRETTY.’ It’s like, [WOMEN] can be PRETTY AND SMART, but you can’t be pretty, smart and funny
That Weaving isn’t immediately thought of as a comedic actor is a testament to the fact that Hollywood still doesn’t really know what to do with women who are both beautiful and funny. “I’ve been told, ‘Oh no, don’t be funny, America’s not [ready], we don’t want that,’” she says. “Essentially being told, ‘Just be pretty.’ It’s like, you can be pretty and smart, but you can’t be pretty, smart and funny. It’s been eye-opening to me because I would look at certain films and think, That’s weird, I know that [woman], and they’re really funny, I wonder why they didn’t make a comedic choice for that scene. Now I know it’s because they couldn’t.”
I tell Weaving I think one of the greatest performances in film history is Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. The Pulitzer prize-winning writer Norman Mailer and author of the 1973 book Marilyn, called Sugar Kane, the star’s ukulele-playing ditz with a heart of gold, Monroe’s “greatest creation”.
“It would have been no more than a very funny film, and gone from the mind so soon as one stepped out of the lobby, if not for Monroe,” he wrote. Weaving — who has name-checked Monroe as the part she would most love to play — nods in agreement. “Historically, you’ve seen women who are so beautiful that people forget they were funny. I recently rewatched Contempt, and Brigitte Bardot is hysterical, and yet everyone only thinks of her as a sex icon.”
For Weaving, comedy wasn’t only a gateway into Hollywood; it was a survival mechanism. From the time she was two weeks old until she was a teenager, Weaving moved around Asia and Europe with her mother, a PhD in Peranakan art, and her father, a filmmaker turned professor of film studies. Her shyness was only exacerbated by constantly changing schools, and so her parents suggested joining drama classes as a way to push Weaving out of her shell. It was a stroke of genius on their part.
“As soon as I was in drama class, there was this freedom because I didn’t have to be Sam trying to impress everyone to fit in. I was playing Puck and being ridiculous, and it would just break the ice instantly,” she says. “Being comedic helped, too, because if you do a funny role and the other kids laugh, then afterwards, they’re going to come up to and say, ‘Do you want to have lunch with us?’”
The Weavings returned to Australia when Samara was a teen, and she immediately pursued acting roles, landing a job on the soap Out of the Blue when she was only 15. “Looking back, I’m impressed and bewildered by how supportive my parents were,” says Weaving, whose parents allowed her to move from the Australian Capital Territory to Sydney for six months to shoot the show. “I mean, I was very adamant, but I still don’t think there are a lot of parents who would have done that.”
Out of the Blue led to an appearance on Home and Away, the famed incubator of Australian acting talent. Weaving was offered a full-time role on the show the same week she received her university results and had to decide whether to enrol in a psychology degree or pursue acting seriously. “I remember getting off the phone with the casting director and hyperventilating and having a panic attack,” she says, noting that she probably made the right call. Weaving says there were plenty of opportunities to finesse her acting skills on Home and Away, but she was plagued by teenage distractions.
“I was 18, and boys and getting into clubs were my two priorities,” she says, laughing. “I was actually very naive because I’d only auditioned for two jobs before, and I got both, so I had this sense of I’ve got this.” But she sent off dozens of audition tapes for work in America and wasn’t hearing back.
“Eventually, my agent said, ‘There’s a wonderful woman you should go to.’ At first, I was a little offended, but I hadn’t worked in a year, so I thought, Okay, maybe you’re right.” Weaving was sent to the acting coach Leigh Kilton-Smith, known for working with Jennifer Aniston, Sam Rockwell and Gabrielle Union. “She just tapped into something,” Weaving says. “I did an intensive two weeks with her, and then the audition I did straight after, I got [the part].”
Weaving is currently enjoying that steady career trajectory most actors dream of. She recently wrapped filming on Damien Chazelle’s anticipated new film Babylon, in which she’ll star alongside Brad Pitt, Olivia Wilde and fellow Aussie Margot Robbie. She’s also gearing up to play Holly Madison, the former girlfriend of Hugh Hefner, in an upcoming mini-series.
The project that garners the most excitement from Weaving is a still-under-wraps movie she’s started to work on with her husband, the writer Jimmy Warden. The pair met on the set of The Babysitter in 2016, and married quietly in 2019. Warden will write and direct the film, and Weaving will star. “I can’t say much, but it’s going to be really great,” she says, smiling.
From the outside, Weaving’s career looks to be made of considered strategic moves that allow her to tackle different genres (action, horror, comedy, period drama) to show off her versatility. But that view showcases a lack of understanding about the reality of being an actor trying to break into Hollywood: for the first few years, it’s about taking whatever you can get.
I have a FEAR of being BOXED into one genre. I don’t want people to have A SET IDEA about the kind of roles I can play
“It’s funny when people ask me about how I choose roles because until recently, I wasn’t choosing roles, I was doing auditions left, right and centre, and those were the roles that I landed,” Weaving says. “It’s only in the past year and a half that I’ve been choosing stuff myself.”
This newfound freedom has allowed her to pick parts that feel nuanced and multi-dimensional, such as the socialite and American founding mother Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte, who Weaving will play in an upcoming biopic. “I have a fear of being boxed into one genre. I don’t want people to have a set idea about the kind of roles I can play — I find it really scary and exciting when a role I haven’t done before comes across the desk.”
All of which is to say that there will be plenty more photoshoots on Weaving’s agenda in the coming years. Bridget had better be ready for them.
Hair by Pete Lennon at AP-Reps; makeup by Victoria Baron at M.A.P; manicure by Jocelyn Petroni. Prop styling by Claudia Wilki.
This story appears in the JUNE/JULY issue of Harper’s BAZAAR Australia/New Zealand, available for deliveryhere.
