The new girl
For a while now, Angourie Rice has been on the fringes of stardom, with supporting roles in ‘Mare of Easttown’ and the ‘Spider-Man’ films. But as the lead in the new version of iconic ten comedy ‘Mean Girls,’ she’s just moved to centre stage.
Words by JANE ALBERT. Photography by SIMON EELES. Styling by KARLA CLARKE
WHEN ANGOURIE RICE was in the early years of primary school in Perth, she and her younger sister, Kalliope, had three DVDs they would watch on high rotation: High School Musical 2, The Sound of Music — and Mean Girls. The girls’ parents both worked in the theatre, so after-school hours were typically spent poring over their portable DVD player in the corner of a theatre or tech rehearsal room, watching and re-watching their favourite films. “Mean Girls is one of the movies I know really, really well because I watched it so many times,” Rice says today. “We owned the DVD and that was rare because most of them we borrowed from the DVD store.”
That worn-out DVD has certainly proved its worth. Fast forward 17-odd years and Rice, now an acclaimed international film actress, is performing the lead role in the highly anticipated Mean Girls remake. An adaptation of the Tony Award-nominated musical based on the original 2004 film (yes, that’s a mouthful), Mean Girls stars Rice as naïve new student Cady Heron alongside queen mean girl Regina George (Reneé Rapp, who starred in the Broadway musical), love interest Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney) and a cast that includes original members Tina Fey and Tim Meadows.
Rice is still pinching herself for landing the role made famous by Lindsay Lohan, in a film that was seminal to her youth. “I get quite excited by these films that feel connected to my childhood, like Barbie, so to be in it feels very surreal, especially when I think if my life had taken a completely different path, and I wasn’t an actor, I would be going to the movies the day it came out and seeing it.”
Due to the Hollywood strike that prevented actors speaking to the press, it has taken seven long months to connect with Rice. But, finally, here she is, zooming in from her Airbnb in Los Angeles, where she’s been doing long-lead press for Mean Girls. Dressed casually in a pale red cotton jumper, hair loose and make-up free, Rice proves to be articulate, intelligent and fascinating company, thanking me for my patience in waiting until the strike was resolved and sending a personal message to my fangirl daughter: “Tell Annie I say hi, I hope she enjoys Mean Girls, I think it’s going to be really fun, really fun,” she enthuses.
Mean Girls caps off a frantically busy few years for the 23-year-old. Last year alone Rice starred in The Last Thing He Told Me opposite Jennifer Garner for Apple+; made her mainstage theatre debut in Melbourne Theatre Company’s (MTC) My Sister Jill and launched her debut novel Stuck Up & Stupid, which she co-wrote with her mother, Kate. In 2022, she played the titular role of Honor in feature film Honor Society opposite Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo; and Rebel Wilson’s younger self in Senior Year, for Netflix. This followed the critically acclaimed series Mare of Easttown, starring Emmy Award-winner Kate Winslet and Rice as Winslet’s headstrong teen daughter, Siobhan, in 2021, the same year she was named one of Variety’s 10 actors to watch. You may also recognise her from Marvel’s Spider-Man franchise playing Betty Brant opposite Zendaya (No Way Home, Far From Home and Homecoming).
But despite the roll call of stars and screen titles Rice has already notched up, her feet remain firmly planted on the ground. Given Rice’s father, Jeremy, is a director and keen photographer, and Kate a writer and musician, she’s spent her life thus far happily immersed in theatre and the arts, initially in Perth, where actors would regularly rehearse in the Rice living room, and later in Melbourne.
“All throughout my childhood I loved being around and watching performers. I’d go home and recite the lines and put on shows for my parents and drag my sister into them for dance shows and singing shows and plays. It was my whole life,” says Rice, who’s named after a revered surfing beach in northern New South Wales.
Rice made her screen debut aged 11 in Australian Zak Hilditch’s short film Transmission and she’s never looked back, going on to perform alongside Ryan Gosling in The Nice Guys and Nicole Kidman in Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled. Given the tender age at which she started there was never any time — or perhaps need — for formal training. And yet, like a bower bird carefully watching and picking up precious kernels, Rice is continually observing and learning both acting skills and life lessons.
This was certainly the case when shooting Mare of Easttown, a brilliant, dark and gritty series dealing with murder, grief and substance abuse. Rice found herself struggling to shake her troubled character Siobhan in the many long hours and days she wasn’t required on set. Sensing her unease, Winslet made a point of supporting her through a tricky intimate scene in a car where Siobhan shares her first kiss with her female love interest. As Rice has revealed previously, Winslet offered to hide in the car boot so she could help coordinate the scene and guide the young Australian, who’s the same age as Winslet’s daughter.
“What’s amazing about both Kate Winslet and Jennifer Garner is they’re so willing to extend kindness and generosity to new or younger people in the industry and provide protection and guidance that they don’t have to, but they want to, because they’re kind people. It makes such a difference to me to feel truly protected by the lead of the show.”
Rice also praises Rachel Perkins, who was shadowed by a young woman interested in becoming a filmmaker when Perkins directed Australian feature film Jasper Jones. “The role of director is so hard because people always want answers from you, but Rachel took the time to guide her on set, show her the script, show her a shot list, talk about how she goes about her day as director, because Rachel knew that was important. That kindness really stuck with me.”
Rice makes a point of seeking out female-led projects (Reese Witherspoon’s female narrative-focused production company Hello Sunshine helmed The Last Thing He Told Me, which was co-written by Laura Dave and executive-produced by Garner, for example) and it was no different with her recent mainstage debut in the MTC’s My Sister Jill, written by esteemed local playwright Patricia Cornelius and directed by Susie Dee. Again, it proved a masterclass in learning the craft of stage acting, given all six fellow actors had been to drama school; but it also forced Rice to confront her intense stage fright.
This year is a BLANK SLATE because the strike HALTED so many things and I didn’t have anything lined up pre-strike. I feel VERY PEACEFUL about it
“I got the job in mid-2022 and would be falling asleep at night then think, Oh, my God, I have to do that play, and feel physically sick about it in the months leading up to it,” Rice says. “I remember standing backstage before our first preview thinking, I don’t know if I can do this. I was shaking. I felt sick. I just felt I couldn’t do it. But I did, and I’m so proud of myself because it felt like such a fear that I got through. And now that it’s done, I’m like, I could never do that again.” Okay . . . but would she do another stage play or musical? “Yes, absolutely, I really would!” she says, without skipping a beat.
After some of the darker series she’s been involved with, Rice enjoyed the lighter subject matter of Mean Girls, shot in a New Jersey school early last year. Based on the 2018 Broadway musical, which is due to open in London’s West End in June, the screenplay was written by Fey (who also co-wrote the original), with music by Fey’s husband, Jeff Richmond, and lyrics by Nell Benjamin, who also wrote the music and lyrics for the stage production. While the film has been updated, with contemporary references to things like social media, it remains largely the story of new girl Cady’s attempts to fit into the high-school jungle by pretending to befriend the popular ‘Plastics’ before attempting to bring them down and falling for the wrong guy in the meantime.
“Tiny Fey is such a clever comedian and comedians are constantly updating jokes, reworking them to be relevant to young people, so it didn’t feel strange to read jokes that had been adapted to include Instagram or Spotify,” says Rice. “The high-school cliques and emotions [of the original] are all the same; the pressure of social media is the thing that’s changed the most.”
Rice doesn’t feel overwhelmed following in Lohan’s footsteps, pointing out it’s an actor’s job to bring their own characterisation to a role. But she does, she says, feel a huge responsibility to keep the character of Cady relatable, funny and sympathetic, as Lohan did. “I think the pressure of wanting to satisfy the audience that already loves Mean Girls is the new thing, but the pressure of wanting to play the character honestly and truthfully stays the same with any role I take on.”
Considering the actors’ strike brought the industry to a halt for much of 2023, Rice considers herself extremely fortunate to have been so busy for the duration. As well as My Sister Jill, she and her mum launched their novel, a modern take on one of Rice’s favourite novels, Pride and Prejudice, and she’s continuing to host her podcast The Community Library. Launched not long after Rice graduated from high school in a bid to rekindle her love of reading (quashed by the demands of the Victorian Certificate of Education), and inspired by the podcast Witch, Please, which analysed the Harry Potter books through an academic lens, The Community Library is about stories and how we tell them.
“It connects me with my community, hopefully makes analysis a lot less intimidating, showing pop culture — which you might think frivolous or shallow — is worth talking about and taking a deep dive into, because it’s everywhere,” she says.
A voracious reader, Rice had devoured 56 books during 2023 when we spoke in early December, and was juggling another four, including The Sympathizer by Vietnamese-American professor Viet Thanh Nguyen; Mullumbimby by Melissa Lucashenko (whose previous novel she loved); Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton, for book club; and The Zebra-Striped Hearse by ’50s and ’60s American- Canadian crime novelist Ross Macdonald, one of her father’s favourite authors and someone she reads whenever she’s in Los Angeles, for his local references. “I track my reading,” she says, “It’s one of my favourite things to do, and at the end I get statistics on the pages and genres.”
For the first time in a long time, Rice has nothing booked yet for the year ahead, something the self-confessed planner is newly comfortable with. “This year is a blank slate because the strike halted so many things and I didn’t have anything lined up pre-strike. I feel very peaceful about it,” she laughs. Three weeks in Melbourne over Christmas with her family and whippet-cross-kelpie was a gift – “Christmas in Australia is my favourite” — and she’s sanguine about whatever the future may hold.
“For a couple of years now, I have finished a job knowing exactly how much time off I have before I start the next, so what’s really nice is I don’t have that now and have the confidence and trust that the next project will come, and it will be incredible. And until then I will just enjoy summer in Australia.”
