Angourie Rice Tells Gaten Matarazzo About Her Acting Nightmares

It takes a certain je ne sais quoi to be cast in the remake of a cultural phenomenon like Mean Girls. Call it talent, versatility, or longevity, but at just 22 years old the Australian actor Angourie Rice definitely has it. Having started her career as a child actor, Rice is technically a veteran, sharing movie credits with the likes of Ryan Gosling, Rebel Wilson, and Zendaya (in the Spider-Man franchise). This eventually nabbed her a leading a role as Kate Winslet’s daughter in Mare of Easttown. Now, Rice finds herself exploring yet another fraught mother-daughter relationship in AppleTV+’s drama/thriller The Last Thing He Told Me, where she stars opposite Jennifer Garner. As Rice films the Mean Girls musical adaptation under Tina Fey’s direction, she found time in her busy schedule for a chat with her friend and Honor Society costar Gaten Matazzaro, who’s currently on Broadway in Sweeney Todd. Below, the two catch up about podcasting, the end of the world, and the oomph of a good musical number. – ERNESTO MACIAS

GATEN MATARAZZO: Hello!

ANGOURIE RICE: How you’re going, Gaten?

MATARAZZO: I’m so good. Oh, my gosh, I’m so prepared.

RICE: I saw your list of questions.

MATARAZZO: I’m going to disregard all of them and talk about Spider-Man for an hour. Is that okay with you?

RICE: I love that. What’s up? The last time I saw you was on stage.

MATARAZZO: It was on stage. I’m so glad that now we get to finally catch up. I’m going to make it all about me.

RICE: Thank you for doing this. Especially on a Sunday, when you are literally in a Broadway show.

MATARAZZO: We have just one today, so nothing crazy, and this is a great little warm-up. This is fun doing it over Zoom, though. It feels very 2020 of us.

RICE: I know, flashbacks.

MATARAZZO: Do you like auditioning in the context of post-COVID in comparison to what it was like before? Because there’s a lot less in-person.

RICE: Great segue, by the way. I can tell you worked on that.

MATARAZZO: Very much so.

RICE: Well, pre-pandemic I spent so much more time in Australia, and then post-pandemic, I’m spending more time in the U.S. When I was in Australia, all my auditions were on Zoom so it’s honestly kind of the same for me.

MATARAZZO: Is that good or bad?

RICE: I don’t mind a self-tape. I don’t mind a Zoom audition. I get so nervous in the room, that’s the thing.

MATARAZZO: Do you think that would reflect on a stage?

RICE: Absolutely. I’m terrified at the thought of doing theater, but that’s why I love it so much. I see these people performing live every single night and they don’t mess it up and give it everything.

MATARAZZO: Yeah, they do.

RICE: Well, yeah, but when I saw you, you didn’t mess anything up.

MATARAZZO: We could have. You never really know.

RICE: That’s true.

MATARAZZO: When did you film Mare of Easttown?

RICE: We were stopped by the pandemic. We had a new crew and we had some of the same crew and then everyone was like, “Hey, how are you?”

MATARAZZO: How long was the break?

RICE: We stopped in March and went back in September. The same with you for Stranger Things?

MATARAZZO: Exactly the same. Is there talk of another one?

RICE: I don’t know. I’m not the person to ask. I’d cut my hair again, but we’ll see.

MATARAZZO: I always thought of this during the pandemic, how weird it was that we weren’t doing what we loved. I’m sure that you missed it quite a lot.

RICE: Yeah, it was very strange.

MATARAZZO: Did you find hobbies? Did you find career backups?

RICE: I don’t know about career backups. I found hobbies. I started baking a lot and I started knitting.

MATARAZZO: What would you do, if everything went to shit forever?

RICE: In this world, does the movie industry still exist? Does theater exist? If there’s no performing arts, I would probably want to be a writer.

MATARAZZO: You’re good at it. You’d be great at that.

RICE: Thank you. What would you do?

MATARAZZO: It’s not my interview. It’s your interview. We’re talking about you, clearly.

RICE: Sorry.

MATARAZZO: Do you think that you have the drive to start writing?

RICE: Yeah, me and my mom have written a book together. It will be out in October in Australia and at a later date it will be out in the U.S. and the U.K.

MATARAZZO: Plug it. Plug it.

RICE: I’ll send you a copy.

MATARAZZO: You’re a big reader.

RICE: Yeah. So I just feel like I know that more than I know the structure of a film script.

MATARAZZO: I think with film scripts they want to give it to an actor and they want them to kind of establish that. But when you read fiction, you’re given that internal thought process by the author, which I think is really fun to read.

RICE: Yeah, very well-said. I like that about books. I also find reading scripts to be like reading a recipe.

MATARAZZO: Do you ever read source material before going to work or does it give you too much?

RICE: No, I pretty much always do, if something’s based on a book like The Last Thing He Told Me. They gave me the seven scripts and I read that first and then I read the book. And with that book, it’s interesting because I feel like the scripts add more to my character, Bailey, than the book does.

MATARAZZO: Oh, that’s great.

RICE: The book is so much from Hannah’s perspective, which is the character Jennifer Garner plays. It’s like from a first-person perspective, it’s about her.

MATARAZZO: How much time on set did you and Jennifer Garner have?

RICE: We had a lot of time together. I was always sad when I didn’t have scenes with her because I felt like we created such a shorthand and such an easy way of working. We would just fall into it. We would go through the scripts together and go through what had happened the day before we did the scene. That was really nice.

MATARAZZO: And Jen’s a pro, too. Just to be in her presence was probably very cool.

RICE: Absolutely. She had the book with her the entire time, she had underlined, doggy-eared. She would go up and say, “I love this line in the book. Is there a way we can fit that into the scene?”

MATARAZZO: I think collaboration is essential when adapting something because there’s always that fine line of do you want to create something new from this? I think nowadays when you adapt from source material you’re not limited to a two-hour movie. You have all the time in the world pretty much. I guess it’s similar to other work you’ve done, like with Spider-Man.

RICE: Everyone knows that character and that world. So it’s interesting adapting it with a new cast and with a new backdrop of the Avengers and all of that. And the other thing is that Laura Dave, who wrote the book, co-created the show with her husband, Josh Singer, who’s a writer. He was our showrunner.

MATARAZZO: That’s always great.

RICE: It was amazing. You never felt like, “Oh, how would the author feel about this?”

MATARAZZO: She was on set the whole time?

RICE: She was hanging out. No question was too small for her.

MATARAZZO: Do you have any more episodes or seasons of your podcast?

RICE: It’s coming. It’s coming.

MATARAZZO: I’m sorry if I stressed you out with that question.

RICE: No! It’s coming, guys. It’s coming. I hate to be that person, “My schedule is so crazy.” But it is!

MATARAZZO: I can imagine so.

RICE: It is. That’s why we’re doing this on a Sunday.

MATARAZZO: Sure. Do you guys have weekends off over at…

RICE: Mean Girls Musical.

MATARAZZO: There it is.

RICE: This week we did work Saturday. We worked yesterday, which is why I slept through my alarm this morning and had 15 minutes to get ready. And it’s been three days and I still haven’t found my hairbrush.

MATARAZZO: No–

RICE: Which is why this is happening.

MATARAZZO: It’s a moment.

RICE: Thank you. So where was I going with this? Once this wraps, which has been so exciting and fun and amazing and busy, I will have a little bit of time to go back to my little computer in my little bookworm cave hole and write some more episodes.

MATARAZZO: This is not in relation to anything we were just talking about. I’m just purely curious. What is filming a musical number like?

RICE: It’s crazy.

MATARAZZO: That idea scares the crap out of me.

RICE: But see, the idea of doing a musical number live on stage scares the crap out of me. This is something we talked about after Sweeney Todd. Like, the thing about filming a musical number is you get so many tries to get it right.

MATARAZZO: Of course. I think the one difference to me is that when people go to a theater, I think even though people know they’re going to see a musical, there’s still a reluctance with audiences to suspend disbelief enough to be okay with seeing that medium transform on a screen. You know what I mean? On a stage, because realism is kind of very abstract, people are very much willing to be okay with the narrative being driven through song. I’ve never understood that.

RICE: I have to tell you because I saw Sweeney Todd with a few of the girls from Mean Girls we were all singing Sweeney Todd on set the next day. I would just go up to them and go “Sweeney! Sweeney Todd!” One of the girls has a Sweeney Todd tote bag that she brings to set every day.

MATARAZZO: The one from the merch stand?

RICE: Yes. The one from the merch stand. She loves it.

MATARAZZO: Oh, good. Do you ever get anxious when you’re not working?

RICE: Well, I’m anxious when I’m not working and I’m anxious when I am working. But that’s something I’m looking into. I do feel like I always need to be doing something. I always like to have a to-do list. I love the call sheet. I study that. I love to know what time everyone’s getting picked up. I want to know what time everyone is getting in the hair and makeup chair. I love all that. So when I’m not working, I make to-do lists for myself, even if it’s stupid stuff, like “Eat breakfast.”

MATARAZZO: That’s not stupid.

RICE: “Get dressed.” I think that helps me feel like I’m doing something. When I’m not doing the thing that I want to be doing, then checking things off a list is good.

MATARAZZO: That’s why I think you’d love theater, because that’s so schedule oriented. Would you say that you thrive on a schedule, for the most part?

RICE: I do. I love it when we get a new schedule. I’m waiting for the pink one-liner to come out.

MATARAZZO: You know exactly what the hell you’re going to be doing on any given day—when you’re going to be there, when your day is going to end. I think that’s great, but you do have a lot of downtime.

RICE: Yeah. I feel like because you film a movie in bits and pieces, you never really get to relax until it’s over.

MATARAZZO: I agree. I think even with scene partners as well, it’s really hard to feel relaxed when you are tackling something for the first time. I think it’s hard to build chemistry with people unless you have a good amount of time to study, learn, create a background and a rapport. I think that was great with Honor Society, though, I’ve never had rehearsals for a movie.

RICE: I’d done a few things where they’d done rehearsals before going into it, which is always so good if you can get the time. I remember that day as well because it was my sister’s birthday.

MATARAZZO: Yes, of course it was. That’s right.

RICE: Well, we had rehearsals for The Last Thing You Told Me as well. Less rehearsals, more like read-throughs. It was me, Jennifer Garner, Josh Singer, and Laura Dave. [We] would sit down together with strawberries, donuts, and coffee and we would read the scripts out loud, and then after that, we’d talk about them and discuss the bits we wanted to draw out or highlight.

MATARAZZO: Do you think your chemistry with Jen, there was a need to interact away from the set and of a rehearsal context to find that relationship?

RICE: Well, I think Jen is so good at making people feel comfortable. Between takes and setups, we would be chatting about life, the scene, about whatever. Once you have that baseline of, “Oh, you are cool, we’re cool, this is great,” then you can explore the scary stuff. I think it was about building trust, which I really felt that we did.

MATARAZZO: In any context, that’s important. In any line of work with anybody you’re working with, that’s square one.

RICE: Yeah.

MATARAZZO: Do you think it’s the same process with characters that you are very distant from?

RICE: I do. When I think about working on Mare of Easttown and playing Siobhan and how she had such a difficult and strange relationship with her mother, I think actors need to feel safe in order to explore. I think there are some actors who love to feel out of their comfort zone and love to feel pushed, and that’s what makes them find it. But for me, if the environment around me feels safe and comfortable, that’s when I can really go for it because I have that knowledge that it will be okay. Can I ask you a question?

MATARAZZO: You might be crossing the line here. But I’ll allow it.

RICE: What is your favorite thing about performing live on stage every night?

MATARAZZO: Oh, that’s a big one, for sure. I think the love, the real love and drive to keep going back, what’s the word? Oomph?

RICE: Oomph!

MATARAZZO: I think all of it is backstage, fully. I think the love and drive really come from the environment that’s around me. Because everybody who’s there loves what they’re doing. Everybody there loves to act and loves to tell stories and feel like they get to be other people. I just know that I’ve gravitated towards it for a long time and I think you’d be very good at it. Have you read plays?

RICE: Yeah, I have. Both my parents work in theater, so I grew up watching a lot of theater and I continued to watch theater. I recently did a play reading for a play that my mom wrote, which was really fun.

MATARAZZO: That also is so interesting to me, that your parents were both so involved in the theater.

RICE: Well, when I was a kid I was like, “Mm, I don’t want to do theater. I want to do film, I want to be different.” But it’s still in my bones.

MATARAZZO: I’ve been asking a lot of people this. What is your recurring actor’s nightmare? And is it specific to you?

RICE: Yes and yes. My recurring nightmares are always about acting. It’s so interesting you bring this up because every time I’m working on a production so intensely, I always dream about set, and everyone on set is in my dream. It happened in Honor Society too. I would dream that I would get to set and not know any of my lines. The only real job you have as an actor, the only thing you need to prepare for the day, is to know your lines.

MATARAZZO: What’s on the page.

RICE: So my fear and my recurring nightmare is going to set and then I can’t get it. No matter how many times I try, I cannot get it.

MATARAZZO: The fear that you’ll just forget how to do what you’ve been doing for a decade.

RICE: Yeah. Another recurring one actually has to do with the theater and I’m the understudy and they’re like, “We need you on stage.” But I’m always a very under-prepared understudy.

MATARAZZO: Do you ever write your dreams down?

RICE: No, because I read that if you write down your dreams, you will remember them more frequently. You’ll get into a habit of remembering them. And I don’t want that.

MATARAZZO: I think they’re fun. I think they’re a cool little insight into the things you forget about yourself.

RICE: Yeah, that’s true.

MATARAZZO: I have a whole log in my notes of all my weird dreams, but I don’t remember them very often. So that’s why when I do I’m like, “Oh, that’s special.”

RICE: Someone would pay a lot of money to read that, I bet.

Source: interviewmagazine.com

IN CONVERSATION WITH ANGOURIE RICE

Angourie Rice is quickly on her way to becoming a major Hollywood starlet garnering hit success across both film and television. She can be currently seen opposite Jennifer Garner in AppleTV+ and Hello Sunshine’s highly anticipated miniseries ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’, based on Laura Dave’s #1 New York Times bestselling novel of the same name, which premiered on 14th April.

Angourie, you’re starring in AppleTV+ and Hello Sunshine’s miniseries ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’, that follows Hannah, a woman who forms an unexpected relationship with her sixteen-year-old stepdaughter Bailey while searching for the truth about why her husband Owen has mysteriously disappeared. Tell us more about what can we expect to see in the remaining episodes of the series.

You can expect Hannah and Bailey to go on more adventures, separately and together. In the last few episodes you really see their relationship change and evolve into something more caring and supportive. They learn to lean on each other when they need it most.

This miniseries is based on Laura Dave’s #1 New York Times bestselling novel. Have you read the book when you got cast on the project? How does the series differ from the novel?

I read the episode scripts first and then I read the book. Both hooked me and were such quick reads. In the book we’re always with Hannah’s perspective, and what I love about the series adaptation is that we get to see more from other characters. We get more insight from Bailey’s perspective into her relationship with her dad and her experience at school. The book and series are both so compelling and thrilling, but they each tell the story in a slightly different way.

In ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ you portray Bailey, the 16-year old dayghter of Hannah. What do you love the most about your character Bailey? What was Bailey’s most exciting storyline for you to film?

What excited me about Bailey was the emotional journey she takes. Olivia Newman, one of our directors and producers, pitched the show to me as a love story between Hannah and Bailey. We see a woman who doesn’t know how to be a mother and a girl who doesn’t know how to have a mother. Tracking their journey from adversaries to mother and daughter was so exciting to play.

You’re currently also in production on Paramount’s ‘Mean Girls’, a film adaptation of the Tony-nominated Broadway musical. What will make the fans of the Broadway musical and also the fans of the original film want to see this and love it just as much?

I wish I could say more about it, but I’m sworn to secrecy. All I can say is that ‘Mean Girls’ is an iconic film and I’m so excited to be a part of the musical movie adaptation. It’s a dream come true to be in a musical.

2022 marked your first leading role in the Paramount+ original movie ‘Honor Society’. How has the experience of being in a leading role helped you grow in your career? What have you learned from the experience for the future?

What struck me was how I felt a sense of responsibility. It was a big task and I didn’t want to let anyone down. I think it pushed me to want to be a better actor and scene partner. My favourite thing about the experience was being on set every day. I really got to know the crew and felt part of a community.

In your career so far, you’ve gotten the chance to work alongside some major names in the industry, like Kate Winslet, Jean Smart, Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe. Do you get nervous when being cast alongside such iconic artists?

Yes, always. But it goes away as soon as I properly meet them and talk to them. We’re all actors who love our job.

You began your acting career young and had your breakout role in the short film ‘Transmission’ when you were 11. Having been in the business since such a young age, how have you evolved as an actress since then?

I’d have to go back and watch that short film to give you an answer. I remember that I learnt all my lines for the entire film before we even started shooting. Now I know that’s not always practical because they often change the lines.

You come from a creative family. What other creative passions have you developed aside from acting?

I love to knit. And I love writing. My mom’s a writer and we’ve written a book together. It’s a modern adaptation of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ called ‘Stuck Up and Stupid’.

Besides acting, you also have a podcast called ‘The Community Library’, which encourages readers and listeners of all ages to think more critically about the media we consume. What made you decide to start this podcast and especially to do it about this topic?

I wanted to create a project that was completely mine, while sharing my love of stories. After high school, a lot of my friends and I felt burnt out from reading books for English class. I wanted to reignite my love of reading through the podcast and continue to talk about books and stories and reading habits in an accessible way. It’s given me so much joy to connect with other readers on the internet.

After ‘The Last Thing He Told Me’ and ‘Mean Girls’, what’s coming up next for you? What are some of your biggest goals and dreams?

Our book ‘Stuck Up and Stupid’ will be out this year, which is very exciting. I’ve always loved writing and it’s so wonderful to finally share it with the world. I’ll also be doing a play in Australia later this year with Melbourne Theatre Company. It’s called ‘My Sister Jill’. I’m looking forward to exploring the theatre making process, something new for me.

numeromag.nl

I added screencaps to the gallery of Angourie in the 4th episode of “The Last Thing He Told Me”. Click on the gallery links below to see all caps.

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Elle.com: Angourie Rice On Working With Jennifer Garner, ‘Mare Of Easttown’ And Becoming ‘Mean Girls” Cady

Here are more photos from Angourie’s most recent photoshoot with David Roemer. Click on the gallery link below to see all photos in full size.

“The Last Thing He Told Me”‘s Angourie Rice Is the Queen of Teenage Angst

Angourie Rice is an expert at playing a teenager, even though she turned 22 this past January. Last year, the actor starred as the teenage version of Rebel Wilson in Netflix’s “Senior Year,” as well as a hilariously driven student in the irreverent comedy “Honour Society.” Rice also appeared in the MCU’s Spider-Man movies as Betty Brant, and in 2021’s “Mare of Easttown” she played Siobhan, Mare’s stubborn daughter. Now, in Apple TV+ series “The Last Thing He Told Me,” based on Laura Dave’s bestselling novel of the same name, Rice stars as reeling high schooler Bailey opposite of Jennifer Garner, who plays her stepmom, Hannah, whom she can’t connect with, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays her missing dad, Owen.

“What I really liked about Bailey is that she had such a clear idea of what she loved and what she wanted to do,” Rice tells POPSUGAR. “I really love that Bailey has this really strong idea of who she is and what she wants, but it’s so shattered when her dad disappears because her idea of who she is is intrinsically, inextricably linked with her dad.”

The main relationship in “The Last Thing He Told Me” is between Bailey and Hannah; Bailey doesn’t accept Hannah as her stepmom, but after Owen goes missing they have no choice but to come together. “Olivia Newman, who directed three of the episodes and is an executive producer as well, pitched it to me as a mother-daughter love story, which I really loved,” Rice says of her audition process. “It’s about two women who don’t know how to be in each other’s lives. And throughout the course of the story, they learn how to do that.”

Garner, Rice says, was “an incredible person to work with.” Before shooting even started, they sat down with Dave and Josh Singer (who wrote the series together) to talk through all the scripts, which she says was “so rare” and “such a treat.”

Something Rice has in common with her “The Last Thing He Told Me” character is a love of musical theatre. The day Owen goes missing, Hannah has to pick Bailey up from play rehearsal. Plus, the latter’s bedroom at home is filled with posters for her favourite musicals. In real life, Rice is currently in production for the movie adaptation of the “Mean Girls” musical. In her Apple TV+ series, the actor uses her musical theatre chops as her character sings “Anyone Can Whistle” at school. But she also performed another song that was cut from the show: “She Used to Be Mine” from “Waitress.” Rice explains, “Both [songs] really connect with Bailey as a character, and it’s so beautiful for Bailey as this moody teenager, she is able to say and express how she’s feeling through musical theatre rather than through words.”

“Musical theatre and art, it gives you something to hold onto,” she continues. “It gives you stories when you might not have stories.” Bailey, she says, doesn’t have a lot of stories in her life. “She has her entire life with her dad, but how much does she know about her mom? How much does she know about her life before her mom died? Probably not much at all,” Rice notes. “I liked the idea that Bailey loves musical theatre so much because it allows her to enact stories that she might not have in her real life.”

One of Rice’s favourite days of filming “The Last Thing He Told Me” was when she and the cast filmed a flashback scene where Bailey, Hannah, and Owen all get dinner together. “That was really fun because Jen and I both love Nikolaj and we missed him so much,” she explains. After Coster-Waldau’s character goes missing in the first episode, he’s only seen briefly in the series through flashbacks. “For that scene, we were so excited to see him again, and he’s so lovely and a bundle of energy and just always brings something fun,” Rice adds.

Rice was the youngest cast member on the set of “The Last Thing He Told Me,” but for the “Mean Girls” movie musical, she’s among fellow rising Gen Z stars like Auli’i Cravalho, Reneé Rapp, “The Summer I Turned Pretty”‘s Christopher Briney, and “Senior Year”‘s Avantika Vandanapu. “They told me I can’t say anything about it,” she warns of the film’s production. However, she is allowed to dish about her costars. “Everyone is so incredibly talented, but also I think everyone has an energy that matches each other,” Rice says. “We all really, really get along, so that’s been really nice, just that we’re all on the same page with the way we work and all of that.”

Rice never actually got to see the “Mean Girls” musical since it hasn’t gone to Australia yet and the Broadway production was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. But she says she’s seen the movie innumerable times. “I called my mom yesterday. She was like, ‘I can’t believe you are there. I would just remember watching that movie with you over and over and over again,'” Rice shares.

The 22-year-old actor admits that there are some odd parts of playing a teenager on screen during her actual teenage years and into her early 20s. She filmed “Spider-Man: Homecoming” in 2016 when she was just 15. “It’s very weird to see your coming of age captured and frozen in time in a movie franchise,” Rice says. Though she hasn’t watched the movies since they were released, she jokes that she might watch “Spider-Man: Homecoming” on a plane one day.

To this day, Rice still keeps in touch with her Spider-Man castmate Tony Revolori, who helped round out the group of teens at the high school attended by Tom Holland’s Peter Parker and Zendaya’s MJ. “We text every so often, asking about each other’s families, and that’s really nice,” Rice says. “We’ve known each other for seven years now, and when we met I was halfway through high school and now I’m an adult.”

As Rice leaves her onscreen adolescence behind and looks to the future, she admits she’d love to do a Jane Austen adaptation. “Clueless” and the 1995 BBC “Pride and Prejudice” miniseries are her favourites, and she’d love to play the title hero in “Emma” one day. “But also to play Elizabeth Bennet is also a dream. I feel like she’s one of the greatest literary characters,” she says. But first, Rice is putting her own foot in the adaptation game. She and her mom, Kate Rice, have written a modern adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice” called “Stuck Up and Stupid.” It’ll hit bookstores in Australia this fall, and she’s hoping for a US release date soon.

The actor and her mom, she says, are a perfect creative pair. “I can’t imagine writing alone, and I can’t imagine writing with anyone else,” says Rice. “It was so good to share the work, and we know each other so well, and we both have the same sort of sense of humour and the same ideas and same style of storytelling.”

For now, though, Rice is excited for fans to get wrapped up in the “intriguing mystery” of “The Last Thing He Told Me.” When she got the scripts, she stayed up late in the middle of production to keep reading about what happens in the show, and she thinks fans will be hooked, too.

Source: popsugar.co.uk