The first thing I notice when Geraldine Viswanathan comes into view on my laptop screen is a small picture of a beach that’s resting on the windowsill behind her. After our initial introductory chit-chat, she tells me it’s a photo of Newcastle, the Australian beach town where she grew up.
The 29-year-old actor describes it as “such a beautiful place”, raving about its world-class beaches and laidback atmosphere. In the same breath, she says her childhood there wasn’t without its challenges. “I grew up in the suburbs and it was just very white, that’s kind of the main thing I remember when I think back to growing up in Newcastle. I was the only [South Asian] one at school for a long time, until year nine when another Indian girl came to school, and that got really confusing for people,” she laughs.
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From a young age, Geraldine was certain about what she wanted to do career-wise: she wanted to perform. More specifically, she wanted to make people laugh. She recounts with vivid detail a primary school play, the first time she realised she could elicit laughter from an audience.
Untitled and Co top and shorts, Shutz shoes, stylist’s own socks
“I always auditioned for the lead roles and never even got a little bit close – it just wasn’t even an option – but then one time, they gave me a funny line and it was a joke about how kids watch TV a lot. I remember getting a laugh and feeling like I had found a bit of a superpower because funny is funny – it doesn’t matter what you look like.”
From that point on, she became obsessed with comedy, devising sketches with her friends in her spare time and eventually, honing her craft on Sydney’s stand-up circuit. While her talent was obvious, getting work as an actor and comedian in Australia proved anything but easy. “It really was at every turn [someone saying]: ‘There’s no place for you here unless it’s about your ethnicity’,” she says.
By the time she was in her teens, she knew if she wanted to be considered for a broader range of roles, she’d need to move to America. “When I was 15, I went to Los Angeles and did an acting class. I was really shy and scared because Americans are so confident and outgoing. But then we eventually did a comedic scene, and I think I really found my confidence in the response from the class. I was like, ‘Okay, this is where I need to be, this is what I need to be doing’ and it was fun to have that big goal. It’s like, get the visa and get over there girl,” she laughs.
Sculptor top, Untitled and Co shorts, Schutz shoes, stylist’s own socks
Years of auditioning followed, until 2017, when Hollywood (literally) came calling. She’d sent in a self-tape for an American comedy film, Blockers, and while she was gearing up to perform at Melbourne International Comedy Festival with her Sydney-based comedy group, Freudian Nip, she was asked to take a Zoom call to discuss the role. Everything moved at breakneck speed from there. “They were like, ‘You need to get on a plane tomorrow to have an in-person session with the director Kay Cannon’…
It was a crazy 48 hours, and then I flew back and was waiting to hear.” Geraldine had learnt not to get her hopes up (“I had gotten close to things but then the visa was always such a complication”), but this time, the stars aligned. She had landed the role and would start filming in Atlanta a week later.
Blockers put Geraldine on the map. Her turn as high school senior Kayla Mannes was praised by critics, with many deeming her the film’s breakout star. Fast forward to today and she’s based between Los Angeles and New York, steadily building a resume that’s nothing short of remarkable. She’s become one of the most in-demand Australian actors, most recently starring in the Amazon comedy, You’re Cordially Invited, alongside Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon.
When I ask her what it was like to work with two of the most beloved actors of the last few decades, she’s quick to tell me it more than lived up to her expectations. “They’re just the best… I haven’t had that ‘don’t meet your heroes’ moment. Everybody has been as great as I thought they would be.”
Dolce and Gabbana dress, coat and shoes
Another acting hero she worked with recently was Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who stars alongside her in the latest Marvel film, Thunderbolts. While she can’t tell me much about her role or the film itself (our interview took place months before its release), she gushes about Julia, calling her “the blueprint”.
“I was so nervous because she’s so sharp and smart, and is truly such a queen. I just think that she’s so exceptional and brilliant. What an icon.” She’s less tight-lipped about Oh, Hi!, a romantic comedy she stars in that’s coming out later this year. She describes working alongside actors John Reynolds (who we both agree we have a ‘little crush’ on), Molly Gordon and Logan Lerman as a dream scenario. Molly, who plays her best friend in the film, is one of her best friends in real life.
On top of that close bond, she already had a relationship with John and the film’s director, Sophie Brooks. “It really was just like actual friends playing friends in a house in upstate New York. I was like, ‘Well, this is actually my dream,’… It’s a true kind of modern rom-com. We unpack the perils of the softboy and the fuckboy, which I think is a really important conversation to be having in this day and age,” she tells me.
Speaking of friends, Geraldine has the kind of Hollywood inner circle most of us would die to hang out with, comprised of some of the funniest, most in-demand young actors like Rachel Sennott, Patti Harrison, Ayo Edebiri and Molly Gordon.
I tell her I’ve always assumed that making genuine friendships in Hollywood, particularly close female friendships, must come with an added layer of difficulty. If you’re up for the same roles as your mates, or you see their career blow up overnight, comparison and jealousy must be commonplace, right? While she recognises this can be the reality for many in her industry, she says she’s lucky to be in a friendship group built on authenticity and shared interests.
Sculptor top
“I have a dream community of people that I respect and admire… I feel really lucky because I know that a lot of people have a hard time in LA. I always laugh because people are like, ‘Why are you in LA?’ and I’m like, ‘Because of the people – my friends’. And that’s not usually how that goes.”
But what about navigating beauty standards in Hollywood? I tell her that even just consuming imagery of actors and seeing their dramatic body and face ‘transformations’ impacts my self-esteem, so I can’t imagine what it’s like to work in the industry. “Yeah, it’s tough. I’m actually so glad you asked me this because I feel like I spent a lot of time being confused as to how people look a certain way. And I’m here to say a lot of people get work done guys – you heard it here first, breaking news!
“I think that there should be a disclaimer that people make or something, because I really was like, ‘Huh?’. It’s subtle too. And I think it’s so perplexing when you’re looking at it and then you add social media into the mix. It just leaves you feeling bad about yourself.”
That’s not to say Geraldine hasn’t experimented with the stereotypical Hollywood look. For this shoot with photographer James J Robinson, the pair imagined what it would look like if she forced herself into whitewashed beauty standards.
“We wanted to insert ourselves into the world we grew up watching but were never a part of – the early-2000s The Simple Life fantasy – while playing with the trope of the ‘girl who came to LA to make something of herself’,” she explains. “It was also exciting for me to break out of the typical mould I, and other South Asian actresses, are put in: the ‘good student’ or model minority. Why can’t I be a dumb slut too?” she laughs.
Untitled and Co top and shorts, Shutz shoes, stylist’s own socks
Outside of playing dress-ups for shoots, she says she derives a lot of self-confidence from the types of characters she plays as they’re “normal people”. The last thing she wants to do is to set an unattainable beauty standard. “I can go to sleep at night knowing that somebody might feel a bit better because they saw my little tummy – I’m here for tummy representation. Or just, you know, having my natural eyebrows or my natural hair texture. I think there have been trends and expectations of how women present themselves, but I think our bodies are not trends and that real faces are beautiful.”
I’m impressed by her candour on a subject so many celebrities are intensely private about. She even tells me she’ll be upfront and “post about it” if she gets any cosmetic work done in the future.
As our time comes to a close, I leave the interview feeling like I just made a fun new friend in the women’s bathroom on a night out – one who would loan me her lip gloss, compliment my outfit and make a perfectly timed joke. But that’s the type of person (and actor) Geraldine is: refreshingly honest, quick-witted and disarmingly charming. It makes total sense that Hollywood can’t get enough of her.
This article was originally published in Fashion Journal issue 197.
Keep up with Geraldine here.
This article Charting the rise and rise of Australian actor Geraldine Viswanathan appeared first on Fashion Journal.
2025-05-14 11:02:00
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