Wellingtonian Nell Fisher, 12, stars in Bookworm and has joined the cast of the new season of Stranger Things. Photo / Geoffery Short
She leads new film Bookworm, has joined the cast of Stranger Things and is yet to hit her teens.
Nell Fisher is 12-years-old. This is something you have to keep reminding yourself while talking to her.
She speaks with a confidence that belies her young age. She’s incredibly friendly, talks directly and does not appear plagued by the afflictions of self-doubt, nerves or awkwardness that are commonplace among people much, much older than her.
For the entirety of our half-hour interview, she sits with perfect posture, back straight, shoulders relaxed. On more than one occasion I become keenly aware that my posture has slipped back into its more comfortable slouch.
All of this is to say that she seems incredibly together. Not just for a 12-year-old, but for anyone. And that’s before we get to the purpose of our Zoom call. Fisher, you see, is about to become our next global superstar.
This month Fisher stars in the family adventure film Bookworm, where she acts opposite Hollywood heavyweight Elijah Wood in the lead role of Mildred. Right now, she’s in Atlanta having landed a coveted role in the fifth and final season of Netflix’s horror fave and cultural phenom Stranger Things.
There’s no doubt about it. Fisher is on the fast track to success. But how has she done it? How did she get here? And, perhaps most crucial of all, why her?
“I instantly thought, ‘this girl’s got major charisma’,” Bookworm director Ant Timpson says when asked about casting Fisher in the film. His search for the precocious Mildred saw him going through more than 300 audition tapes to find a young actor strong enough to carry the film, Mildred is in nearly every scene of its 94-minute running time, and sell the wide range of emotion the role required.
“That whole precocious kid thing gets a bit long in the tooth sometimes and can be played very on the nose. We were looking for more nuance and shade,” he continues. “You really want to see some of those qualities inherent in the person as well. It’s a lot easier if it comes out naturally as well. Nell’s fiercely smart for someone that age and really has a great insight into a bit of everything.”
The same question was posed to Gail Cowan, the founder and manager of the internationally recognised talent agency GCM Management that represents Fisher. As an agent, Cowan’s been talent spotting since 1983 representing household names such as Academy Award winners Anna Paquin and Keisha Castle-Hughes and Aotearoa’s fellow rising star Thomasin McKenzie. Cowan also found herself instantly drawn to Fisher.
“I was in awe of her right from the first time we met,” Cowan recalls. “She was about 8 or 9 at the time and conducting herself with adults in such an incredibly mature way. She has a luminosity on film and all the right engaging qualities in terms of her look. But she also has intelligence, wit and tenaciousness.”
Acting is in Fisher’s blood. Her father, Toby Fisher, was an actor best known for playing the lead role in Ian Mune’s film The Whole of the Moon in 1997, before giving up the screen to focus on law. But he wasn’t her inspiration to start acting herself. Instead, it was her older brother.
“I was maybe 3 or 4, watching his school play and I remember being absolutely transfixed,” she says. “You know, I always thought that taking on someone who wasn’t you was just absolutely crazy.”
At the risk of armchair psychology, disappearing inside another person may have subconsciously appealed to Fisher. Her mum Laura Clark, OBE, was a former diplomat meaning the family moved around a lot and Fisher found herself attending new schools and making new friends. About four or five years ago, the family moved to Wellington after her mum was assigned as the British High Commissioner to New Zealand. And this is where Fisher really got bitten by the acting bug.
It was while she was taking after-school drama classes that an open audition for 2021′s local action-thriller film Northspur came in.
She matched the description and, encouraged by her teachers, she began working on an audition tape with her dad.
“They were like, ‘just try it. It’ll be a bit of fun’,” Fisher says. At just 7 years old it would be her first big acting role.
“Filming was for, like, a fortnight. But the feeling of being on camera was so exhilarating,” she enthuses. “It kind of all rolled on from there.”
“I wish I had,” Cowan laughs when asked how she talent spotted Fisher. “But they came to me. She’d been cast in Northspur and her father sought advice. As parents, they’re exemplary and made sure they did their due diligence before they popped her into our care. But also their reputations and careers meant they couldn’t afford to take a risk on someone. We had a meeting with Nell’s mum, who was at that point the British High Commissioner for New Zealand, so we got out the best teacups and tried to behave.
“Her father’s a lawyer so he understood the contract but he didn’t understand the industry. They were making sure Nell had guidance through that first production, which we did as a one-off. They approached us again a little bit later to make it official.”
Fisher’s next gig was in 2023′s horror flick Evil Dead Rise, before switching gears to star in the Netflix rom-com Choose Love that same year. Which leads us neatly to Bookworm.
The movie follows Mildred, the bookworm of the title, and her estranged father, a journeyman magician from Las Vegas, as they explore the South Island’s wild bush in hunt of the mythical Canterbury Panther. It’s a neat premise that mythologises our famed cryptid and provides a rollicking family adventure.
“We didn’t set out to specifically make a PG movie. That’s just how it ended up,” Timpson says of the film, which is an unexpected delight coming from the twisted mind behind the bloodsoaked horror comedies The Greasy Strangler and Come to Daddy. “It was really playing into those 70s films that I grew up with, those wilderness family adventures. They weren’t patronising or aimed just at kids. They were what used to be called general entertainment. There wasn’t that niche targeting. The breadth of those films covers such a wide range of entertainment for whether people went with the kids or by themselves. We were trying to pay homage to that type of cinema and it ended up being this odd family comedy movie.”
“It’s a very fun and heartwarming film, but it’s also quite an emotional journey,” Fisher says. “You’ve got these two characters who are both going through their own things but are brought together trying to look for this panther. I love these characters. They’re both, very quirky and kind of offbeat, you know.”
Then, through an enthusiastic grin, she says: “I thought it was amazing! Mildred and I are both similar and not. On a surface level we both love reading, we’re both absolute bookworms, but we also have a kind of adventurous side.
“But, Mildred’s life has been pretty hard. She’s grown up with a single parent, whereas I’ve had a really lucky life. I’ve had a great life so far. Mildred hasn’t had that.”
She pauses for a moment and then says: “I admire that she knows who she is. She’s an 11-year-old girl, but she’s still very confident in who she is. She doesn’t want to be anyone else and she’s not willing to change for anyone else.”
As I mentally double-check whether she’s talking about Mildred or herself, she finishes her thought saying: “I admire that in anyone.”
After she finishes filming Stranger Things she’ll return to London, where the family now lives, and, in effect, to her childhood. She’s looking forward to seeing her friend group, a bunch she cherishes more than the norm.
“It’s tricky because I often form connections and then have to leave that place,” she says, recalling the many countries she lived in and how her work has now upped that transience. “But it’s also helped me with knowing how to build strong relationships with people. It really helps in my line of work because if I’m away from school, I want to be able to know that my friends will still be my friends when I get back.”
Away from acting she enjoys going to school and always has her head buried in a book. She loves rock climbing and bouldering and talks excitedly about scaling the wall near where she lives in London.
With her star in the ascendant, Fisher is not getting caught up in the hype, mapping out her future or escaping into dreams.
“I’m just living life as it goes,” she says, sounding very much unlike a pre-teen. “I feel like you can’t plan too far ahead because if one thing tumbles.”
She takes a second to mull things over and then says: “You know, I love acting. And I do think I want it to be in my future.”
Earlier in our interview, Fisher had revealed her first acting role. It was a production of the children’s fable The Little Red Hen. Fisher did not have the lead role. Instead, she was a nameless sheep, one of the many farmyard animals who refuses to help the titular hen bake a cake. Fisher may not have been the star of the show, but she loved the part.
“That’s the thing,” she says with utmost earnestness, “I would have been perfectly happy if the rest of my life I had been the sheep in The Little Red Hen. I just love the feeling of being on stage or on camera.”
Then, as a wide smile crosses her face Fisher says: “Big part, small part … I honestly couldn’t care less.”
Bookworm opens in cinemas on Thursday, August 8.
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