American filmmaker Debra Granik has a knack for discovering new talent.
Granik was the one who cast a then-teenage Jennifer Lawrence in her 2010 film Winter’s Bone, leading to Lawrence’s first Oscar nomination and an enormously successful career.
So, when Granik released Leave No Trace in 2018, a drama about a teenage girl and her veteran, PTSD-suffering dad, everyone was watching the young co-lead. Had Granik unearthed another rare gem?
She had.
That gem is Thomasin McKenzie, a then-16-year-old New Zealand actor whose onscreen emotional maturity rivalled that of co-star Ben Foster. It was an intelligent and generous performance, and it heralded McKenzie’s arrival on the international scene. She was nominated for a slew of awards, including a Critic’s Choice and an Indie Spirit.
When you break out with that kind of performance, the others come calling, and soon afterwards the Wellington-born actor had booked roles in Jojo Rabbit, Old, Last Night in Soho, The King and The Power of the Dog.
In the span of a few short years, McKenzie went from a recurring role in the Kiwi soap Shortland Street to working with filmmakers Taika Watiti, Edgar Wright, Jane Campion and M. Night Shyamalan.
McKenzie, now 22 and on a rare break back home in Wellington, told news.com.au that because she was so young at the time, she could barely register the whirlwind career she was swept into.
“I did Leave No Trace when I was 16, Jojo Rabbit when I was 17, True History of the Kelly Gang when I was 18 and Last Night in Soho when I was 18,” she recalled. “I was so young I was oblivious to how amazing it all was. And then at a certain point, it hit me – ‘Ohmigod, I’ve been working with incredible, incredible people’.
“Now I think about it and I’m starstruck, years down the track.”
McKenzie’s latest project is the streaming series Totally Completely Fine, a co-production between Stan and American streamer Sundance Now. Set in Sydney, the story follows twenty-something screw-up Vivian. Vivian drinks too much, vapes too much and hates the world too much.
She has thorny relationships with her family, including a brother whose vegan food truck she burnt down with a bacon-flavoured vape, and her overall lack of direction is becoming a problem.
When her grandfather dies, she’s surprised to discover he has left her his cliff-side home. But rather than a lucrative real-estate coup, the home comes with a catch – the backyard backing into the ocean is a suicide hotspot.
So now the person who can barely save herself is the last line of defence for distressed people.
It’s tagged as a comedy, but Totally Completely Fine deals with a lot of serious issues, and every episode comes with a trigger warning and a pointer to support lines.
While McKenzie didn’t relate to Vivian’s partying ways – “Just want to put that out there” – she could relate to the character’s vulnerabilities.
“I, too, have struggled a lot throughout my life with mental health. I feel a lot of anxiety and I can feel really down sometimes,” she said. “I really wanted to do a project that explores mental health and gives permission for people to be messy and imperfect, and the permission to not always be right.
“That’s what drew me to Vivian. I saw her pain and I could relate to it.”
McKenzie said she wasn’t great at expressing herself and that she always found it difficult to get out what she was trying to say, which is one of the reasons why she acted – a script or a character enabled her to vocalise things she had felt.
“I feel like I’m given a voice, so it’s my own kind of therapy in that way. I’m always excited to do that because it allows me to figure things out myself.”
McKenzie wasn’t scared to explore these aspects of herself through the series, but she was scared about how audiences might react to Totally Completely Fine, “because it’s a dark comedy, they are dark subject matters in this”.
But she was assured at the amount of research, care and sensitivities that the production put into the show, which included an on-set therapist, and there is a balance between light and dark.
“There’s a lot of sadness and trauma, those are tough things to talk about,” she explained. “But there’s also a lot of joy and laughter in the show. I was nervous about finding the right balance but I think the best way to heal is through laughter and connection, and finding as much joy and beauty as you possibly can, even during the times when it feels like it’s just darkness.”