HUSTLE AND FLOW
Australian actress Danielle Macdonald brings to life a new hip-hop heroine in Patti Cake$
If we told you before this year’s Sundance Film Festival that 26-year-old Danielle Macdonald could spit with Nicki Minajlevel swagger, we’d understand if you didn’t believe us. After all, Macdonald, who grew up on Sydney’s northern beaches and had never rapped before, was barely known in Hollywood, her credits consisting of bit parts – such as a member of an anarchist group in 2013’s The East – and being cast as a lead in the 2010 series Huge (until her visa didn’t come through). But when Macdonald debuted as Mc-in-themaking Patti in director Geremy Jasper’s
Patti Cake$ – about a struggling bartender with rap-star dreams and a screw-the-haters attitude – she caused a who’s-that-girl frenzy on par with previous festival breakouts Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) and Gabourey Sidibe (Precious).
In 2014, Jasper cast Macdonald after seeing her in The East, and the two spent weeks honing Patti. At first, “she was a little cut-and-dried,” Macdonald says. “Patti is tough and knows what she wants, but I wanted to find all her weaknesses, her selfdoubt, in order to get to her strength.” She also immersed herself in hip-hop culture while working on her flow. “I listened to Nicki, Jay Z, Kendrick – and a lot of Biggie,” says Macdonald, who’ll be on the film’s soundtrack rapping about everything from sex to body image to the struggles of the working class. “Biggie helped me find that relaxed confidence Patti needed.”
As for her rap future? “I’ll leave it with Patti,” says Macdonald. “Geremy wrote everything; I just performed it. So I’ll still just, I don’t know, rap along in the car.”