Macdonald follows own beat to play ‘Patti Cake$’ rapper
Danielle Macdonald came to America with a dream, and as the star of Friday’s “Patti Cake$,” it’s come true.
“I arrived in L.A. one month before my 19th birthday. That was seven years ago,” the Sydney, Australia, native remembered.
A movie-mad kid who was hyperactive, “I didn’t have a long attention span and movies would get me to focus. That was big.”
What she most loved were “the stories, being in another world. My world would become that.”
After a year of college Down Under, Macdonald packed up for L.A. to create her own story.
“I came out with a job that I wasn’t able to do because I couldn’t get my visa in time.
“So I started from scratch. That was a good thing because I had to learn the ropes and really had to figure it all out.
“I had never lived away from home before. I had never been away from school. I had never lived in the ‘real’ world.
“So I had to figure out who I really am, how to be away from home and how to pursue a career I really wanted.”
Her film debut was 2013’s little-seen “The East,” about contemporary anarchists, but it was enough for a “Patti Cake$” producer to take notice and show her photo to writer-director Geremy Jasper.
“It was funny, when Geremy, who had been working on the character in his mind for years and years, saw my photo, he said, ‘That is literally what I have in my head for Patti Dombrowski.’”
An aspiring rapper from New Jersey, Patti charts her struggle and her grit.
Initially Macdonald was wary. “She was the opposite from me! I couldn’t rap, I didn’t know Jersey or that world or how to be cool — that was so not me.
“Geremy said don’t worry about the rapping. The heart of the project was so much about Patti’s desire and passion to make it in an industry that wouldn’t really accept her.
“That made me understand what drives her. Because I could relate to that — and I think everyone can — because it’s really feeling like a misfit and I think we’ve all felt that at times.”
Now that one dream is realized, “I want to keep the momentum going.”