On the run
As Elliot and Helen take their quest for answers about his past to Ireland in The Tourist’s second season, Aussie actor Danielle Macdonald lets Siobhan Duck in on some on-set hijinks and how she is forging her own path in the entertainment industry
DANIELLE Macdonald discovered a surprising new talent while in Ireland shooting the second season of The Tourist.
The revelation came while the Aussie was having a few laughs over a pint of Guinness with Jamie Dornan and her other Irish co-stars at the pub.
“I don’t even know if this is a thing (but they told me this is a thing), but when you get your pint of Guinness, you have to hit the line of the G [in the brand name written on the glass] in your first sip,” she recalls with a laugh.
“So, you have to guess how much Guinness to drink and then, when it settles, the top of the foam should meet the G. It sounds ridiculous – and it is ridiculous – but the point is we had a competition and I kind of nailed it.”
Although she’d never visited Ireland before, Macdonald felt instantly at home there.
“I find Irish people the funniest out of everyone because I’ve never laughed so hard on a job ever, to be honest,” she enthuses.
“So that was really fun, especially when you’re dealing with some dark content as we do in the show. It’s really nice when you can also just laugh until you are crying, at the end of the day.”
The first season of
The Tourist was filmed in South Australia and followed amnesiac Elliot (Dornan) as he tried to piece together his identity with the help of a sunny-natured novice traffic cop named Helen (Macdonald).
Macdonald says writers Harry and Jack Williams (the brothers who created Angela Black and Liar, as well as producing Fleabag) had always intended for The Tourist to be a “one and done” series.
But six months after
The Tourist debuted on Stan – becoming the most-watched drama in the UK in 2022 in the process – the brothers rethought their position and devised a new adventure for Elliot and Helen.
The second season picks up 14 months after Helen interrupted Elliot’s downward spiral (brought on by some disturbing revelations about his past) with a timely text. Now loved up, the couple begin looking for new information about Elliot’s background in his hometown.
Of course, it’s not long before trouble finds the lovers and sets them off on another rollicking adventure with a whole new battery of baddies to outwit.
Macdonald understands that playing Dornan’s love interest will make her the envy of many. As Christian Grey, the S&M-loving protagonist of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, Dornan’s kinky onscreen trysts made him an instant sex symbol in 2015.
Macdonald confesses she was among the millions of cinemagoers who went to see Fifty Shades of Grey when it came out.
“Thank God it was years ago, because I didn’t want to be like: ‘Guess what I watched last week and it’s all I can think about’,” she jokes of going to work with Dornan.
Of course, Dornan would have good reason to be equally impressed by Macdonald’s back catalogue of screen work, which includes playing Jennifer Aniston’s daughter in the 2018 film Dumplin’, an apocalyptic survivor in the Sandra Bullockhelmed thriller Bird Box, and a sexual assault victim in critically acclaimed Netflix drama Unbelievable.
Unlike many Aussie stars, Macdonald didn’t take the traditional route to Hollywood by doing time on either Home and Away or Neighbours.
“The first opportunity I got was in America,” she explains.
“You know, I watched Home and Away when I was younger. I’m from Avalon, so Palm Beach is one of my local beaches and I saw them filming all the time.
“It would have been cool to do that when I was a teenager or in my early 20s like people do… it just didn’t really feel like the natural progression at the time. I didn’t get any auditions.”
It was perhaps because the fuller-figured Macdonald didn’t fit the traditional mould of what a TV star should look like that her talents were initially overlooked.
And so, it wasn’t until Macdonald moved to
Los Angeles at age 18 that casting agents finally sat up and took notice.
Upon reflection, Macdonald, 32, now realises that she didn’t see many people who looked like her on-screen when she was growing up.
“You don’t know that it’s abnormal, honestly, because you’re a kid,” she says.
“Or until you experience something different.”
For Macdonald, that perspective-altering experience came in the shape of the Broadway musical, Hairspray.
“I was obsessed with it,” she laughs.
Not only did the musical highlight “some challenging
issues in society” but it made Macdonald feel “seen”.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s a plus-sized woman playing a lead role!’,” she gasps.
“That’s really exciting. And I didn’t know that really existed for me.”
Until then, Macdonald had never envisaged herself as ever being the lead star in anything and was resigned to always being a supporting player.
At the urging of her managers, Macdonald refused to settle for second best.
“When I first started, they were like, ‘We don’t want you to be just a character that’s the butt of a joke’,” she recalls.
“But I just wanted a role. And they were like, ‘No!’. I didn’t realise when I was younger that [those roles] are really demeaning. And that’s because that’s all there was growing up and that’s just what I thought I could get.”
Thankfully, the TV landscape has changed dramatically in recent years, so that Macdonald now finds herself sharing top billing with Dornan in The Tourist.
“It’s not every day that you see someone like Jamie –
who has portrayed many, many, many attractive characters – with a plus-sized lead,” she smiles.
“It’s great that Harry and Jack Williams said ‘Well, that’s normal in our world’.”
Over the years – and particularly after the release of Dumplin’ – Macdonald has been approached by women about her age who thank her for making them feel represented.
Younger viewers don’t tend to see her as any sort of pioneer. And she’s delighted.
“I am just really hopeful that it does – without teenagers or young people even realising – alter things for them,” she says.
“I hope that it is just normal for them to see people of all sizes, but also all backgrounds on screen.
“There’s so many different people that now feel like they’re finally represented. And I hope that their experience is just different [to mine] because they’re growing up seeing that [as normal] and they don’t even know to be like, ‘Oh, wow, I’m so glad you’re doing that’.”
streaming, Stan