MAIA Mitchell Crowning GLORY
The actor on returning to her love of Australian-made television The Crown star, Claire Foy, shares her thoughts on immortality, AI and what was on Queen Elizabeth’s Spotify playlist
Maia Mitchell has her hand wrist-deep in a 19th-century cadaver. Fortunately for the 30-year-old actor, she has not found herself caught in the throes of a historical crime or heading up a human sacrifice ritual. Instead, she is on the set of her latest project, The Artful Dodger,
a TV series adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist.
“We referenced a lot of real surgical cases in the show, so we had to learn how to do all the operations,” recalls Mitchell. She plays Lady Belle Fox, the Governor’s daughter, who is determined to become the first female surgeon in the fictional Australian colony of Port Victory in the 1850s. “We had these prosthetic cadavers, which were so realistic they eventually had to dial it back because they were too visceral.”
After spending the past decade navigating Hollywood in the cult-series
The Fosters, Mitchell is happy to be working back at home (the actor was born in Lismore, New South Wales) on the project, alongside a slew of incredible Australian talent, including Miranda Tapsell, Corrie Chen, Gracie Otto and Tim Minchin.
The gripping new series centres on Jack Dawkins aka The Artful Dodger (played by Thomas Brodie-Sangster) whose fast, pickpocketing fingers have turned into the skilled hands of a surgeon.
And what skills did Mitchell learn for her next sleight-of-hand? “I wasn’t very good at the hand tricks in the series, but I did know how to do archery,” she says. “The scene didn’t end up making the cut, but now I have a new hobby. I’m obsessed with archery.”
– Harriet Sim
You’re starring in the film All of Us Strangers. It’s an incredibly nuanced story of loss, loneliness, love and the persistence of grief.
I connected with the idea of someone whose parents have died. We had a really traumatic loss in my family when I was very young, so I really felt that in a way. The fundamental principle of loving someone is that you have to accept that you’re going to, at some point, be deeply wounded by it. We often think about the opportunity to talk to someone who has passed. I loved how the film unpacked what those conversations might look like.
It’s interesting being on the other side of the coin, playing a mother who didn’t get to see their child grow up or learn that their son was gay. I was able to live inside that experience of all the usual things that you feel as a parent, which is guilt that you’ve done a terrible job, whilst also being defensive about that in some way, and knowing that you only did your best and that we’re all fucked up.
It’s interesting because it echoes what’s happening in AI with grief technology.
I’m very suspicious of AI. It’s this
Black Mirror world where you can no longer lose someone. All of Us Strangers shows you that you have to go through the loss to understand what that love was and understand that that is the fundamental principle in life, and we can’t try to hide from it.
Music plays an important part in the film. What role does music play for you when preparing a character?
I’ve had a music playlist for every single character I’ve ever taken on since I started acting. One thing
I’ve learnt is that an incredibly happy song for a character is the one that you will listen to in the darkest moments, because it reminds you of that swing between what things used to be and what they are now. Music has an extraordinary [ability] to take you back to a place [where] you know what it felt like to be there, what the smells were like, and remind you of those things.
What songs were on your playlist when you were preparing for the role of Queen Elizabeth in the series
The Crown?
I decided when I was playing her that she wasn’t really engaged with music in a huge way. She likes musicals, so I had quite a lot of musical soundtracks, including An American in Paris and
Oklahoma. I also listened to a lot of Scottish and Celtic music. The playlist is rarely what the character would be listening to, but rather what encapsulates a feeling or emotion.
I feel that you’d have a very chaotic Spotify Wrapped.
It would be crazy and also be littered with strange kid songs and hypnobirthing stuff too.
You’ve played a slew of incredible historical figures: The Queen, Anne Boleyn, Janet Armstrong. Who else’s story would you love to see told in a screen adaption?
I’ve been really lucky to tell stories from a female perspective, in a historical sense, because that’s quite rare. I would love to tell more stories from people you never hear about – the unsung heroes of everybody’s life.
Often female-centric stories are only deemed worthy of being told if they’re about extraordinary women.
Exactly. Women don’t have to be climbing Mount Everest or discovering Newtonian to be rich and interesting.
Which of your characters has been the hardest to say goodbye to?
I’m usually relieved by the end to say goodbye to all my characters.
I find it really cathartic. Salome in
[the 2022 film] Women Talking was the character I wanted to say goodbye to the most. What she had experienced – that touched me in such a deep way. I think I knew fundamentally that my approach to everything would be different after doing that film and playing that character.
What was the first movie or TV show where you recognised yourself in a character and who was it?
Claire Danes [who played Angela Chase in the mid-’90s TV series]
My So-Called Life. There was something about myself where
I just felt a little bit dirtier and I identified with her awkwardness.
All of Us Strangers is in cinemas now.