Two hearts are likely beating in Rose Byrne’s chest – one for feminism and political art, and a second for any nonsense. She became famous in a very serious role, as a junior lawyer alongside Glenn Close on the series Damages. But she had her breakthrough on screen in a different subject – than bitchy Helen, the one in Judd Apatows Bridesmaids intrigued and the only one to survive the legendary bridal dress shop scene with some dignity while strutting around her worst food poisoning friends. Bridesmaids was considered a milestone – faecal humor in the cinema was previously reserved for men. “I was”, says Rose Byrne at the video call from Australia today, “naive in that respect”. These female roles did not seem so unusual to her when she made the film.
Rose Byrne, born in Australia in 1979, has since been introduced as a comedian. In the new Apple Plus series Physical it’s all about her, and her character Sheila needs every bit of humor. Physical takes place in an era Byrne can’t even remember himself. In 1980 Sheila moved to San Diego with her husband, he works at a college and will soon be flying out of there, and Sheila now has to solve his own problems as well as her own. “Physical is – how should I put it: dark, but still a comedy. It’s not like Bridesmaids, what Judd Apatow calls hard comedy. I love that expression, “she says. How did the change of subject come about?” When you’re honest as an actress, you just want to try different things. At first I waited a long time to get serious roles, and then I really wanted to play weird ones. “
Soon she is supposed to play Jacinda Ardern – but many find the project around the Christchurch assassination tactless
A few years ago, Rose Byrne did in the Guardian written about ithow her serious actresses heart awoke when she learned from an Arthur Miller play in the theater at the age of 16 that there is more to an actor than just entertainment. In the meantime she has found her own added value in terms of content – sometimes she plays Medea on stage, then again in a comedy, but often she opts for projects that somehow involve feminist struggles. Last year started in the USA the series Mrs. America, which was about how a right-wing, anti-feminist activist named Phyllis Schlafly fought against an amendment to the American constitution that was supposed to ensure equality in the seventies. Rose Byrne played Schlafly’s antagonist – Gloria Steinem, one of her idols. She should soon be in They Are Us Andrew Niccol plays New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – the project meets with considerable resistance in New Zealand, however, it is about the Christchurch assassination, and many people find such a film to be tactless.
There is Physical with his swipes at the Reagan era much more harmless: Sheila’s husband Danny decides when the college no longer wants him that politics has been waiting for him. “He’s so incredibly arrogant – I love Danny as a character,” says Rose Byrne. Sheila is a black character study, and Byrne can give it everything she can as an actress, the black humor as much as a sad inner conflict that seizes Sheila when she starts thinking about her life. Sheila has got used to some things, although she still doesn’t like them. She takes it with outward composure when her husband presents her ideas as his newly discovered knowledge at parties. But we can hear what’s going on in her head. And are with her, even if he is not. When you see them for the first time in a wrecked motel room, you have no idea how deep they look into their abysses. “Sheila’s marriage looks progressive from the outside,” says Rose Byrne of the role, “but in reality this marriage is traditional through and through. She has the supporting role. She is the supporting strategist in the background. She is sick – and can Don’t even express it. She needs a valve. ” This is what she finds when she comes into contact with a sport that is only for women: aerobics.
Byrne sees aerobics videos as a precursor to social media: “No Kim Kardashian without Jenny Craig.”
For Rose Byrne, this is all before her time, but she can well remember from her childhood in Australia what it was all about – fitness, the obsession with slimness that has to do with it, are only part of what they are Housewives were looking for when they began to hop around to Jane Fonda’s video instructions in front of the television: “Wellness and exercise were a luxury for my mother. It was not a given to have such freedom of your own.” Seen in this way, aerobics were actually a small step towards emancipation. Rose Byrne sees something else in this, which sounds a lot more frightening: She sees the aerobics videos as the forerunners of today’s social media: “No Kim Kardashian without Jenny Craig.” Craig was one of the first to build a diet and lifestyle empire from scratch in the 1980s.
Is it easier to conceptualize a series around female characters and actually get it through than is the case with movies? There was no breakthrough in many films that focus on a female figure. “Television has traditionally had good female roles,” says Rose Byrne. “Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect for example, this is now a classic. Or Nurse Jackie with Edie Falco. But there are also movies like Nomad land – and that knocks you out. In the cinema there are always superheroes and robots – and the rest is streamed. I am curious to see whether something will fundamentally change after the pandemic. “