The Australian actress and singer talks about her favourite books, Boy Swallows Universe, Lemony Snicket, Atonement, What I Loved, and Little Birds among them.
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00:00 I really love books about just simple things and the human existence, and With Atonement
00:07 is a good example that something small can happen and it can change the trajectory of
00:11 someone's life.
00:18 I was introduced to reading from a very, very young age.
00:21 Both my parents actually are really avid readers, and reading was always really, really encouraged
00:27 in our house, you know, an outing for me and my little sister was always to the bookstore
00:33 over the toy store, and my mother would always kind of let us go rogue and pick almost as
00:40 many books as we, within reason, as many books as we wanted.
00:45 And one of the first books that I really remember reading and loving was Lemony Snicket's series
00:52 of unfortunate events.
00:53 I think when I was younger I had such a vivid imagination and those books just really fed
01:00 into that.
01:01 It was my probably first introduction into kind of dark humor in literature, and I remember
01:07 being very inspired by the world of Lemony Snicket, as sort of dark and twisted as those
01:12 stories are.
01:14 I'm definitely a before-sleep reader, which is hard when you're reading a really good
01:19 book, and then it's really hard to fall asleep because you want to stay up and read all night.
01:23 The last time I had that actually, I think it was my year of rest and relaxation.
01:28 As I said, my parents have always been really big readers, and so we're constantly sharing
01:34 books.
01:35 Actually, the trauma cleaner, I think, either came from my mom or my dad a couple of years
01:39 ago.
01:40 My dad always gives me books for my birthday, which is a pretty dad gift.
01:45 So he'll pick three or four books and send them to my apartment in New York.
01:50 And then my mom actually gave me Boy Swallows Universe for Christmas a couple of years ago.
01:54 So we're constantly giving each other books.
01:56 I definitely love stories written by women about complicated women or the complications
02:02 of being a young woman or a girl.
02:06 As a teenager, even though we had very liberal use of the bookshelf and the books that we
02:12 had at home, there were still books that I read maybe as rebellion, more so probably
02:18 from school than from my parents at home.
02:22 The books that we read at school were Animal Farm and a lot of Jane Austen, which I've
02:26 now read as an adult and I've got a lot of love for those books.
02:29 But when you're told to read something and it's not on your own accord, there's a rebellion
02:34 in reading books that aren't curriculum.
02:37 So the books that I read in school that definitely shaped that period between 14 and 17 and commentary
02:44 on girlhood and being a young woman would be Lolita, Little Birds by Anais Neen, and
02:52 The Virgin Suicides.
02:54 I think as a young woman, especially in your teenage years, I don't think you have the
03:00 vocabulary to articulate what being a young girl is about.
03:05 Ironically, Virgin Suicides is written by a man, a professor actually, but I still felt
03:10 like there was a language in there that my girlfriends and I could relate to, even if
03:15 it was a more exaggerated version, obviously, of how it feels to be a young woman and an
03:20 adolescent in a time where things are changing.
03:24 But I think it also just created this whimsical world that I think we fed into and were very
03:33 inspired by.
03:35 And then Lolita, I read when I was about 15 and have reread about six years ago.
03:43 And I definitely read it with a very different perspective.
03:45 There was something quite provocative about reading it at 15 and again, as a rebellion
03:50 against the kind of Jane Austen's and the books that curriculum that we had to read
03:55 at school.
03:56 So I read it again at 26 with a very different perspective.
04:00 And there was a less sort of romanticizing about this story, which I think as a young
04:03 girl you do a little bit, at least I did a little bit.
04:07 You know, it was, as I said, very provocative.
04:10 The book that I read, I think when I was about 12 or 13 was Atonement.
04:15 And that probably shaped the rest of my reading life.
04:19 I would say I loved telling stories as a kid, but I didn't really know how to.
04:26 And Atonement obviously was not only such a vivid book about a time, but it was also
04:31 about a young girl who was telling stories and writing scripts.
04:36 And I would say both characters, Cecilia and Bryony in the book, kind of influenced me
04:42 growing up.
04:43 I moved to New York in 2019 and someone gifted me Just Kids.
04:49 It was such a kind of beautiful introduction to this city that I was moving to and was
04:54 so excited to be walking around these streets that Patti Smith was mentioning.
05:00 What I loved by Siri Hustvedt.
05:02 In this book, you know, reading about these streets like Canal and Broome and all these
05:06 streets that I see and walk through every day, there's just something really beautiful
05:10 about putting yourself in the exact space and place that these writers are writing about.
05:17 My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which is by a wonderful female author called Urtessa Moschweg.
05:22 It's almost like the grown up version maybe of Virgin Suicides, a little bit.
05:28 I love a book that is kind of just a comment on sort of the meandering existence of being
05:38 a human, that nothing spectacular happens.
05:41 I really love books about just simple things and the human existence.
05:47 And With Atonement is a good example that something small can happen and it can change
05:53 the trajectory of someone's life.
05:55 And ultimately that's what a lot of these books are about.
06:00 The Trauma Cleaner is probably my favorite book that I've read recently.
06:05 And I love it because it's a portrait of someone that is doing something extraordinary, but
06:15 it's still within a very simple world.
06:19 And what she is doing, it's a spectacular thing, but small.
06:24 So it's about a trans woman who grew up in a very oppressive time in Australia.
06:31 And it weaves in the stories of the houses that she cleans.
06:36 So she cleans houses after crime scenes, or she cleans houses for people that are hoarders.
06:43 So the story is both about this woman's life in Australia and growing up as a trans woman
06:51 and weaves in these stories of the people whose houses she cleans.
06:57 And to me, that book sort of sums up what I look for in a book, which is, you know,
07:02 relatability and the simpleness and the spectacularness, if that's a word, of the human existence.
07:11 So Three Women by Lisa Taddeo is a book that I read during COVID.
07:15 And yes, it's a book about women and desire and not necessarily fitting in the box of
07:24 sexuality.
07:25 I really love reading stories by women that really understand the complexity and the messiness
07:31 of women.
07:34 I think that literature has definitely influenced my acting career.
07:38 I have always said that I never, as a young child, set out to be an actress.
07:43 I really just love storytelling, which is why atonement was such a pivotal part of my,
07:49 you know, realization that this is what I wanted to do.
07:52 And I still, you know, I love the aspect of storytelling more than sometimes the acting
07:58 itself.
07:59 I love the preparation.
08:00 I love being able to delve into books and escape.
08:06 I also had the privilege of being in a book that is being developed for Netflix called
08:12 Boy Swallows Universe.
08:13 It was the first time that I've ever played a character that was from a book.
08:18 And I'd already read the book a few years before I got the part.
08:22 And it was just such a beautiful resource to have this wonderful book that I could read
08:29 over and over and over again, as well as the script.
08:32 And there was just so many pieces in it that I was able to put into the show that weren't
08:36 necessarily in the script.
08:40 So Boy Swallows Universe is by an Australian author called Trent Dalton.
08:44 He decided to write this book about his childhood that was quite rough, faced a lot of adversity
08:49 as a child.
08:50 And he wanted to write a book that painted all of those hardships in a way that they
08:58 were part of the journey, that they were part of what led to the next moment in his life.
09:03 But it all leads to the moment in your life where you look back and you think, it all
09:09 happened for a reason.
09:11 You know, I think it's a universal story about overcoming adversity and love and family,
09:21 being able to conquer some of the pain that we all inevitably go through in life.
09:29 It's just a wonderful book.
09:31 I do write.
09:32 I used to write a lot more as a kid, especially in high school.
09:37 But in saying that, one of the parts about acting that I love the most is the preparation
09:43 for a character.
09:45 I will usually answer questions about the character that I may have.
09:49 And that usually in turn kind of turns into a version of a short story.
09:54 So for example, in Boy Swallows Universe, there was a lot in this book that I was able
10:00 to take to be able to build and shape this character.
10:04 But there are also gaps in the timeline that I'm able to then go in and write my own story
10:11 about what happened to her in those four years that maybe aren't necessarily detailed in
10:15 the book.
10:16 So usually for characters, I sit and just sort of let my imagination run wild and think
10:23 of what their favorite food is, what kind of music that character listens to, and write
10:30 it out as if it's sort of a short story.
10:31 [silence]