Meet the Australian Actor Playing a Wannabe Rapper in One of This Year's Best Films, Patti Cake$
The film looks set to be Danielle MacDonald's breakthrough role.
With all due respect to them, the cast of Patti Cake$ don't look your average movie stars. And they certainly don't look like your average rappers. There's Cathy Moriarty as a pack-a-day smoking grandma, Mamoudou Athie as an awkward would-be anarchist, Siddharth Dhananjay as a smooth-talking pharmacy worker and, finally, Sydney's own Danielle MacDonald as Patricia Dumbrowski, aka Patti Cake$ aka White Trish aka KILLA P, a downtrodden woman who dreams of becoming a hip hop sensation.
Of course, it's precisely because the film focuses on such an unconventional set of protagonists that this inspiring indie drama works so well. Written and directed by first-time filmmaker Geremy Jasper, who workshopped the film with his cast at the Sundance Directors Lab, Patti Cake$ is a classic underdog story — one that will have audiences cheering for its misfit heroes at every turn.
"I think we all want to be represented," says MacDonald, her Aussie accent sounding nothing like Patti's New Jersey drawl. "We see what normality is on screen, but that's not really true to real life. I don't know any one person who would say that they're normal, quite honestly. And I think now that we're seeing different stories and different people on screen, it's really cool."
After screening at the Sydney Film and Melbourne International Film festivals, Patti Cake$ is now in Australian cinemas. We spoke to MacDonald about how she went from Sydney's northern beaches to suddenly being the talk of LA. That, as well as the importance of on screen diversity, and what it's like being cast as a rapper when you have literally no idea how to rap.
A STAR ON THE RISE
Since Patti Cake$ premiered to a standing ovation at Sundance in January (prompting a bidding war between five major production companies — Fox Searchlight came out on top), critics have been singing MacDonald's praises — and rightfully so. But while it might seem like she appeared out of nowhere, the actor has been putting in the hard yards for quite some time.
"I grew up in Clareville [a small suburb in Sydney's northern beaches]," she tells us. "I did acting classes in Sydney at the Australian Institute for the Performing Arts. I did some tours to America, just to learn about the industry out there, and one of the casting directors I met introduced me to my managers. My managers got me an audition, I moved to the States, and I've been there for seven years, working my way up."
It was MacDonald's small part in indie thriller The East that caught the attention of Patti Cake$ director Jasper, who invited her — along with Dhananjay and Bridgett Everett, who play's Patti's alcoholic mother Barb — to help develop the project at the Sundance Labs in 2014.
"That was kind of my audition process," MacDonald says. "It was really cool, because Geremy hadn't finished the writing process yet, and I feel like his writing was influenced by myself and Sid and Bridget. We all workshopped with him and kind of figured out who these characters were, based off this time that we got."
HIP HOP 101
MacDonald displays phenomenal talent in the film, but even she admits her casting was a bit of a gamble. After all, it's one thing to teach an Aussie girl a Jersey accent, but it's another thing entirely to teach her how to rap. "I was terrified," she admits. "And I could tell [Jasper] was terrified as well."
"It was a lot of repetition," MacDonald says of her hip hop training. "I listened to a lot of different artists, a lot of different songs and styles of music. On top of that I worked with a rap coach for a month before we started shooting. He really helped me sit in the beat nicely, and just relax into it and not stress about it, which you do when it's not a natural skill. He helped me find that."
"I feel like so much of rapping is just confidence, and I had no confidence. Trying to get over that was very mentally challenging."
When asked if rapping is now a skill she'll possess forever, MacDonald laughs. "I only know how to rap as Patti — I learnt how to do these songs in her voice and in her head. I would never be able to do it as me. With my voice and my no swag, it would go very badly."
CONNECTING ON A HUMAN LEVEL
Of the all the elements in Patti Cake$, it's the diverse characters that make the film so gratifying. "[They] reflect society," MacDonald remarks. "These are people of all different shapes and sizes and ethnicities and religions and genders, that all come together and connect just on a human level.
Connecting "through their weirdness", MacDonald observes they're all outcasts in a way. "It's special. They find their own way of doing things," she says.
"My small town in the northern beaches is very different to this small town in Jersey," MacDonald continues. "It's cool to be see something different and be able to play something different, but something that I can still relate to. And that's the thing. I think when you see these films and you can go, 'Oh I can relate to that person, even though they're so different from me', I think it really helps bring people together."
