2 minute read
BACKSTAGE 5 WITH
Lucy Fry
By Allie Volpe
Australian actor Lucy Fry has played her fair share of supernatural characters: an elf in the Netflix film “Bright,” a mermaid on the Australian TV show “Mako Mermaids,” and now a vampire in another Netflix feature, “Night Teeth.” (She does also take on human roles, including mob boss daughter Stella on Epix’s “Godfather of Harlem.”) Here, she discusses the importance of grounding every character in reality and the joys of working on Netflix productions.
What advice would you give your younger self? When I was a little younger, it was about [asking]: Where am I going to get? how am I going to get there? It always seemed so hard and so far. Being in a place now where I’m working consistently, I wish I could just tell her, “It’s OK. Enjoy it. Enjoy the struggle, enjoy the breakthroughs, and don’t think about it too much. Just be in your life now.”
What is your worst audition horror story? I had just done a film that was quite intense, and a bit of intense life stuff [was] happening at the same time. You know [how] when big stuff has happened, you can feel a little shocked and out of your body? I was in the audition and the scene was: She’s finding out she has cancer, and she’s crying about dying. In the scene, I was in so much shock that I didn’t get any of the beats, and there was zero emotion. And then they said cut, and I started crying after. I was so embarrassed.
What’s the wildest thing you ever did to get a role? I do remember for “Bright,” I had always wanted to play an elf, and that was the first time I got to audition for an elf. It was a dream of mine when I saw “Lord of the Rings” as a kid. I auditioned four or five times and wrote to [director] David Ayer. And every time I went into the audition room, I just left everything on the floor. Tell us about your first day on a professional set. My first day on a professional set was a job called “Lightning Point” in Australia. I was playing a surf-crazed alien with two girls who are two of my closest friends now. I remember we were filming in these cornfields in Queensland and [feeling] the excitement of doing it professionally for the first time, doing something that I had trained for years in, and being paid to do what I love. I felt so much pressure to do a good job. It was just a nothing scene—walking into a cornfield on a kids’ show—but I remember feeling so thrilled.
What performance should every actor see and why? I went to Lincoln Center years ago because you can watch archives of plays there. I watched “Jerusalem” with Mark Rylance. His performance in that was really deep and inspiring; and the ending of it, where he plays this drum, it gets into your bones, even watching it on a recording in a library. That kind of depth that can translate through a screen—I can’t imagine how it would’ve felt in the audience. I feel like he channels an energy that’s greater than himself.
