The studious Australian actor steps into Lindsay Lohan’s sneakers as Cady Heron within the new film musical
Rice, 23, has been uncovered to the enterprise facet of Hollywood for almost a decade, showing in three Spider-Man movies, reserving a slew of status tv gigs and, now, enjoying Cady Heron within the “Imply Women” film musical that hits theaters Friday. However she nonetheless struggles to reconcile the Southern California she romanticized as a baby half a world away, whereas glued to “Singin’ within the Rain,” “Insurgent With out a Trigger” and “All About Eve,” with the sprawling metropolis she now experiences as a working grownup.
“I don’t actually perceive the way it capabilities as a metropolis as a result of it appears so scattered,” Rice says with a honest mix of curiosity and consternation. “I’m simply making an attempt to determine what L.A. means to me. Each time I am going, I’m nonetheless confused.”
Fairly than chalk up these emotions to tradition conflict, Rice stays fixated on uncovering the town’s soul. The Southern California-themed collage on her wall is one piece of that undertaking. She additionally took it upon herself to lately learn Ross Macdonald’s L.A.-set whodunit “The Zebra-Striped Hearse” and Joan Didion’s “The White Album,” a set of essays that encapsulate 1960s California.
It’s a cerebral mind-set befitting a cerebral actor. Rice was 11 when she made her function movie debut within the Australian apocalyptic thriller “These Remaining Hours” and — in a touch of overachievement she relays with sheepish laughter — memorized not solely her traces however the different actors’ dialogue, too. To at the present time, she nonetheless annotates her scripts the identical approach she would a guide. This previous fall, she revealed her first novel: “Caught Up & Silly,” a modern-day retelling of “Delight and Prejudice” she co-wrote along with her mom. Rice additionally has used her guide membership podcast, “The Group Library,” to ruminate on a whole lot of texts since launching the present in 2019.
“She’s considerate, she’s very thorough, and she or he’s studious,” says Reneé Rapp, who performs the queen bee bully Regina George in “Imply Women.” “She’s taking issues significantly, and I believe it’s actually mirrored in her work.”
That mental outlook made Rice a pure match for “Imply Women” protagonist Cady, the calculus whiz portrayed by Lindsay Lohan within the Tina Fey-penned 2004 film. This remake — tailored from the 2018 Broadway musical, which featured a guide by Fey and rating from Jeff Richmond and Nell Benjamin — additionally provides “Imply Women” a social-media-fueled refresh that speaks to Rice’s era. And the comedy’s fish-out-of-water premise, as Cady learns about highschool cliques and quirks after transferring from Kenya to Illinois, posed a becoming take a look at for an Aussie actor who, as a youngster, spent many months away from residence finding out her craft on American film units.
“I really like Cady as a result of I related so much along with her story of strolling into an American highschool setting and never understanding or figuring out something about the way it labored,” Rice says. “I used to be in a film known as ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ — had no thought what homecoming was. So it’s a type of experiences that I actually perceive.”
Born in Sydney, largely raised in Perth and named after the New South Wales village of Angourie (pronounced “Anne-Gary”), Rice grew up with a theater director father and playwright mom who dutifully immersed each of their daughters within the arts. Music was notably current: Rice’s father was in a band, and her mom loved sitting on the piano, enjoying a variety from her musical theater songbook — assume “Les Misérables,” “Little Store of Horrors” and “West Facet Story” — and inspiring the household to sing alongside. After faculty, Rice would observe her father to the rehearsal corridor and, every so often, discover a quiet spot to observe “Imply Women” on her moveable DVD participant.
Rice bought her begin as a baby actor in Australia, engaged on commercials and low-budget movies, then made her Hollywood breakthrough at age 13 because the whip-smart daughter of Ryan Gosling’s hapless personal eye within the 2016 action-comedy “The Good Guys.” She went on to play Peter Parker’s tightly wound classmate Betty Brant in “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and reprised the function within the blockbuster sequels “Far From Dwelling” and “No Manner Dwelling” — a spoiler-averse train in preserving on-set secrets and techniques that proved exhilarating, if isolating.
“It’s very thrilling to see it on the opposite facet,” Rice says. “However there’s one thing fairly lonely about seeing one thing all over the place that you just have been part of and figuring out that you could’t share.”
Between Marvel Cinematic Universe voyages, Rice appeared in Sofia Coppola’s Southern Gothic drama “The Beguiled,” starred in a “Black Mirror” episode and honed a Delco accent for the homicide thriller sequence “Mare of Easttown,” during which she portrayed the grief-stricken daughter of Kate Winslet’s titular detective. Though Rice confirmed off her vocal chops as a storage band singer in 2021’s “Mare” and a theater-loving teen within the 2023 restricted sequence “The Final Factor He Advised Me,” she nonetheless was stunned when Fey slipped into her inbox to debate the lead function within the film musical.
In an electronic mail to The Washington Publish, Fey says she gravitated to Rice for the function of Cady — a goody-two-shoes who turns two-faced amid a plot to topple her highschool’s social hierarchy — due to the “deep intelligence” she shares with the character. “Cady must be very good,” explains Fey, who additionally wrote the brand new movie and reprises her function as Cady’s calculus trainer. “Angourie actually delivers that.” Co-directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., in the meantime, relished Rice’s flip as a duplicitous straight-A scholar within the 2022 dramedy “Honor Society.” “After we noticed that,” Jayne says, “we actually have been in a position to visualize her within the function as Cady.”
Rice charms in dialog, with agreeable earnestness and an uncanny knack for cracking herself up. Whereas her on-screen personae faucet into that inherent innocence, she additionally excels at inhabiting characters with an over-it edge and deep-seated insecurities — qualities that made her all of the extra ready to ace her naive-to-nefarious “Imply Women” examination.
But Rice hesitated to enroll at North Shore Excessive. First, she had little formal coaching as a musician (even when she does play the violin and ukulele, and indulges in “Simply Dance” on Xbox). The remainder of the “Imply Women” forged, then again, is populated with vocal powerhouses resembling “Moana’s” Auli‘i Cravalho, Tony nominee Jaquel Spivey and Rapp, the budding pop star who additionally performed Regina on Broadway. Getting into Lohan’s sneakers to retell a cult-classic story got here with its personal imposing highlight.
“I knew so many individuals have been going to be watching, and I used to be actually nervous about that,” Rice says. “However I used to be engaged on the songs, and each time I sang a specific half in a music, I might get chills. I used to be like, ‘I need to chase that feeling. I need to preserve doing that.’”
“Everyone might be going to speak about how candy she is,” Perez provides, “however I believe we must also discuss how courageous she was to take this function. The pink excessive heels you’ve bought to face on? Holy s—. All the pieces she did, she did it with such humility.”
Although Rice had the possibility to see the stage present in Los Angeles final winter, days earlier than she flew to New Jersey for filming, she determined towards it. “It will be an excessive amount of,” Rice remembers pondering. “I might see it and I might go, ‘Oh my God, what am I doing? I can’t do that. Have a look at them. Have a look at me.’”
However as Rapp notes, Rice “has a sure innocence that’s her in actual life simply as a lot as it’s on-screen.” So channeling Cady’s healthful nature got here actually for an actor who spent her weekends baking treats to share on set and knitted herself a pink wool sweater to put on on Wednesdays (copying the film’s characters). Finally, her naturalistic efficiency and serene singing middle Jayne and Perez’s trendy, candy-colored spin on the “Imply Women” mythos.
“Now we have all of this stuff that actually convey this movie right down to earth and make it really feel tactile and actual,” Jayne says, “in order that once we escape into these musical sequences, it looks like seeing the world of those characters in a break from actuality. I believe what Angourie dropped at this movie was that groundedness.”
As Rice turns the web page, she admits to often having an unreasonable obsession with eager to do all of it. Living proof: She recollects dashing to her mom in tears when, amid her burgeoning performing profession, she needed to drop math and French from her highschool course load. (“I beloved faculty,” Rice unsurprisingly acknowledges. “It was crucial to me.”)
So, to handle her calendar, Rice has adopted “select pleasure” as her mantra for 2024. Which means spending on a regular basis she will be able to in Melbourne — she nonetheless hasn’t cracked Los Angeles, in spite of everything — whereas devouring extra books, restocking the “Group Library” catalogue, taking a dance class or two, and finishing her second novel.
The place does performing slot in that calculus? To the ever-deliberate Rice, it’s a part of the equation — however not the one answer.
“I’ve this wholesome concern of, ‘I may not get one other job, ever,’” Rice says. “If I put all of my self-worth into my performing, I might be a really sad individual if that was all taken away. So I want to search out different issues in my life that give me worth. Perhaps that’s why I baked bread each single weekend [while shooting “Mean Girls”] — as a result of I used to be like, ‘I’ve management over this. I can be sure that this loaf is nice.’
“You don’t know when you’re going to get the following massive factor. You don’t know when you’re going to get an award. You don’t have management over it. However you do have management over selecting issues that you just like to do.”