Viswanathan logs on to our Zoom call from her hotel room in London, where she’s attending the global premiere of Thunderbolts*. She’s in a bathrobe, drinking tea, feeling like the luckiest girl in the world. “I’ve never been on a press run of this scale before. It’s insane. I could cry.” Tears of joy, she specifies.
Instagram content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
If the 29-year-old’s excitement seems to border on hysteria, it’s only because this is a lifelong dream that almost didn’t come true. After finishing high school in Newcastle, Viswanathan decided to forgo university and move across the world to Los Angeles. She vividly remembers watching her father leave on a bus after settling her in, too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to dwell on the fact that life, as she knew it, was about to change. “I had to take the bus all over town for dodgy auditions or open mics at random comedy clubs. It’s crazy now that I think about it.” She gave herself five years to make it, but was back home much sooner after she wasn’t able to get the visa she needed to stay. It was in 2016, when she was juggling university and stand-up comedy in Sydney, that the call from Hollywood came.
Blockers, in which she played the precocious daughter of professional wrestler John Cena hell bent on stopping her from losing her virginity on prom night, was her big breakout. She earned a string of credits in the years that followed, the highlights of which include a key supporting role in the 2019 indie Bad Education as the plucky student reporter who brings down Hugh Jackman’s embezzling school principal, a romantic interest opposite Margaret Qualley in Drive-Away Dolls (2024), four seasons of the cult comedy Miracle Workers (2019-2023) opposite Daniel Radcliffe and, most notably, a leading role in the 2020 Netflix film The Broken Hearts Gallery. Not only was playing the heroine in a New York-based romcom pure wish-fulfilment for her, but shooting with Dacre Montgomery (Stranger Things) was also one of the most enjoyable experiences of her life.
