Watching dog videos with Jennifer Aniston. Getting into a recording booth with Dolly Parton. Rapping the final verse of “8-Mile” with Luke Benward while waiting to film their makeout scene for the umpteenth time. These are just a few of the extraordinary experiences Australian actress Danielle MacDonald had while making Dumplin‘, the Netflix film based on Julie Murphy’s beloved young adult novel.
But MacDonald has a habit of being extraordinary herself. She landed the role of #1 Dolly Parton fan Willowdean Dixon without even auditioning; after her breakout role in Patti Cake$—a Sundance darling about a Jersey girl with rap dreams—she became a frontrunner for the role. A feelgood pageant tale, Dumplin‘, which was released on December 7, has become a streaming favorite because it doesn’t believe in ugly ducklings who need to turn into swans.
Willowdean—or, as MacDonald calls her, Will—is beautiful and smart and vivacious. But after her diner co-worker Bo (Benward) confesses he likes her, she becomes clouded with confusion—why would such a great guy be interested in, well, her? Tied up in this is her grief over the death of her beloved Aunt Lucy and the fact that Will and her former pageant winner mom, Rosie (Aniston), are continually at odds. So, in a move that surprises everyone, Will does what she never wanted to do: enters the pageant.
ELLE.com caught up with MacDonald over dinner to discuss the “powerful, beautiful” Will, why Dumplin‘s romance doesn’t conform to the typical teen rom-com tropes, and what she learned from Hollywood queens Aniston and Sandra Bullock.
How did you find out about Dumplin‘?
Danielle MacDonald: I had read the book. I fell so in love with it. Then I found out that the script was circulating. I was like, I don’t know that they’ll ever want me, I’m a little too old for the part or not totally right. I felt like I wanted it for my teenage self—I never got that kind of movie growing up. It was kind of cathartic. I picked up the book because I was like, Is that a cartoon version of me on a book? That really startled me—it made me stop and take a picture. I was like, I need to buy this book.
What do you think teenage you would have got out of it?
That I wasn’t alone in feeling the way I felt. You just feel insecure. I didn’t have any plus-size friends, really. So there wasn’t anyone I was talking to. But then I have tiny friends that felt that way, a lot of different people that felt that way—it’s something you’re scared to talk about as a teenager because you think, Maybe I’m weird for feeling insecure. But no one is. Everyone goes through that. I think my 16-year-old self would have loved that, but also that you can just be happy and confident in who you are, and you don’t need a change to make your life great.
How do you think about confidence now?
I think confidence comes with age and experience, honestly. It’s just so hard growing up, you go through things. Especially acting—I go to a different set every couple of months and you meet an entirely new group of people that are around you 24/7. It’s not an easy situation to go into when you’re a shy person. On day one, we have people mic-ing us. There is someone getting up in your thighs, your stomach, your boobs. That’s how it works, and you’ve gotta be comfortable with that really quickly. You’ve got wardrobe stylists touching you and measuring you. You’ve got a camera right in your face and people are just around you, watching you. You have to be vulnerable and break down, but you have to find confidence to do it.
I think if you love it enough, you’re like, Oh, they didn’t judge me, and you get more confidence. Every time you’re scared to do something and you do it, and it isn’t the end of the world…. I think it just grows in that way.
In both Patti Cake$ and Dumplin‘ you play characters that other people bully. How does it feel to play a character going through such challenging moments?
It would be really hard if I didn’t trust the other actor. I have to let myself go through that, and let that affect me. In order to do that, mentally, I need to feel protected before I go into it. It’s always important for me to talk to the other actors. To be fair, the other actors hate doing it. They’re like, “I hate this, it makes me so uncomfortable.” The guy calling me horrible names in Dumplin‘, well, I’m also about to knee him in the balls, and he had to trust me not to do that—which I kind of accidentally once did. But he was the nicest guy. I’m not a teenager any more. I know who I am, I’m confident in who I am, and I think that that helps you to be able to go to those places.
Dolly Parton said she got you and Jennifer Aniston in the studio with her to record “Push and Pull.” What was that like?
I can’t sing. So, you know, it took me a really long time to get a take that was half decent. You think I’m kidding, but the music producer ended up stopping the backing track, coming into the room with me, and we did it line by line, because that was the only way I was getting it. It wasn’t my first time in a recording booth, but it was my first time singing and I had to sing on set to Dolly Parton.
What was it like working with Jennifer? She was one of the first people you talked to about the role.
She and I met at her house, just to talk and see how we got along. We hung out, just as people. It wasn’t like an interview. It was more, “Let’s be casual and see how we get along and talk about our lives and our families, and what we see in the characters, and that’s it.”
I found out I got it a week later, and then we started to go into depth about Willowdean and Rosie’s connection. The characters have two incredibly different ways of thinking, and that is what separates them for so long. It was a lot of bonding as well. Getting to know each other, watching dog videos together.
Dog videos?
She introduced me to The Dodo. I would show her videos of my dog and my cat playing. We both love animals, things like that. It was getting comfortable around each other, which is such a big thing, ’cause when you’re comfortable around someone, you can be comfortable in the scene and then hopefully it will resemble reality.
When I first met her, I was like, This will be terrifying and intimidating. Then she just gave me a big, warm hug and I was like, “You’re a person. You’re just a person who happens to be very open and lovely and I’m so grateful because I’m terrified right now.”
What did you learn from working with her?
I worked with Jen and I worked with Sandra Bullock right after [in Bird Box]. They are arguably two of the biggest female superstars, and what I learned from both of them, was they are where they are for a reason. They’re both still at the top of their game, because they come to work prepared. They come to work with a good attitude, they’re giving, they’re very warm. They don’t just rest on the fact that they made it. They’re still passionate about their work. They get into it. They think about everything. I loved it.
I realized that you can also speak up—that you’re allowed to have an opinion and it doesn’t mean that you’re being difficult or disagreeing. It’s a project that you’re working on with people, so you’re allowed to have conversations. You can have questions.
Netflix
One big moment for Willowdean is when she’s kissing Bo, and suddenly freaks out. Tell me a little bit about that scene.
You have to get pretty vulnerable because you’re doing it in front of an entire crew of people. But at the same time, I’m glad I did it. I think girls need to see that she drove herself crazy about that, because that’s her insecurity. That’s something that she needs to learn to be okay with as well—he wouldn’t be touching her if he didn’t want to.
Obviously he’s a cute guy, but I don’t think he’s meant to represent the hottest guy that’s super popular. He’s not a star football player. It’s not about that at all. He’s just a guy at her work who actually has his own life and his own challenges. He just happened to find someone that is real and who he connects with, so why wouldn’t he like her? She sees him as this amazing guy, but he also sees her as this also powerful, beautiful girl. That’s the point. We shouldn’t be looking at this and being like, how could I get involved with this guy? I think that’s more the point of it—that there doesn’t have to be a barrier, and it also doesn’t matter what other people think, because they’re both into it. I think that’s pretty special.
Dumplin’ is streaming on Netflix now.
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