When she was six, Geraldine Viswanathan auditioned for a spot at a performing arts school in her hometown of Newcastle, Australia. The task? Pretend to walk a dog. “I rocked it,” she says, smiling at the memory. “They saw the dog. They felt the dog.”
Less than two decades later, the actress faced an entirely different challenge: losing her virginity on prom night. In 2018’s Blockers, she stole the show as John Cena’s sporty, sex-positive daughter, exuding a cool confidence well beyond her years. Her career took off from there—she exposed Hugh Jackman’s fraud in the HBO film Bad Education, tempted fate alongside Daniel Radcliffe and Steve Buscemi on TBS’s Miracle Workers, and unleashed cross-country chaos with her lesbian bestie (played by Margaret Qualley) in last year’s crime-comedy from Ethan Coen, Drive-Away Dolls.
Most recently, in Prime Video’s rom-com You’re Cordially Invited, she played Will Ferrell’s daughter, a pairing that sparked some palpable comedic chemistry. “He made me laugh so hard,” she says. “I’ve had some really great dads.”
Viswanathan thrives on pushing herself into uncharted territory with each new role. She’s not just showing up and delivering a deadpan punch line—each performance feels like an invitation to watch someone redefine what we think they’re capable of.
Her chameleon talents will be on display soon in ‘Oh, Hi!’, a rom-com-gone-wrong directed by Sophie Brooks and co-written with Molly Gordon, where she’ll play Gordon’s friend and confidant, as well as the highly anticipated Marvel superhero blockbuster Thunderbolts*—recently rebranded as *The New Avengers in a unique marketing move—where she’ll take on the role of Mel, the assistant to Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s domineering CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. She thinks the role was meant to be: “When I was 18, I came to L.A. with my family, and my mom saw a psychic who said I’d be in a superhero movie,” she says. “I need to get that psychic’s number!”
Filming the movie was unlike anything she had ever encountered before: “There was no green screen, and it was the craziest set that I’ve ever been on, just the sheer number of extras.” And contrary to what some fans might expect from a big-budget franchise, there was no special initiation: “The most Marvel-y thing I had to do was meet with the security team and get a little badge.”
With precious few women of color taking on leading roles in Hollywood, the space can be frustratingly limited. Viswanathan—born to an Indian father, who’s a nuclear medicine specialist, and a Swiss artist mother—is keenly aware of this, having felt her ethnicity was a barrier to getting cast in Australia. “It was an experience that has defined who I am, especially growing up as the only person of color in a small, white town,” she says. “Feeling undervalued inspired me to act because I love to do it—not because anybody is asking me to do it. When you approach life that way, it becomes more magnetic.”
She’s also managed to reach It girl status, recently attending her third Paris Fashion Week, where she sat front row beside fellow Aussie Rose Byrne at the Zimmermann show. “She’s had some of my favorite roles,” Viswanathan gushes. “[Byrne] is so brilliant, cool, kind, and funny—she was killing me.”
When it comes to her own viewing habits, Viswanathan gravitates toward ensemble comedies like The Hangover. As for Harry Potter, which stars her Miracle Workers castmate Radcliffe, she admits, “I was, like, seven when I went to see the first movie and had to leave the theater because I was scared....There was a scene where a troll put a wand up his nose. It was too much for me.”
So does that rule out the fantasy genre in the future? If Viswanathan has taught us anything, it’s that the unexpected is her baseline—but she’s always grounded in an unapologetic authenticity. “I could see myself going there…it’s not my first instinct, because I always try to do things I’d actually want to watch,” she says, before adding wryly: “And I’m still a little bitch.”
Hair by Sami Knight for Rehab; makeup by Alexandra French at Forward Artists; manicure by Jolene Brodeur at The Wall Group; produced by Anthony Federici at Petty Cash Production; photographed at Malibu Creek Ranch.
A version of this story appears in the Summer 2025 issue of ELLE.
