I sat down with Adelaide Clemens, the talented actress behind performances in Rectify, Under the Banner of Heaven, and the newly released Netflix film Kangaroo Island, to talk about her journey from a high school Shakespeare festival to Hollywood. What struck me most was Adelaide’s thoughtful exploration of the distance between her own life of…
I sat down with Adelaide Clemens, the talented actress behind performances in Rectify, Under the Banner of Heaven, and the newly released Netflix film Kangaroo Island, to talk about her journey from a high school Shakespeare festival to Hollywood. What struck me most was Adelaide’s thoughtful exploration of the distance between her own life of constant movement and the women she plays, characters rooted in one place, bound by faith, fear, and the weight of staying still.
McAuley Tucker: You got your first agent when you were young… you were still in high school, and you got your first agent through your drama teacher, but she was an actress as well. Was that Elizabeth Alexander who was the drama teacher?
Adelaide Clemens: Yeah. That’s it. I walked past the school that I went to, and I used to enter a Shakespeare festival here. I don’t know if it’s still going, but I used to enter it every year, and then one year some people saw it, and John Bell, who was the head of the Bell Shakespeare Company here in Australia, he said to her, “Hey, she should think about acting seriously.” And then she helped me record auditions on VHS tapes, and we sent them out to agents and managers here, and that’s how I got started at 14.
McAuley Tucker: And it must have been very helpful to start at a young age. I’ve been doing this since I was 15. I’ve always been very thankful to be doing this so young. And so you must be very happy and appreciative for those around you who were able to get this door open. And from my understanding, you spent your early years in Cognac and your father was there because he worked for Seagram. And now in this project, you’re playing a lady who has stayed in one place. And for you, you’ve gone all over the place. What does rootedness look like to you?
Adelaide Clemens: In Australia, people are very well traveled, but it’s a rite of passage… generally what we do is we travel for a year or two, we call it a gap year, and then we stay put and we stay home. But I have a lot of family in Queensland… it’s more extended family… who stay put. Do you know what I mean? And you empathize with people like that, and you can totally understand… the longer you delay doing something, the harder it gets. It’s like the double-edged sword of procrastination… the anxiety around it builds. And so [Freya’s] fear of leaving, her fear of trying new things, grew and grew and grew, and then suddenly she was trapped in a life, in a marriage, in a situation that she wasn’t happy with.
McAuley Tucker: With this project, you worked with Timothy David, and he said, when he was directing this film, that having you on set was like having a professional athlete on the team. That’s what he said in an old interview back in 2024. And you shot over a hundred scenes in over 24 days. When that pace is so fast, what’s the thing that you as an actor need to protect that cannot be rushed?
Adelaide Clemens: Making sure I’m tethered to the truth… But it’s hard to know… through doing it a lot, I’m quite strategic about when I ask for time. I know that we’ve gotta move at a rapid pace, and so if it’s a wide shot… as long as I’m very relaxed and I’m in my body and I’m concentrated, it’s going to be fine. Sorry I’m getting a bit nerdy, but the more repetition, the more you try to hone something, it becomes less interesting to me. So, the first few takes are always great. And then if I need to execute something, I’ll ask for the time, but it’s a concentration thing. It’s an internal meditation that’s going on. I don’t like distancing myself from the crew, but I am doing a little internal preparation often.
McAuley Tucker: I mapped something throughout your career that I don’t think anybody has put together. You’ve now played two or three religious characters. You’ve got Tawney in Rectify, Rebecca in Under the Banner of Heaven, and now Freya. And you keep playing women of deep faith. But I wanted to ask you, is there something about women of faith that you understand from the inside, or is it the opposite that they’re the farthest thing from you, and that’s what’s making them interesting?
Adelaide Clemens: They are the farthest thing from me. I’m spiritual. I grew up in a non-denominational school, so religion wasn’t enforced on us. I wanted to study theology because I thought it would be so interesting. But, when I did this character, Tawney in Rectify, I spent a lot of time in the south. I went to a lot of churches. I got to know a lot of the religious people there, and I started to understand how it gives you a, I’m using the word tether a lot, but when there’s not a lot to inspire you or educate you in these parts of the south where the industry has moved on and there’s strip mall wastelands, all you’ve got is the church, and that’s your community. But my grandfather, who I was very close to as he was battling cancer, he turned to religion, and that was occurring to me as I was saying tether, I witnessed how it can hold you together, and so maybe it’s that. I think there is something interesting there that I’m always digging at.
Consider watching Kangaroo Island today.