Michmutters

If you google Markella Kavenagh’s date of birth, many of the results will tell you she was born in 1990. Given her long list of acting credits, this seems to add up. But when the fresh-faced actor sits down for an interview with sunday life, it’s clear she’s much younger than the 32 years various websites claim her to be. “I’m only 21,” she says, laughing. “I was born in 2000.”

This correction makes the work Markella has squeezed into a few short years even more impressive – and shows why you shouldn’t trust everything you read online.

A self-confessed “theatre kid”, Markella was in high school at Melbourne’s Wesley College when she landed her first role, in Foxtel’s 2018 series Picnic at Hanging Rock. This was quickly followed that year by a gig on Stan’s break-stomper (“I rocked up to school with a shaved undercut,” she recalls), and the BBC’s acclaimed drama The cry. Next was the 2019 film The True History of the Kelly Gangdirected by Justin Kurzel, then another Stan series, The Gloamingin 2020.

Markella was still a teenager, barely out of school and working at fashion retailer Sportsgirl, when she got the call that would change her life.

“I remember being in the back room and I was locking up for the night,” she says. “Then I got this call from my agent about an audition. It was so surreal. I just thought, ‘Well, you know what, I will do the audition and that’s where it probably will end. And I’m so grateful to be able to do it and be in the room.’ But then I got a call a couple of weeks later…”

That call was to tell her she’d been cast as Elanor “Nori” Brandyfoot in the massively-hyped Amazon Prime Video series, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. It’s due to air next month and Markella is flat-out on the publicity trail in the lead-up to the launch, including today’s photo shoot and interview with sunday life.

Ever since Amazon bought the television rights to The Lord of the Rings for $US250 million in November 2017, die-hard fantasy fans have been picking over any tiny morsel of information they can get their hands on about the series. So it’s not surprising then that online forums went into a frenzy when Markella was the first casting to be announced, accompanied by an image of her character from her.

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As Nori, Markella has curly ash-brown hair and elfin ears. Her cheeks are round and rosy, and her expression is wide-eyed and innocent. It’s a far cry from the look she is adopting for today’s shoot and interview: a vampy goddess in a sequined dress, her lips cherry red and her long hair jet black. “It was initially for testing hair colors for a role,” she says of her raven mane de ella, “and I just really liked it.”

The series is based on the world created by JRR Tolkien in The Lord
of the Rings and its appendices. Set in the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ringsit follows a cast of both familiar and new characters as they confront the threat of evil returning to Middle-earth.

Those familiar with Tolkien’s work will be able to identify the character of Nori as one of the “new” variety. “She’s not specifically a canon character,” explains Markella. “But obviously, there are Harfoots in the Legendarium.”

Harfoot’s? Legendarium? those not familiar with Tolkien’s work might be scratching their heads. First up, the Legendarium is the body of writing that forms the background to The Lord of the Rings.

When it comes to explaining Harfoots, Markella does that best. “Harfoots are kind of the ancestors to Hobbits – they look quite similar,” she says. “They’ve both got the feet, they’ve both got the ears. But the main difference is their circumstance.

“So the Hobbits that we’ve seen in the books and later in the Fellowship, they have the Shire, they have their home. Whereas the Harfoots are very much still in the process of finding that sense of solid, secure place.”

What else can Markella tell fact-hungry fans about Nori specifically? “Nori is a very resolute, very inquisitive Harfoot. She kind of pushes the boundaries and she just really wants to subvert tradition and the expectations of what being a Harfoot looks like. She kind of leads with the idea that a fear of risk can be greater than the risk itself, so why not just go out there and take it and see what you can do.”

“”I never thought that I would find myself in fantasy,” she confesses. “I fell in love with film through minimalist, neorealist movies like Bicycle Thieves and Shoplifters.”

The way Markella speaks about her character and the Tolkien world, she comes across as a dedicated fantasy fan. But it turns out she hasn’t always been au fait with Harfoots and Hobbits.

“I never thought that I would find myself in fantasy,” she confesses. “I fell in love with film through minimalist, neorealist movies like Bicycle Thieves and Shoplifters. Those are the films that I love, because they’re focusing on the space between people in relationships, and in our real life. There are no fancy cuts and visuals.

“I knew and I appreciated that there was a place for fantasy through comfort and escapism. But it’s been so liberating to see that you can take those same themes, and that same truth and the same approach, and focus on truthful stories and portraying specific storylines and character arcs, just in a fantastical context.”

Given the feverish fascination with Tolkien’s work, is Markella ready for the fame that will become her reality when the series goes to air? “I’m just kind of staying open and seeing what happens,” she says, either completely unfazed or possibly unaware of what lies ahead.

A quick look at Markella’s Instagram profile shows she has a modest 12,000 followers. No doubt that she will explode with her growing celebrity. “I have so many thoughts about social media,” she says. “For me, social media is something that I’m continuously navigating. If I wake up in the morning and the first app I check is my Instagram and I see something that was posted five hours ago, I’m already starting my day in the past. When I personally can struggle with being completely present, I want to focus on investing as much as I can in my interests and in issues I care about.

“So it’s making sure that I’m investing in my real life and in the people who I love. Because otherwise, I feel like you can get stuck. You can get stuck scrolling, stuck comparing.

It can be a bit of a vicious cycle and I don’t want to contribute to an echo chamber. I really want to make sure I’m taking the time to reflect on how I would like my online presence to be.”

For many breakthrough actors, a move to Hollywood is the obvious next step. But Markella is not so sure. “There’s a quote by Aldous Huxley that says, ‘There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling.’

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“I think that’s easier said than done sometimes. But I really try to hold on to that. To not let any outside noise or expectations affect what I decide to do and the choices I make. I’ve thought about moving to LA but I just want to see what I gravitate towards naturally.”

With her level-headedness about fame and social media, her love of neorealist films and the ability to casually slip a Huxley quote into a conversation, Markella displays a degree of maturity far beyond her years. Perhaps the birth date on Google is correct after all?

“My friends are always making fun of me because sometimes I’ll listen to a song and I’ll just be like, ‘You know what, I feel nostalgic for the ’90s,’ “, she says, laughing. “But I wasn’t even born then!”

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres on Prime Video on September 2.

Styling by Penny McCarthy and Emerson Conrad; Hair by Daren Borthwick using Oribe; Make-up by Linda Jefferyes using Liqlips by Linda Jefferyes. Shot on location at the Bob Hawke Beer & Leisure Centre.

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