Award winning Actor, Rachel Griffiths, takes the reins on the newest biopic to hit the silver screen, Ride Like a Girl, where she challenges our perception of what is your typical rite of passage. Alana Lowes sat down with Rachel to chat about bringing together at epic cast to direct this timely biopic.
Where were you the day Michelle won the Melbourne Cup?
I was at a barbecue with lots of friends and lots of kids. We’d done a sweep, we all came into the lounge room to watch the race and I’ll never forget it. I didn’t know at that time that women were jockeys and I didn’t know that Michelle was in that race until she hit around the 200 and then the race caller started talking about Prince of Penzance and Michelle Payne. I thought Oh, it’s a girl! All the women in the room started cheering for Michelle and then she crossed the line. The race caller said ‘Michelle Payne, we’ve just made history at Flemington’. Then she told the world to ‘get stuffed’ and I immediately started googling and discovered her incredible story…that her mother and sister had died, that she was the youngest of 10 kids and I thought, ‘this is a movie!’.
READ MORE CELEBRITY NEWS: Brad Pitt – Digging Deep into the Pitt
It was that quick you knew it should be made into a move?
It was so immediate, literally within five minutes I texted producer Richard Keddie and said: “Did you just watch that? We have to make this movie.”
There must have been a lot of people competing for Michelle’s story, how did you win the rights to her story?
I think the combination of producer Richard Keddie and myself was really the winning team, because he’s got a fabulous history of delivering biopics that make a person’s life particularly resonant and relevant. Richard had done Hawke, he’d done Curtin, and Oddball was also inspired by a famous local character. With me, I think it was my female passion, my vision for delivering a kind of feminist coming-of-age sports film. I love sports films and I think together, finally when we got the opportunity to pitch it, we were able to convince Michelle and her team that we would do the right thing by her, we would do the right thing by her family, and most importantly we would do the right thing by her story.
How did you finally convince Michelle you were the one to tell her story?
I did have to do a bit of stalking. I discovered Michelle was going to to be at Randwick Racecourse having photos taken with fans, so I flew up to Sydney, joined the line of fans waiting to talk to Michelle, and when it was my turn, I said “Hi, I’m Rachel Griffiths, I want to make your story, I think you’re incredible and I think your film would be the great Australian un-made sports film”. I told Michelle that I wanted to make a film that she would be proud of and comfortable to watch with her whole family. So I think all those factors combined, despite the risk of me being a first time director on such an ambitious project, meant that Michelle and her management picked us. Such a privilege.
It’s a huge project to take on as a first-time director, how challenging was it and what were those challenges?
I think the first challenge was working out how to shoot the racing sequences. We’d promised our investors we were going to get the best racing sequences of all time.
Richard and I worked very closely with Jamie Doolan, our second unit horse action director, and storyboard artists to really explore how we could get inside the race. Ultimately it’s a jockey’s story so it was just so important that we got in the ‘warzone’ of the race. And we also wanted the scenes to be beautiful Disney-esque –in many ways Michelle is a classic Disney princess with a dream that’s unconventional and a series of life challenges she needs to overcome – but when she goes into that race she’s in battle.
What kind of film did you want to make?
From the beginning we were clear that this was a great Australian story, so it needed to be a film for all audiences. We wanted to make a family film that would play as well for older audiences as it might if you brought your children or your grandchildren. I was always determined to make a PG film and you know our writers understood that, so there was a balance to get, to not shy away from sexism, the family tragedies, but to sit in a greater form that was comfortable delivering the tears, delivering the laughs and delivering that amazing kind of chill up the spine you get when Michelle comes around the bend and makes it up the final straight.
Tell me about that casting process and what you were looking for and how you came to attract such great people?
Obviously the most critical part of our puzzle was finding Michelle. I needed to find an actress who would embody all of Michelle’s heart and her kindness, and be a girl that we could relate to – that we would as the Americans say “root for” – but she had to also believably be a killer athlete. When it comes to the athlete in Michelle, she’s focussed, she’s driven, she’s so hard-working, she’s resilient, her work ethic is phenomenal, and her relationship with the horses is really special.
And how did you ultimately find your “Michelle”?
We searched the world, and we did look at English actresses, American actresses, but I was determined that she should be an Australian actress. I’d worked with Teresa on Hacksaw Ridge and I think she has this unbelievably open heart and a very rare thing where men love her, they love her as their daughter, as their girlfriend, they’d love her as their mother to their children and women love her too. And that’s a really, really rare thing, that women and men respond to her in really similar ways. I saw her in the film Berlin Syndrome and I realised how physically committed she is as an actor, I saw in her a determination as an actress to do whatever it takes to embody the role, and she did that with Michelle. All through pre-production she would be riding four to six hours a day so that when she’s in the race you believe it’s her.
The next piece of the puzzle was the actor to play Paddy Payne. I’ve worked with Sam a bunch of times and he also was my first choice.
What about Stevie Payne, he has become a star now in his own rite!
Yes, the big casting decision was getting Stevie Payne to play himself. The family let us know that Stevie would be quite interested in being a movie star and I thought “fantastic!” It spoke to our authenticity. Stevie came in for his audition and it was just beautiful. He’s extraordinary with the horses, which was very important, but he also has tremendous acting instincts. His fellow cast members did their best work when they were around him and that’s the hallmark of a great actor.
Add Comment