ROSE BYRNE

The Australian shapeshifter who can master all accents and vacillates between bawdy comedy, high-wire drama and heartfelt family feels returns to TV with jet-black humour as she explores the interior monologue of women in ’80s-set Physical. She tells Total Film about self-doubt, success and ensuring she has ‘a seat at the table’.

- JANE CROWTHER

Rose Byrne is running errands in Sydney. While she Zooms with Total Film she’s flitting in and out of stores, making purchases, juggling shopping bags. “I’m so sorry,” she apologizes down the line, “I’m multi-tasking!” It’s entirely appropriate that she should be spinning plates when we’re talking about her latest role in Apple TV+’s new show, Physical. Byrne plays a harried ’80s housewife, Sheila, whose school-run/grocery shop/husband appeasing days are interrupted by her own self-loathing internal dialogue and bouts of miserable binge-eating and bulimia. As a former free-spirited activist of the ’70s, Sheila has found herself trapped in a Sisyphean existence, playing enabler to her man-child husband (Rory Scovel) – literally once ‘a big guy on campus. Until one day she follows a lycra-clad woman to an aerobic class which changes her life and outlook…

Tapping into ’80s nostalgia and the truth bomb of women’s real/brutal interior lives that recalls the dark humor of Promising Young Woman,