A Savage Christmas is the primary characteristic from director Madeleine Dyer (who co-directed an episode of her sister Harriet’s collection Colin from Accounts final yr), and stars comedy mainstays Darren Gilshenan (A Moody Christmas), Helen Thomson (Colin from Accounts), Gary Candy (Home Husbands) and David Roberts (Please Like Me).
The extra skilled actors have been fast to supply steerage and help to Raveneau. “They have been a little bit of a security web,” she says. “They might give unsolicited reassurance that I’m doing a great job, and that helped me to push away any self-doubt.”
Raveneau says she recognized with Davina’s strained however finally loving relationship together with her household and was given house to discover her personal emotions and relationships whereas making the movie.
“Like Davina, I sadly have handled a number of dead-naming and misgendering from my household. I do know precisely how that feels. I’ve needed to reduce individuals off like Davina has, and I’ve had to determine if I need to rebuild a relationship with somebody who I’ve reduce off.
“I don’t discuss to my father, so to have moments with David Roberts’ character, as Davina and James, it was simply so candy. I may really feel my coronary heart being warmed in moments like that.”
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Being a transgender lady starring in a Christmas film as a transgender character is one thing Raveneau couldn’t have foreseen when she was rising up in regional Queensland watching Dwelling and Away and secretly aspiring to be an actor.
“Being a really flamboyant and female one that recognized as male on the time, dwelling in rural, regional locations, it was not in all probability finest to run round telling everybody that I needed to do drama or performing,” she explains. “That in all probability wasn’t the most secure, by way of bullying.”
She didn’t even know what “transgender” meant till she was 20 years previous. She says she wasn’t uncovered to the total breadth of queer communities and identities. When Caitlyn Jenner got here out in 2016, Raveneau recognised one thing about herself. “I did my analysis and was like, ‘Holy smoke, this appears like me!’” she says.
That very same yr, Raveneau determined she was able to lastly give performing a attempt: she started taking youth drama lessons on the Empire Theatre in Toowoomba and even booked an audition to get into an performing diploma at Queensland College of Know-how, however obtained scared and didn’t go.
Raveneau and Max Jahufer in A Savage Christmas.Credit score: Bonsai
“That yr was a turning level the place it went from me being like, ‘Oh, that is the life I’ve’ to ‘That is what it may very well be’. And understanding that I’m in command of that,” she says.
Three years later, she did make it to the QUT auditions, and obtained in. Since then, she’s carried out in college productions and in a expertise growth program at La Boite Theatre in Brisbane. A Savage Christmas then is a big second for an actor who solely began performing in 2019: “I couldn’t have requested for a greater undertaking to be part of as my debut,” she says.
A Savage Christmas is in cinemas now.