In the pantheon of working Australian actors in Hollywood, a club whose twin figureheads are, well, Margot Robbie and Chris Hemsworth, Cleopatra Coleman is the veritable “Oh, her!” of the group. More than a decade since she first went to Los Angeles seeking acting opportunities, the 36-year-old is increasingly everywhere.

In the past 12 months, you might’ve seen her in Zack Snyder’s high-profile blockbuster Rebel Moon, or the bonkers indie sleeper Infinity Pool alongside Alexander Skarsgard and Mia Goth. But her latest role on Clipped, the new FX limited series currently airing on Disney+, is a legitimate star turn.

“We just did the premiere a week ago, I’ve been doing a lot of interviews and photoshoots and then going to set and filming,” says Coleman from her temporary home in Brooklyn, New York, while enjoying a rare day off from shooting her next project Black Rabbit, a thriller with Jason Bateman and Jude Law.

“It’s been nice to just have a day with my dog and, like, hang out at home.” She gestures towards George, her yorkiepoo. “I’ve just given him a peanut butter distraction so hopefully he’ll leave us alone.”

Clipped – based on ESPN reporter Ramona Shelburne’s 30 for 30 podcast, The Sterling Tapes – is a riveting deep-dive into the 2013 scandal that left Donald Sterling, the 80-year-old billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, banned for life from the NBA after racist recordings were leaked to TMZ by his 30-year-old assistant and sort-of-mistress, V. Stiviano.

The scandal ignited a racial firestorm in the US, particularly around the relationship between largely white sports club owners and their primarily black employees, and pre-empted the #BlackLivesMatter reckoning to come. Following a series of bizarre public outings in an oversized visor and roller skates, and a memorable interview with Barbara Walters that brought the terms “silly rabbit” and “right-hand arm … man” into the cultural lexicon, it also made a viral star of Stiviano.

At the time, still in the nascent dawn of social media infamy, Stiviano was pilloried as a vapid clout-chaser, a ditsy opportunist who found inspiration in Kim Kardashian’s manoeuvre from sex tape to empire. But in Clipped, Coleman’s performance elicits such empathy around Stiviano’s actions that it complicates that legacy. “Even though it was only 10 years ago, this was a time when we weren’t really viewing women as nuanced as we do now,” Coleman says.

She plays Stiviano like a tightrope: both exploited and exploiter, a resourceful hustler eager to provide a stable life to her two adopted sons by any means necessary, but thwarted by her own impulsiveness, envy and naivety. Coleman pouts and rages and spends countless scenes squaring off against Jacki Weaver, who plays Sterling’s long-suffering wife, Shelley. “The queen herself! Jacki Weaver,” Coleman exclaims. “She’s an icon. So much fun and so cheeky. She’s really Aussie in that way. That was so comforting for me, and familiar.”

In preparing for the role, Coleman nixed any idea of trying to connect with the real Stiviano, who has oddly remained out of the public eye since the scandal. But does she feel she’s come to an understanding around her?

“Absolutely. I think I do. From the very beginning, I saw V as a survivor and an outlier, someone that was seeking safety and security, that human need we all require. Her modes of going about that may differ from mine, but as an actor it’s my job to get into the psychology of my character and empathise with them,” Coleman says.

She sees V as representative of the American dream, via Los Angeles’ warped specifics. “People used to come to California to mine for gold and that hasn’t changed,” says Coleman, “it’s just the gold has changed to fame and fortune and followers.”

A decade ago, when the Sterling story first broke, Coleman was a fresh transplant to Los Angeles where she still resides. “I remember how horrible it all was, and how strange and bizarre, and that it just dominated the news cycle. And then there was this person with a visor, and people tended to paint her in a certain way, but there was a lot more to her than previously reported.”

Raised in Byron Bay to a “hippie anarchist” and a “crazy goddess from Jamaica”, as she once described her parents, Coleman was brought up in a decidedly countercultural way, the antithesis of LA’s social striving. She spent nights camping at bush doofs with her dad, who did lighting at festivals where new-age philosophers such as Terrence McKenna spoke. “I was exposed to a lot of really interesting things, art and freedom. I didn’t really understand that wasn’t normal at the time. But now I look back and I’m like wow, I kind of grew up at Burning Man,” Coleman laughs.

She excelled at school, and its structured environment – “straight-A student, big nerd, loved school,” she says – and got heavily into dance and ballet, craving its focus and discipline, but gave it up once acting took over.

She first visited LA at 19, on an alien of extraordinary ability visa, which allowed her to take meetings and auditions. “I just wanted to see if it was a party I could be invited to,” says Coleman. She landed a gig in Step Up: Revolution, her first Hollywood film, and moved there permanently when she became a regular on Will Forte’s cult sitcom Last Man on Earth, playing Australian survivalist Erica Dundee, eventual love interest to Mary Steenburgen and mother of the post-apocalypse’s first baby. “Isn’t it so great?” Coleman beams of the series that marked her proper breakout. “I love fans of Last Man on Earth; they’re always really cool, sweet people because it was a really cool, sweet show.”

The initial desire behind her move to the US was twofold, she says. Firstly, she was tracing her family’s history: her parents had met at a reggae club in Inglewood in Los Angeles, where her dad had been working in the film industry in various production roles. When the Ozploitation boom hit in the late ’70s, he moved back to Australia with Coleman’s mum, but grandparents, aunts and cousins remained in LA. “That was always the story I was told, and I always wanted to go there to meet them,” says Coleman.

The move was also a career necessity. Echoing a frustratingly familiar story for actors of colour and diverse backgrounds in Australia, the local industry had no idea what to do with her. “Even though I’d been working in Australia since I was 14 years old, I felt this glass ceiling above me, especially back then,” Coleman says. “I was always the only non-white person at all my auditions, and I would have to go in and change people’s minds. They weren’t writing characters with my look in mind and so I had to be undeniable.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to work in Australia, I just couldn’t get work. So I was like, I’ve got to go to greener pastures. Coming to LA was exciting; where most people would feel competitive, I actually felt so stoked to be in a waiting room with a bunch of girls who looked like me. I’d never experienced that in my life.”

Growing up in Byron Bay had its charms, but Coleman was driven. At 14, she’d researched where most of the TV productions were happening in Australia and convinced her parents to move from Byron to Melbourne to support her acting dreams. “I have very supportive parents,” she laughs.

Within a year, she’d landed a national commercial and her first TV role in the ABC’s teen sci-fi series Silversun, quickly followed by a bit part in Blue Heelers and a recurring role in Neighbours. But the glass ceiling hovered.

“I mean, I did pretty well in Australia, I did work. But there were so many disappointing experiences,” says Coleman. “I don’t want to give specific examples because I don’t really want to call anyone out, but I had so many instances of racism, casual and more obtuse, and it was difficult to deal with as a young actress.”

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Years on, she categorises the experience as “boot camp”, “character building” for her initiation into the shark pool that is Hollywood. “It made me hone my skills and work twice as hard, three times as hard ... But it blows my mind sometimes that I’ve come from a small town in Australia and I’ve built a career here, built my own lane,” she says.

“I remember my agent in Australia was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know, there are so many girls that look like you in LA’, and I was like, ‘Yeah, but that’s still got to be better than here’. I just believed it until it happened.”

Amid the current glow of her work in Clipped, she’s eager to work in Australia again and her team is actively looking for appropriate projects. “If someone has a wonderful role for me, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” she says.

“It’s important that I show up because I am what Australia looks like. We look like you, me, all of these things. I did not grow up feeling represented at all in [Australian] media whatsoever, and I would love to be able to have the next little Cleopatra be able to see herself. I want that so much.”

Clipped is now streaming on Disney+.

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