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Jessica Mauboy might be one of Australia’s most successful recording artists, with six top-10 albums and two ARIA awards, but when she stepped onto the set of family movie Windcatcher she was nervous.
Not since 2012’s musical hit The Sapphires had she made a feature film. And she had never played a character that didn’t sing. Even her leading role on Seven’s drama series The Secret Daughter was a country crooner. So, as Windcatcher’s Aunty Cressida, an SES volunteer and primary carer of a dreamy 10-year-old runner called Percy Boy, Mauboy looked to the strong women in her life.
Jessica Mauboy, Kelton Pell and Lennox Monaghan in the family movie Windcatcher.
“Aunty Cressida is a woman who feels very close to home,” says Mauboy, who is about to embark on her first national tour in eight years. “I felt like I was playing a lot of my aunties, or my older siblings, or my mother. She’s a very staunch type of woman who’s able to take responsibility.”
She credits screenwriter Boyd Quakawoot, director Tanith Glynn-Maloney and the adult cast (including Kelton Pell, Lisa Maza and Pia Miranda) with putting her at ease. But it was the child actors, led by Lennox Monaghan, a didgeridoo player and dancer, who helped shake off the butterflies.
“Lennox is a triple threat, he can do no wrong,” says Mauboy. “He’s brilliant at acting, and also at just being a normal kid. It made me a better person, being in his presence. All the kids, [like] Max Turner and Coco Greenstone, it was wonderful to be alongside these inspiring kids who have no filter. There was never a dull moment when the kids were not showing me a TikTok dance. They would whip out the phone and say, ‘Hey, Aunty Jess, can you do this move?’ and I’d have a little giggle to myself.”
There is not a mobile phone to be seen in the film, which is set in 1990s regional Victoria. Growing up in Darwin in that decade, Mauboy could relate.
Jessica Mauboy stars as Aunty Cressida in the film Windcatcher.
“We were always out at the park, or watching the monsoon rolling in, and all the gutters would fill up with water, and we’d make homemade surfboards and surf down the gutters of the street,” she says. “It broadened our imagination. We had to make games up and we had the freedom of just creating, without technology.”
The film tackles some heavy themes, such as dementia, loss, poverty, and bullying.