‘Drive-Away Dolls’: Desi Actress Geraldine Viswanathan Embarks On a Road Trip to Hollywood Stardom

Geraldine Indira Viswanathan has always been interested in comedy. The Australian native started out doing standup, and performing with the all-female comedy troupe, Freudian Nip, in Sydney, and followed it up with remarkable performances in diverse films. 

Now the 28-year-old daughter of an Indian father and a Swiss mother will be seen in the bawdy road trip film “Drive-Away Dolls,” releasing on Feb. 23. Directed by Oscar winner Ethan Coen, it follows Jamie (Margaret Qualley), “an uninhibited free spirit bemoaning yet another breakup with a girlfriend,” and her “demure friend” Marian (Viswanathan), “who desperately needs to loosen up,” according to the film’s synopsis. “In search of a fresh start, the two young lesbian women embark on an impromptu road trip to Tallahassee, but things quickly go awry when they cross paths with a group of inept criminals along the way,” the synopsis adds. Cast includes Hollywood heavyweights Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal, Beanie Feldstein, and Colman Domingo.

‘Thrilling and Intimidating’

Viswanathan was excited to get the script for “Drive-Away Dolls” from Coen and Tricia Cooke. Talking to Moviefone, she described it as “an original and fresh script with so many cool elements and so many surprising turns.” She said she “really fell in love with the character.” At first she thought she was “really different from Marian,” but she also “kind of understood her and related to her and the way that I get introverted or sensitive and shy.” She felt “excited to play into those parts of myself a little bit more.” 

The experience of getting to work with Coen “was both thrilling and intimidating,” she said to IndieWire. He’s “a wonderful person” she said, adding that “it was such a joy to get to work with him and soak up that experience as much as I possibly could.” It was “a real treat” for her to “get to honor” the words written by Coen and Cooke, which are “very specific tonally,” she said. “It was a real fun challenge and, at the same time, also one of the easiest, stress-less jobs. They know what they’re doing and it’s really amazing to be on their set.”

In a conversation with Them magazine, she said it is “really fun” to be able to participate in a film that has “a specific tone and style that is just in the language of their universe of film.” Noting that Coen and Cooke “sprinkle in so many little nuggets of truth and history for your character,” she said its “amazing that these characters are so dimensional, and there’s so many of them as well.” She feels like “everyone” in the ensemble cast “feels like a real person, but also a Coen character at the same time.”

The Taylor Swift Connect

Apart from the experiences filming, Viswanathan had some memorable events off-set as well. Her co-star, Margaret Qualley is married to singer and musician Jack Antonoff, who’s good friends with Taylor Swift. 

In a recent appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” she recalled her chance meeting with the “Anti-Hero” singer. She was “hanging out” with Qualley and Antonoff in the studio and Swift  was on her way out. That’s when Antonoff introduced them. “Taylor, have you met Geraldine? She’s in the movie with Margaret,” she recalls Antonoff telling Swift. 

During their conversation, she complimented the Taylor Swift’s bag. She told Meyers that she was anxious and didn’t know how to respond when Swift told her the trailer for “Drive Away Dolls” looked “so good.” And that’s when Swift asked her if she wanted the bag. ‘”And then she started taking her stuff out of her bag into her pockets,” she told Meyers. Swift told her that she got there bag for free, so she could take it. “So, I took her bag,” Viswanathan told Meyers while the audience laughed.

A Career Full of Roles

Viswanathan came into the limelight as the surprise breakout star of the 2018 box office hit, “Blockers,” a raunchy comedy about three American teenage girls determined to lose their virginity on prom night and their equally determined parents’ ploys to stop them. She made headlines for her “sweet connection” with her on-screen dad, played by John Cena. The film,  which premiered at South by Southwest in 2018, received rave reviews. The Last Magazine, in an in-depth profile and interview of Viswanathan said that many critics singled out her performance in “Blockers,” along with its “feminist undertones.” 

The same year, she was listed among The Hollywood Reporter’s “Next Gen Talent 2018,” a list of 20 rising stars who are shaking up the industry.”

Another role that fetched her instant recognition and stardom was her lead role in “Hala.” The film, written and directed by Minhal Baig, follows a 16-year-old Muslim girl living in Chicago under the strict, religious rules of her parents. The film was screened in the U.S. Dramatic Competition section at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. TV Guide said Viswanathan’s role in “Hala” is “a big swing” for her, “not just because it’s her first dramatic part, but also because Hala, who skateboards and masturbates and recites Anne Carson poems in class, is a (not The) portrait of a modern Muslim teenager, a community to which Viswanathan is not necessarily connected.” 

After receiving rave reviews for her performances in both the films, she had mentioned that being one of a handful of Indian diaspora actresses who Western audiences recognize isn’t enough. She told TV Over Mind that she wants a career full of roles in which the audience and the industry can “see you as a complete person, or character.”

She had told InStyle magazine that she feels “very fortunate to be entering the industry at this time where I am able to play a leading role or a role where I don’t feel completely defined by my ethnicity.” She noted that “the playing field has opened up and kind of evened out in a way that it hasn’t been before.” She said that since she’s started working in the industry, she has “felt the progress and I think it’s moving in a good direction, but I think there’s still a ways to go. I just hope we keep telling different and new stories and keep going with it.” 

She was most recently seen in the 2023 film “The Beanie Bubble,” about the meteoric rise in popularity of the Beanie Babies and tells the story behind the toy obsession that took off in the 1990s. It follows toy manufacturer turned billionaire Ty Warner, and centers around the women who were integral to his success. Viswanathan plays Maya, who was studying to be a doctor, but an internship at Ty Inc. leads to a variety of opportunities for her creative ideas to migrate into reality. 

Passion for Acting

The young actress has often spoken about growing up in a country where neither of her parents belonged to. Her father, Suresh Viswanathan, is of South Indian descent and her mother, Anja Raith, is from Switzerland. She has also talked about not completing her education, and leaving Australia to come to the U.S. at the age of 15 to pursue acting. She told The Wrap that it was during a family vacation to Los Angeles, when a manager she met through family friends told her she had potential. “I was like, ‘Whoa, that’s all I needed to hear,’” she recalled, according to The Wrap, “And then I was set on making this my career.”

Since her mother was also interested in acting, Viswanathan found herself being drawn to the craft. Viswanathan began acting while in kindergarten, and at age 5, she was cast in a Kodak commercial.  When she was 6, her mother’s friend suggested that Viswanathan’s bubbly personality could come in handy in a performing arts school. That’s when Viswanathan went to Hunter School of the Performing Arts and told a story about the zoo for her audition and was accepted immediately.

After high school, she took a gap year and moved to Los Angeles for six months to start auditioning. She returned to Australia for a brief stint at university before realizing it wasn’t the right choice for her. “I went to school for international studies and media. I thought maybe I would want to be a diplomat,” she told The Wrap. However, it was due to her “very supportive parents,” that she dropped out of university to pursue her passion for acting. 

She told TV Over Mind that her early experiences in comedy “helped affirm” her decision to venture into the genre. “It felt so good to be actually doing what I wanted to do, performing,” she said. “With standup, you don’t have to wait for someone to ask you to do it. I was frustrated with auditioning and not getting anything, so it was more just for the soul. It felt good to be proactive. I think it did give me confidence because standup is terrifying. It definitely makes everything seem a little less scary.”