Rowan Blanchard: ‘Hollywood is an extremely fucked industry’

At just 24, Rowan Blanchard already has an entire acting career behind her, having starred in Spy Kids: All the Time in the World at nine and Disney’s Girl Meets World as a young teen. “I started acting when I was five, so it’s the only thing I know and quite literally all I remember,” she says. “I have memories of watching I Love Lucy and wanting to be that funny, or watching Audrey Hepburn movies.”

But Blanchard is one of the rare child stars to have pulled off a genuine metamorphosis: today, she’s something of a Gen Z style icon, and many of the young people following the projects she’s part of may never even have seen Spy Kids. More than that, she’s navigating the industry on her own terms, staying politically engaged while pushing herself across very different kinds of roles. In her latest, Blanchard enters the world of Gilead – the fundamentalist, totalitarian regime at the centre of The Handmaid’s Tale – as Shunammite in The Testaments, the sequel series based on Margaret Atwood’s novel. The character is a young woman coming of age within that brutal system, alongside a cast that includes former Dazed cover star Chase Infiniti.

As comparisons between Gilead and America continue to mount, we spoke to Blanchard about building an unexpected career, getting offline, posting about Palestine, and why she doesn’t expect a TV show to carry the weight of the world.

What’s it been like to transition from being a child star to acting on your own terms?

Rowan Blanchard: It’s been interesting because I’ve been working for so long. What I don’t love is that, when you’re a kid, you can only work nine and a half hours, but as an adult, you can do 14 to 16-hour days. I miss when I turned into a pumpkin at a certain time, but it’s nice to step into myself and have an experience on set that’s different. 

Who are the actors you did (and do) look up to?

Rowan Blanchard: I don’t want to even put myself in the same sentence as her, but when I was a teenager, I watched Isabelle Adjani in Possession or Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher – I could only dream of being given that material. I pray to God someone gives me a crazy script like that. But, recently, I’ve been thinking about Kristen Stewart and how she bought a theatre in LA. She’s such an interesting actress because she was also a child actor, and has had such a long, dynamic career, going from big franchise movies like Twilight to making her own movie. It feels like there’s so much more for her to give, and I’m excited for the rest of her life. 

Do you want your career trajectory to be as unexpected?

Rowan Blanchard: I think so, yeah. Coming from being on Disney as a child, I just want to have the opportunity to be in all different types of projects. I want to play more crazy girls, because it’s fun. 

So many young people also look to your personal style as inspiration. Have you always loved fashion?

Rowan Blanchard: I’ve just always loved clothes. When I was a little girl, I loved old movie stars. I loved glamour. I loved dressing up. I love bitches who dress up. So it’s nice that people have embraced that because it’s really fun for me. 

I feel like you’re good at thrifting. 

Rowan Blanchard: I haven’t bought clothes in so long, but I am good at thrifting when I do it. As I’ve grown up, it’s become more important to me to buy things that genuinely make me feel good. When I was a teenager, I had so much fun dressing very theatrically, and now I just want a comforting sweater, a nice pair of pants, or a nice dress. I just want romantic, simple things now. 

“There are a lot of people who have rejected me [speaking out about Palestine], but I also just have a heart that beats. I think that not having an opinion is really concerning”

You’ve also been online, documenting your life, for a very long time now. How has your relationship with the internet changed over time?

Rowan Blanchard: I grew up on the internet, but I will say now I try not to be on the internet as much. I have an app that sets a timer on Instagram, and I deleted Twitter and Tumblr years ago. I don’t have TikTok. I think I had it for maybe a month. But I was homeschooled and never physically around that many other people, so the internet was once how I connected and learned from other people. 

You’re also very public about activism online. Why do you think it’s important for actors to have conversations about issues like Palestinian rights?

Rowan Blanchard: My opinion on celebrity-adjacent activism changes every single day, but I know for me personally, the state of things and the acceleration of things in the last three years has been so extreme and volatile that it feels impossible for me not to affirm my beliefs. I have been talking about Palestine online since 2018, and I didn’t know it was not something I could talk about. Then I talked about it and got calls, and there are a lot of people who have rejected me, but I also just have a heart that beats. I think that not having an opinion is really concerning. I know I now work in Hollywood, and it’s an extremely fucked industry, but I really value my integrity, and I can sleep at night knowing my heart is in the right place. I just want people to know where I stand, and that’s a big part of my life. 

In your latest role as Shunammite in The Testaments, you are stepping into a world that’s very politically charged. How did you prepare to inhabit a society that’s so restrictive?

Rowan Blanch: It was fun, honestly, to keep remembering that my character doesn’t know any better. That was a good challenge as an actress, just to completely separate and remember that I don’t have any sort of antiquated opinion because I have no outside reference. There’s no Tumblr. There are no books. You can’t read. So it’s a very clear mind, and I just had to keep reminding myself that. 

What was it like to play a teenager now?

Rowan Blanchard: It was fun to have that kind of problematic teenage brain where you don’t understand why things happen, and you don’t understand what all the fluctuating emotions in your body are, and your hormones. I’d love to play another teenager. 

Shunammite is also fairly bratty, which seems like the opposite of you!

Rowan Blanchard: I’m not bratty, but I definitely am quite dry and sarcastic, which I think are the qualities that I immediately sensed in my character. But she’s also very societal. She likes her status. She likes her wealth. She likes her family. Gilead’s so hierarchical in that way, and it’s just the opposite of what I believe in. So it was very funny to be someone who cares about being ‘better’ than other people, and it was an exciting story to be part of for me because of the challenge of being in a completely different universe and having a lot of innocence. 

I feel like people also always compare Gilead to what’s happening in America right now. 

Rowan Blanchard: Personally, I don’t expect any TV show or movie to hold the weight and gravitas of the incredibly fucked state of things right now. If people find their own conclusions, that’s great, but no show really can. Go outside, go to a protest, read a book, donate your money. Talk to your friends. What’s your friend group like? What do they look like? When The Handmaid’s Tale came out, it was such a specific moment in time. Trump had just been elected, and it was very surreal. But America has been fucked up since America got started. There has never been an America without it resting on the oppression of so many different people, so it’s inevitably going to be relevant.