EXCLUSIVE: Bojana Novakovic is full of surprises. Not long after she filmed her scene-stealing role in the second season of the Apple TV series Your Friends & Neighbours, the award-winning
actor also quietly welcomed a baby.
Even though her guest role as Jon Hamm’s billionaire foil came out of the blue for viewers, the Serbian-born Australian actor and activist tells Stellar that there was no great secrecy involved.
“They offered it to me, so there isn’t really a dramatic story behind it. I guess they liked my work,” says Novakovic – who’s also known to local audiences for the 2021-2023 Binge drama series Love Me.
“Jon remembered me from years ago when something I wrote was offered to him, and he turned it down. It was an insane parody about a sexist, narcissistic journalist making a feminist show for TV. I’m not surprised he said no … but I was very surprised he remembered it.”
Describing Hamm as “funny, incredibly intelligent, a really astute script analyst, and an exceptionally caring scene partner”, Novakovic says the Mad Men star’s leadership on the dark comedy crime drama set a tone that made her feel instantly welcome.
Showrunner Jonathan Tropper also allowed Novakovic to bring a little of herself to the performance.
“He wanted me to use my [Australian] accent, along with Serbian, which was a really interesting element of the character,” she explains.
“I’m of the breed who believes billionaires shouldn’t exist, and in doing the reading and research for the piece, it was an interesting challenge to empathise with the role.”
Novakovic has plenty of experience sharing screens with enduring Hollywood actors, from Keanu Reeves in the 2012 indie film Generation Um … to Margot Robbie in the 2020 Harley Quinn action comedy Birds Of Prey.
But she insists any lessons on staying power haven’t been found on film sets.
“I’ve learnt them from my parents and from the farmers I work with in Serbia [Novakovic advocates for those threatened by a proposed lithium mining project in Serbia], people who have not only farmed their whole lives but come from generations of farmers,” she says. “Longevity isn’t about one life; it’s about legacy, DNA and generations.”
Legacy drives much of her work. Alongside her Master’s in Sustainable Development, the 44-year-old is putting the finishing touches on a documentary, The Forbidden Aunt, which is set to premiere this month at the Sarajevo Film Festival before screening at the Adelaide Film Festival in October.
“It’s about four generations of women in my family from rural Serbia and how generational trauma and sexual violence shaped the identities of women across those generations,” she explains.
Novakovic immigrated to Australia from Serbia when she was seven years old, a displacement that shaped her. “I didn’t really have friends growing up and I wasn’t particularly confident,” she recalls.
It wasn’t until her parents enrolled her at The McDonald College, a Sydney school specialising in creative and performing arts, that everything clicked.
“Not only did my confidence change, but my academic performance improved as well,” she recalls.
“Ultimately, acting came out of that necessity. I needed somewhere I felt like I belonged.”
Despite her global career, Novakovic still spends about half the year in Serbia, where she has helped build one of Europe’s largest environmental and anti-colonial movements, actively campaigning against corporate mining and government corruption.
“Serbia isn’t somewhere I came from,” she explains. “Its people, and my friends and family there, are central to my life and my future.”
Her fierce advocacy for human rights and bodily autonomy informs how she views the world, particularly while working in the US against its turbulent political backdrop, where she says the systematic stripping of reproductive rights is a symptom of a much larger crisis.
And, she warns, Australia isn’t immune to these global shifts, either.
“Anything we fail to confront ‘over there’ eventually arrives on our own doorstep. Rights aren’t permanent.
“Australia has its own profound human rights issues that don’t receive nearly the same attention because they’re tied to our colonial history and normalised.
“I’m deeply concerned about reproductive rights, but I’m equally concerned about Indigenous children being imprisoned, children being tried as adults, the lack of Indigenous justice, and the ongoing absence of Treaty.”
When it comes to her own motherhood journey, the actor draws a hard line.
You won’t see photos of her partner or child, and she firmly refuses to offer parenting advice or participate in interviews that ask her to open up about being a working mother.
“Quite frankly,” she tells Stellar, “I’m tired of celebrities and actors offering advice about parenting.
“I don’t want to participate in normalising a culture where someone who sat through hair and make-up, lost all their baby weight within weeks, and was back at work after a gruelling birth – that person being me – is somehow presented as worth taking advice from.
“I don’t think that’s useful to women, and I don’t want to contribute to it.”
Novakovic also notes that her privileged experience as an actor doesn’t represent reality for most women.
“My pregnancy and birthing experience, although gruelling like they all are, is highly individual and not a normal experience,” she points out.
“I think that sharing it will cause people to compare themselves rather than help anyone.”
So while she’s more than happy to chat about motherhood with friends, family, or even strangers on the street, Novakovic won’t do it for a media sound bite.
Asked how she’d teach her child to “handle it all” should they face a similarly whirlwind year of filming, activism and a new baby, she offers a characteristic dose of perspective.
“I don’t think that life is about handling everything,” she says.
“Most of it isn’t actually handleable. I’m not handling it all. I just keep going.”
See the full shoot with Bojana Novakovic in a new issue of Stellar, out in the Sunday papers. For more from Stellar, click here.