CASTING SECTOR HERALDS NEXT GEN TALENT POOL IN RISING STARS LIST

The Casting Guild of Australia has crowned Australia’s top emerging talent of 2022, revealing its 8th annual list of CGA Rising Stars.

The annual list has a strong track-record of picking Australian talent who are truly on the cusp of greatness. Previous recipients include Milly Alcock (House of Dragon), Eliza Scanlan (Little Women), Katherine Langford (13 Reasons Why), Thomas Weatherall (Heartbreak High), Zoe Terakes (Nine Perfect Strangers) Olivia De-Jonge (Elvis) and Alexander England (Little Monsters).

CGA President Thea McLeod said, "We’re so proud to watch these talented performers skyrocket from the casting room to our screens and stages. The annual Rising Star awards highlight the fantastic calibre of talent we have here in Australia. We send our deepest congratulations to the Rising Stars of 2022 – a very talented bunch!"

Actor, gymnast and dancer Christopher Bunton made his feature film debut in Down Under and since then has gone on to star in Nude Tuesday, Relic, Lone Wolf and Kairos. He will soon be seen alongside Josh Gad and Isla Fisher in the second season of Stan’s Wolf Like Me.

James Majoos’ (pictured, right) recent role as ‘Darren’ in the worldwide Netflix reboot hit, Heartbreak High, has this year earned them an AACTA nomination for Best Lead Actor in a Drama. On stage he featured in Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Grand Horizons and Belvoir’s Fangirls.

Hattie Hook starred in Stan’s Ten Pound Poms and ABC’s Savage River alongside Rising Star alum Katherine Langford. This year she debuted in her first feature, Goran Stolevski’s Of An Age, which opened the 2022 Melbourne International Film Festival. Onstage, Hook’s credits include Gypsy, Mary Poppins and Annie.

Mabel Li was nominated for a Silver Logie for Most Outstanding Supporting Actress and won an Asian Academy award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in the SBS drama, New Gold Mountain (trailer, below). She has shone onstage in Never Closer (Downstairs Belvoir), Miss Peony (Belvoir), Delilah by the Hour and D.N.A (Seymour Theatre). Next year she will star in Kindling Picture’s Safe Home for SBS.

Maggie (Max) McKenna has appeared on television in the Foxtel comedy series Open Slather and the ABC drama series The Doctor Blake Mysteries. In 2018 McKenna joined the American touring production of Tony Award-winning musical Dear Evan Hansen. Most recently, they’ve been seen in Sydney Theatre Company’s Melbourne and Sydney seasons of the Alanis Morrisette-inspired musical, Jagged Little Pill.

Michelle Lim Davidson (pictured, right; with co-star Magda Szubanski) has been seen on Nine Network’s After the Verdict and prior to that, The Newsreader, for which she received an AACTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Television Drama. Filming for the second season of The Newsreader has just wrapped and is set to air in 2023. Davidson is also a regular presenter on Play School and ABC KIDS Listen’s Story Salad.

Born in South Africa, Sana’a Shaik has starred in Stan’s Jack Irish, US mini-series Reckoning and as Xanthe in the sci-fi climate change feature 2067. She quill soon be seen in the feature film It Only Takes a Night, Amazon Prime's original Australian series Class of '07 and ABC's anthology series, Summer Love.

A proud Innawonga and Yindjibarndi man from the Pilbara region of Western Australia, Shaka Cook toured with The Secret River to the Edinburgh Festival and the National Theatre in London with the Sydney Theatre Company. On television he has appeared in Cleverman, The Leftovers, Black Comedy and Operation Buffalo, and in film, Top End Wedding and a lead role in critically acclaimed The Flood (trailer, below). 

Steph Tisdell is one of the brightest stars to explode on the Australian comedy scene in recent years. In 2014 she won the Deadly Funny National Grand Final and has gone on to sell out award-winning shows around the country. In 2021 Tisdell made her acting debut in ABC’s Total Control and will soon appear in the Amazon Prime series Class of ‘07.

Since her first major acting role came as ‘Ruby’ in the play Stolen by Jane Harrison, Tuuli Narkle has acted in the Sydney Theatre Company’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (pictured, right) and made her Melbourne Theatre Company debut playing the role of ‘Roxanne’ in a modern adaption of Cyrano. She starred in the comedy series All My Friends Are Racist for ABC iView and in the Corrie Chen-directed drama series Bad Behaviour for Matchbox Pictures. This year she joined a stellar cast for Season 3 of ABC TV’s Mystery Road and received an AACTA Award Nomination for Best Lead Actress in Drama.

From November 18, audiences can meet this year’s Rising Stars as part of a 10 day series on CGA’s Instagram, with a new interview posted each day in the lead up to the official in-person presentation at the CGA Awards ceremony on Friday 2 December in Melbourne.