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When Gillian Cosgriff decided to quit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in 2022, she had no idea of the success that was about to come her way.
The Melbourne-based actor, singer, writer, musician, composer and comedian had been working on the hit production since it opened in January 2019, first playing Moaning Myrtle, and then a new character to the series, Delphi.
“I loved that job so much,” Cosgriff says. “[But] I was ready to go.”
Gillian Cosgriff spent three-and-a-half years starring in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.Credit: Joe Armao
With the two-part play due to transition to a single, three-act structure, she knew, after three-and-a-half years, it was time to move on.
“I had never intended to stay that long,” she says. “I was gonna leave after the first year of Myrtle.”
But she resolved to stay with the production for another year after she was asked to audition for the role of Delphi. Thanks to a COVID-induced shutdown, that extra year became two-and-a-half.
Gillian Cosgriff, right, stars as Delphi in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
In that time, Cosgriff didn’t have the time or energy to work on her own projects.
“I can convince myself I could write in my downtime, but you don’t have downtime,” she says. “You have physio and pilates and occasionally seeing your family and apologising for never seeing them,” she laughs.
“It [commercial theatre] does consume your life in a very big way. I was pretty ready to have my life back.”
Despite feeling ready to leave, she says she also felt “weirdly untethered” after Harry Potter. She recalls asking herself, “Who am I?”
So Cosgriff – whose early professional roles were in musicals including The Pirates of Penzance and Company – reconnected with her roots and threw herself into musical theatre.
She starred in a new musical at Melbourne Theatre Company, Come Rain or Come Shine (with original songs by Tim Finn from Crowded House); co-created Every Musical Ever, a rapid fire journey through every musical ever written, which debuted at Adelaide Cabaret Festival; and starred in an Australian production of Godspell at Sydney’s Hayes Theatre.
Gillian Cosgriff starred in MTC’s Come Rain or Come Shine (pictured with Angus Grant).Credit: Jeff Busby
She also started to write her first comedy show in five years, Actually, Good.
In April, a year after she made the leap out of commercial theatre, she was awarded both Most Outstanding Show and the Golden Gibbo (for an independent show), worth $3000, at Melbourne International Comedy Festival for her efforts.
Gillian Cosgriff with the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s top gong for 2023.Credit: Chris Hopkins
Returning to the comedy scene, Cosgriff says, “It felt like I was myself again … It felt like coming home.”
But she never expected the five-star reviews, positive audience responses (including from people like Rhys Nicholson and Julia Zemiro), and awards that were about to come her way. Off the back of those accolades, she’s taking the show to Sydney for Bondi Festival and Melbourne for Replay Festival, before touring it to Edinburgh Fringe in August.
“Something nice happened nearly every day during the festival,” Cosgriff says. “And I came home and cried at my kitchen table. I was just like, ‘It’s just so beautiful’.”
It might have been daunting to return to comedy after so many years away, but in that time, Cosgriff had been steadily accumulating material by writing jokes on her phone.
“I wrote the show quite fast in quite a short space of time,” she says. “When I sat down to write, I had so many tiny little bits and pieces. It’s the first time I’ve ever had too much stuff.”
She had also been asking people for lists of 10 things they liked – ranked from “things you just like” at number 10 to something you love at number one.
In Actually, Good, Cosgriff collaborates on a new list with her audience each night, adding it to her “book of tiny delights”.
It’s a concept born out of a “terrible holiday” Cosgriff took with her partner. It rained every day and every night for seven days. One night at dinner, they invented the 10 things game, trading their answers back and forth, starting with her partner’s number 10, Baileys Irish Cream, and then hers, carrot cake.
“[We] just sat there being silly,” she explains. “It really redeemed the holiday for both of us.”
Now she has running lists of people’s likes and loves in a note in her phone as well as in the book. These small joys include: walking briskly on a travelator; warm, dry towels; and “when you realise that one of your friends has known one of your other friends for ages”.
The process of putting together and performing Actually, Good reconfigured how Cosgriff saw herself. After she read an early draft of the show to a friend, they pointed out while she may consider herself a pessimist, she’s really an optimist.
According to Cosgriff, “[They said,] you’re my friend Gill who is afraid of some things and worries about a lot of things. But you are also my friend Gill who will pick up things in the world and go, ‘look at this, isn’t this amazing?’
“I did not know that about myself. That has truly transformed my life. I don’t think that’s an overstatement. It’s really shifted my mindset.”
Every night she performs Actually, Good now she is reminded how important it is to appreciate the small things. Inviting her audience members to send her their full lists after the show gives her another nudge.
“It’s been so good for my brain,” she says. “I do have a very speedy, anxious little brain that just remembers things and retains things. Because I’ve been feeding it a lot of good stuff, it means I’m genuinely walking around with all these beautiful little touchstones.”
The value of appreciating the small stuff was something she also learned during Melbourne lockdowns. During those months, she read Delight, a collection of short essays by English writer J.B. Priestley – many of which had been written during WWII.
She would take lessons from there and apply them to her life – such as having some “breathing time” by treating herself to a gin and tonic and packet of chips on a Friday night while staying at home.
“It’s too much to look for a big feeling of like happiness or whatever,” says Cosgriff. “I don’t know what that is a lot of the time. Just being able to find small bites that you are able to digest that make you feel good enough to keep going is what’s been really nice about doing the show.”
But don’t think that Actually, Good is a pandemic show.
“That’s not what I set out to make,” Cosgriff says. “It just feels like a ‘hey, look at the world, not all of it is bad’ show. I think that’s what’s resonated with a lot of people.”
Now, Cosgriff is at work on her first musical, The Fig Tree, which she started to develop (with Virginia Gay as director and dramaturg) at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival earlier this month. Its title comes from Sylvia Plath’s novel The Bell Jar, when the narrator ponders the different choices she could make.
Now Cosgriff is working on her first original musical.Credit: Chris Hopkins
In Cosgriff’s musical, the protagonist Liz is struggling to figure out if she wants to have a baby with her long-term partner – so the couple resolve to spend six weeks apart, dating other people, and then come to a decision together.
On what’s next, Cosgriff says: “I can kind of do whatever I want now. Wait, no, I was always allowed to do whatever I want and that’s what I’m going to [continue to] do. I just keep chipping away at it.”
Gillian Cosgriff: Actually, Good is at Bondi Pavilion from June 30 to July 2; and at Comedy Republic on July 7.
Sydney Morning Herald subscribers can enjoy 2-for-1 tickets* to the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales during June 2023. Click here for more details.
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