Local filmmaker Cassidy Krygger’s newest work, Daisy, which has won a swag of domestic and international awards, will feature at North Bellarine Film Festival’s (NBFF) upcoming showcase. Cassidy spoke to Matt Hewson about Daisy, filmmaking and living with multiple sclerosis.
Cassidy Krygger knew from an early age she wanted to be an actor.
From the day her mother took her to see Baz Lurhmann’s Moulin Rouge at the cinema when she was six years old she felt inspired to be involved with acting and filmmaking.
“I always question why she took me to see Moulin Rouge at six years old, but I fell in love with, fell in love with movies, on the spot,” Cassidy said.
“I remember so clearly just being enamoured with the film. I remember leaving the cinema and looking at Mum and saying, ‘I want to do that, I want to be that.’”
Living in Melbourne’s northern suburbs at the time, Cassidy soon began taking acting classes with Children’s Performing Company of Australia (now Stage School Australia), then with Screen Actors Geelong when she and her mother moved to this area in 2008.
After performing in some live theatre productions she got her “first professional gig.. first paid, proper thing” when, at 15 years old, she scored a role on iconic Australian soap opera Neighbours.
Cassidy said turning up to the Neighbours set, which at the time included now-superstar Margot Robbie, was “the best” experience even though she was “petrified”.
“I’ve never been more scared in my life; I didn’t want to do it,” she said.
“I remember walking in and they called me to wardrobe, I was shaking with nerves, I just felt so sick.
“But standing there in her costume was Susan Kennedy (actor Jackie Woodburne), and I just felt calm. I was like, oh, everything’s okay, Susan Kennedy is here.
“The Neighbours set was such a wonderful experience, a really great welcoming first experience on a big set.”
The Neighbours gig gave Cassidy the confidence to host her own show on community television station Channel 31 at age 17. Called Adolescence, it was a group discussion show; “Like The View, but for teenagers”.
However, by the time she turned 21 Cassidy was starting to feel the strain of the endless grind of auditions and rejections.
“I’d been doing it for so long, I’d done a full-time course and training and I’d really given it my all,” she said.
“There was one certain audition that I put my heart and soul into. I really tried hard and when I got the no I thought, you know what, I can’t keep getting nos for trying this hard.
“And at 21 I felt old; I look back and laugh now. But I thought I needed to go do something that was going to financially support me.”
Cassidy completed a diploma in social media marketing and began working in that field. Despite disliking the work initially – “I was like, this is it? This is horrible, this isn’t fun at all” – she came to enjoy her job.
Then, in a week, everything changed.
“It was AFL grand final day 2018, which is my favourite day of the year, I love it, and I was watching the football when I felt my left eye begin to ache,” she said.
“I thought nothing of it, it’s a headache, whatever. But as the days progressed it got worse and my mum was like, you need to go to the doctor.
“I thought the doctor would laugh and say, go home and have a Panadol. But he didn’t, I got sent straight to the emergency room.
“Then an ophthalmologist came down and spoke to me and asked if I had MS in my family. I was put in an MRI machine and that Friday I was back at the hospital and I had the diagnosis.
“It was most shocking, to go from a week ago being totally fine, a healthy 22 year old to having MS… it was so unbelievably, life-alteringly frightening and just crazy.”
While Cassidy, with the support of her mother and friends, was struggling to come to terms with the diagnosis, once again a filmgoing experience had a profound effect on her.
“Around that time the film Bohemian Rhapsody, the Freddie Mercury biopic, came out, and I’m a massive Queen and Freddie Mercury fan,” she said.
“It was literally the month of my diagnosis and it was the thing I’d been looking forward to the most, because I was just in hell at that time.
“I went to see the film and there’s a moment where Freddie tells his band mates that he has AIDS. And you know, they’re all crying and all that. And I can’t remember exactly the words, but Freddie says to them, you know, I’m still me, I’m going to be a performer.
“It really impacted me. I thought, I am still who I am. Life is short, I love acting, I love filmmaking. I don’t know what my future holds, but why not enjoy what I have for now and go pursue what I love the most.”
Cassidy enrolled in acting classes again in 2019 and began working her way back into the industry.
The unexpected COVID-19 pandemic could have derailed her plans, but instead it helped Cassidy change her mindset regarding creativity.
“I did an online course that was all about taking control of your career yourself as an actor… don’t just sit and wait for the phone to ring,” she said.
“I’d never thought of it that way. I always thought I was just an actor, I never thought I could go write or be a filmmaker.
“But this course was all about create your own work, create your own film, write, so that’s what I did. And I just fell in love with it.”
Cassidy’s first short film was Enigma, a period piece about a lady of high society choosing her duty over her servant lover.
“We shot that in 2021… and it did okay at film festivals, but what it did for me was give me the confidence to be like, okay, I can do this,” she said.
Armed with that confidence, Cassidy took on a project that had been bubbling away inside her for some time, the story of her great-grandmother.
“Daisy’s story was so tragic, she really stood up for herself in a time where women were pushed down and told to conform and I always found that really inspiring,” she said.
“Being pregnant out of wedlock, standing up to her parents and choosing to be with the love of her life, that’s amazing. And then the fact that she passed away at 23; she died four months after giving birth to her baby.
“It just didn’t sit right with me that she was dead so young and would just fade away into history.”
Filmed in November last year, Daisy was entered into film festivals around the world in February and quickly garnered critical acclaim.
The film has won more than 20 awards, including Best Biographical Short Film at Cannes World Film Festival, Best Australian Film at Melbourne Cineverse Film Festival and Best International Short Film at Golden Lion International Film Festival.
Cassidy has also won a number of awards for her performance as Daisy, winning Best Actress at Melbourne Cineverse, Robinson Italian Film Awards and Paradise Film Festival (Italy).
She said “not for a second” could she have anticipated such an overwhelmingly positive response.
“I was sitting in a hospital getting my MS treatment doing the first film festival entry and I thought to myself, please, just let us at least get into one film festival; at least if I get into one I’ll feel like I’ve done something with this film,” she said.
“It’s been unbelievable, just crazy. And now we’re officially a contender for an AACTA award, which are the big Academy Awards in Australia. The first round of voting opens this week, so you can go on and watch the films and vote if you want to.
“If we get through the first round, we’ll be officially AACTA-nominated which will just be huge. It’ll open up so many doors because we want to make Daisy into a feature film.
“That’s our next goal, we want to shoot it in Geelong and tell her whole story.”
Looking back over her journey so far, Cassidy said she believed firmly in the power of trying to make good things happen out of bad.
“MS does very much impact my life, it can be very hard,” she said.
“But at the same time, before my MS diagnosis, I was floundering… and so deeply unhappy. And when I was diagnosed the shock was horrific, and it took me a very long time to come to terms with it.
“But now I feel I have come to terms with it and I feel happier than ever. I feel like I’m fulfilling what I’m meant to do and I don’t think that would be happening without an MS diagnosis.”
Daisy will be at the NBBF’s Geelong Short Film Festival at Boronggook Drysdale on August 14.
