At a glance…
- Rising Australian star Shabana Azeez sits down with The Weekly to speak about her latest (and local) project, The Airport Chaplain.
- She reveals her unlikely start in the world of acting and why, should it all fall away tomorrow, she’d be at peace.
- The Airport Chaplain premieres on 26 August 2026 on SBS and SBS on Demand.
Shabana Azeez was in her hometown of Adelaide when she decided to do something that would shapeshift the course of her career. Completing a self-taped audition for a yet-to-film new US medical drama, she sent it off with a hope and a prayer. When her scheduled follow-up Zoom call for the role of intern Victoria “Dr J” Javadi only lasted nine minutes, she figured she was out of the race. Far from it. Instead, she’d landed a dream role on what would turn out to be a mega-hit.
Ensemble drama The Pitt – led by ER veteran Noah Wyle and which won best drama series at the Emmys and Golden Globes this year – quickly launched Shabana into the global stratosphere, even as she remained relatively unknown at home.
But that’s about to change. She’ll next be seen standing toe-to-toe with Hugo Weaving in SBS drama The Airport Chaplain, which also stars Claudia Karvan and a slew of other talented Aussie faces.
She started the project straight after filming wrapped on season 2 of The Pitt.
“It was very intense,” she tells The Weekly as she drops by our office to talk about the latest feat in what is shaping up to be an extraordinary career. “I was tired in a way that I didn’t know I could be tired.”
With filming of The Airport Chaplain proceeding in Melbourne, though – just a short hop away from her family in Adelaide – she relished taking a break from the LA hustle which, she confides, is far from the glamour people expect when they see stars on the red carpets.
“I love being there so much,” she couches, “but also, I work 12-hour days, five days a week. And then on the weekends I’m learning my lines. I’m living alone in a city where I don’t know many people – I’ve only been there for two years, not even.
“I remember getting sick for the first time in LA, living alone and being, “Oh, I have nobody to call. I’m not close enough to anybody to be like, ‘Hey, can you bring me soup?’.
“The day I landed in Melbourne, I had a friend call and say, ‘I feel like you want a home-cooked meal. When was the last time you had one?’ So I went to her house, and she cooked for me and it was the best thing ever.”
As we chat ahead of her flightback to LA, Shabana – whose Indo-Fijian parents had hoped for a more traditional career for their daughter – reveals how she got her unlikely acting break at 21 and why, as she takes on a new stage in her career, she wants to keep being misunderstood.
Had you always wanted to act?
I’d always wanted to, for various reasons. But my parents were like, “What are you talking about?” So I didn’t do drama at school. WhenI became an actor, everybody in my life was like, “You? Acting? Really?” They were, like, so shocked by it.
Why is that?
Because I’m not what you’d think of. I’m not really a showman. I really struggle to be looked at. In a lot of ways, I think acting for me came from a really different need. I just got lucky that somebody was kind to me and gave me an opportunity.
How did that come about?
I was working at the office for Mercury CX, which is an emerging filmmaker’s hub in Adelaide. There, I would help fund short films and we would run conferences and programs for filmmakers. I started that job as an intern and they hired me off the back of that. I was the production coordinator there.
We had another intern come in a few years later. She was going to be an actor, and she was so full of life. She was 16 and she was so passionate. My boss looked at her and looked at me and was, like, “You’ve never been that happy. What do you want to do? Because this arts admin is not it.”
What was your answer?
I said, “I’d like to act, but I’ve never been on a film set. I’ve never acted since school.”
What happened next?
She got me the audition in an hour for the lead of a short film we were funding and [said], “Go to this audition. You won’t get the lead. But go to that and tell them you want to be a runner since then you’ll get to help everybody out on set and you get to learn what it’s like. Maybe you’ll get one of the extras, one of the small roles in that short film.” And then I did the audition and I got it and it changed my life.
It certainly did! After that break in 2018 and a run of indie projects, The Pitt launching in 2024 really saw your profile blow up. Did Noah Wyle give you advice about handling being in a show that is such a phenomenon?
The fame stuff has changed so much generationally with social media. Does anybody have a blueprint to deal with this? Because it happened very fast. But Noah’s been really great. I told him I want to make films, and he got me books on editing and directing.
What’s it like on set of such a huge production?
It’s a very Australian vibe. We shoot chronologically in one location. We have green rooms instead of trailers and everyone hangs out. It’s very social.
How are you handling public recognition in the US?
I feel lucky to be on a show that’s impact-driven. [With] most people coming up to me … it’s not, “I love that you’re on a big show”, it’s nurses saying, “Hey, I’m able to talk to my husband about what my day-to-day is like because of the show.” Or med students [saying], “I was going to quit, but I didn’t because I saw you.” The crisis in America with healthcare is so potent. I’m grateful to have a positive impact on somebody as opposed to creating second screen viewing.
Is that important to you?
I feel a real responsibility to tell that story. Or hopefully be a place that people can go [when] they’re having those days. Stories are so powerful… they’re exercises in empathy. We tune in to the TV and watch people we don’t know in real life and learn to have empathy for them.
Growing up, which stories gave you a sense of feeling seen?
My joke answer for that is always Shrek. Like, beauty is so moralised and I didn’t grow up conventionally attractive. I got bullied for how I looked when I was growing up. And Shrek seemed like the first time that beauty wasn’t moralised.
Shrek is good. He’s ugly and he is good. Whereas in all the other Disney films growing up, you could tell who the villain was because they were ugly.
Beauty is still moralised. Even in adult media, people think of beauty as ‘good’. That’s really insidious and painful. And I worry about contributing to that with media. I’m really grateful to be on a show where I’m wearing baggy scrubs all day and no make-up. That feels good to me. Is that a real answer to that question?
I think so. It’s very easy to look at what we see on our screens and think people have had it easy because of surface-level looks. But when you can see those real-life experiences that have given us funky edges and thickened our skins, that’s great.
I don’t want to sand those edges down. If you take that away, everybody ends up the blandest, hottest version of themselves. The thing that makes the story worth telling are the icky bits. You have to be ugly, you have to be complex and an anti-hero, or be able to be misunderstood for someone who is misunderstood to be able to relate to you. And I think that everybody feels misunderstood in some way, right?
Absolutely. You’ve come off the back of The Pitt for an Australian project. What attracted you to The Airport Chaplain?
I knew that Hugo Weaving was on board, and to be able to work with actors of that calibre and learn from them is my dream. I just want to be learning my whole life. That was really exciting. And Kavitha [Anandasivam] plays one of the other characters. She was one of the first people I acted with back in Adelaide, so that was like coming home.
That must have been wonderful.
The Australian industry has changed for me a lot. The rooms I’m in. The places I get invited into. The ways I get to be creative are very different to before I left. But it was nice to be like, “Oh, but it hasn’t changed. I can still be with my people.” You see, I don’t believe in networking upwards. I believe in making genuine friendships.
Had you met Claudia Karvan before?
Never. She was so lovely. She gave me a really great piece of advice.
What was that?
You know, when things are busy and then quiet? I’m somebody who’s like, “I’m never going to work again.” I’m panicked. I want to have a job. I want to be hustling. And she [said], “It’s really important that you cherish when the phone stops ringing. When it’s ringing, great. Pick it up. But when the phone’s not ringing? Don’t wait. Just go off and live your life and climb a mountain and do yoga and be a person. When you come back, the phone will ring. Just relax, it will be okay.”
I was like, “That’s easy for you to say. You’re Claudia Karvan!” But it was really beautiful advice because I work in a gig economy, and there’s no guarantee I’ll ever work again. And it can be really easy to tie your self-worth and your identity with your ability to do your work. You put so much of yourself into your creative work. I bring all of me to work. But there needs to be some sort of separation. If I never work again and nobody ever thinks I can act again? My identity is not going to crumble.
The Airport Chaplain premieres on SBS and SBS On Demand on 26 August. Stream all episodes on SBS On Demand or watch from 8:30pm Wednesdays on SBS.
This feature originally appeared in the September 2026 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Subscribe so you never miss an issue.
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