NAT BOLTT
SOVEREIGNTY
NAT BOLTT doesn't just embody sovereignty in her work — she celebrates the 'slow burn' journey it took to claim it, too.
At 53, having just directed her first feature film, Holy Days (in cinemas now), she carries a new sense of passion, spirit and dedication in her armoury — the kind that only comes from lessons learned the long way round. She calls this chapter, simply, "go time."
Holy Days follows a grieving boy and three eccentric elderly nuns who set out on a chaotic road trip across New Zealand to save their convent — blending quirky humour with heartfelt moments to explore faith, friendship and second chances, with a stellar cast including Judy Davis, Miriam Margolyes and Jacki Weaver.
Growing up in South Africa, Boltt learned early that if she was funny and polite and fitted in, everything would be good. That's what was expected.
"I've been through the politeness and agreeableness as a woman," she says, "and I'm on the other side of that now." What she's built since is a far cry from that — a woman leading with truth, humour and heart, in roles that answer to no one's expectations of politeness.
"I SEE MY ROLE AS — WITH A SENSE OF HUMOUR — CREATING AN AWARENESS THAT WOMEN, AT ANY AGE, ARE BRILLIANT AND FUNNY AND PROVIDE THE BALANCE THIS PLANET IS SEEKING."
There's a relief and a power in settling into yourself at this stage of life — a fire that comes through and says 'let's go' — and a contentedness that comes, Boltt says, with having nothing to prove and from taking the drama out of it. No longer gripping tightly to how a next step is "supposed" to look, and instead following your own inner guidance with trust.
"NOTHING ELSE MATTERS EXCEPT KEEPING YOUR PLAYGROUND INTACT."
It's the first thing Boltt says when asked what single message she'd leave the world, if all her work disappeared tomorrow. Keep your playground intact, she says — whatever your passion, whatever your industry, the message doesn't change.
It's a belief she returns to often, alongside a version of Margaret Mead's famous line: never doubt that a small, dedicated group of people can change the world — indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
BEHIND THE SCENES
Nat Boltt on location for FREQ SOVEREIGN cover shoot
LEADING WITH HEART
Nat speaks boldly of her advocacy for women and the power of the feminine, not least by how she describes the bringing of her emotionally attuned and heart-led approach to the director's chair. Boltt doesn't lead by force of ego or technical command, but by making sure the people she works with feel listened to, and that they can trust her.
"I know what it's like not to be listened to, I know what it's like not to be respected, I know what it's like to be ignored," she says.
"I also know what it's like to be incredibly sensitive, so I make sure my actors feel safe, heard and trusted above all else."
It's why, she believes, actors so often make good directors — they know what's needed. It's also testament to having walked through the fire herself: wisdom she now carries into every room she enters, whether as director, actor or mother.
It was refreshing to hear such an embodied, empathetic and intuitive leader walking her talk in the world — particularly in the arts, an industry where still only 8% of feature film directors are women.
That fearlessness with her own emotional range runs deep. Boltt has spent years channelling rage through her role as Penelope Blossom in the popular TV series Riverdale — a rage she describes as her mother's rage and the rage of all women.
Asked if it was difficult to sustain that kind of persona on screen, her answer was simple: "it was the easiest thing in the world." She could call on her mother's fury easily, and found it healthy — a place to put something that needed somewhere to go.
Creativity, for Boltt, is a tool for healing on many levels — an alchemical process. She goes hiking with a friend, also a writer and director, and the two of them rant their way round — properly rant, until it moves through the body.
"You sound angry enough to go home and write something," her friend told her once. She usually does — and it usually comes out funny. Explosively funny, she confesses, because that's how she processes best.
FREQ's Editor-in-Chief, Louise George, sat down with actor and director, Nat Boltt, in a beautiful conversation on leading with heart, alchemising rage into art, and the courage it takes to keep going creatively.
Words by Sophie French
Writer & Editorial & Manager
Listening in to this conversation while driving by the ocean, in a midst of questions and reflections at aged 36 — a sense of hope and a deep sigh of relief settled over me as these two incredible women talked about the settling-in of life after 40 — feeling like they're just getting started, with a no-bullshit approach to life.
One line has stayed with me since: taking the drama out of it. Whether that's securing a role in an acting capacity, or simply how we think things "should" look in life — loosening our grip saves us so much unnecessary suffering.
Holding things lightly, with humour and levity, is a message I'll be carrying with me for a long time to come. I hope this conversation settles into you the way it settled into me.
THE COURAGE TO KEEP GOING
“Sometimes when you quit,
you’re just making space!”
Not that any of it has come easily. She quit acting more than once — on one occasion, she called her agency and told them to take her off their books, done for good.
There was a night in a damp, mould-lined rental house in New Zealand that she still returns to. Her son, then small, was asleep on her chest — an insomniac from the pressure she'd put on herself to be seen, she'd ended up lying awake on the floor rather than in the bed.
She had just emailed every agent she had to say she was finished. "I've got nothing," she remembers thinking. "I am nothing. I'm not seen. But it turns out the world hasn't stopped turning." Curling up and giving in wasn't an option — her son needed her. So she got up with a plan to do something else instead. "Sometimes when you quit, you're just making space," she says now.
The space Nat made was where she was invited to co-direct a film called The Silk with Dame Joy Cowley. This is how she met Joy, who wrote Holy Days, and how Boltt then came to direct it. Evidence of the sentiment that you can only join the dots looking backwards, never forwards.
It's her encouragement to any creative guiding their own way: nobody is coming to save you, or do it for you. "Nobody's inside your mind. Nobody's inside your heart," she says. "Only you are." Which is, perhaps, exactly why it's our job — hers, ours, anyone with a platform or a page or an idea — to share that with the world.
She's clear that "taking the drama out of it" isn't about caring less — it's about no longer needing any single audition, any single yes, to be the one that saves you. These days, there's trust where there used to be gripping.
That belief is written into the making of Holy Days itself — and it's harder to separate from her family's story than it first appears. Having grown up with parents both burned by the church in their own way, there's an interesting irony underlying her latest project.
Her mother was sent away to a convent in the UK as a young girl, raised at a distance by nuns in an environment she describes as brutal, rarely seeing her own parents. Her father's family fared no better — his grandfather was killed in a racial attack, and the church, who'd promised to help, didn't.
Her instant reaction to a script about elderly nuns then was initially a knee-jerk dismissal. But she was invited to look a little deeper — and found it instead a subconscious way to heal from the religious trauma running through her own lineage.
She was advised to make Holy Days her feature — and to make it her own. So she did: a story for her son, made while he was still small, so he'd understand that the world is "a good place, full of promise and friendship." She made it funny too, she says, "because that's my medicine" — leaning on years of training as a dancer and a mime artist to bring real physical comedy into a story steeped in grief and faith.
It took eleven years to bring it to life, from scriptwriting to filming to being out in the world. There were points where the financing fell through and she genuinely believed the whole thing was dead.
"You've been travelling down this road so long," she says of that stretch, "you're 98% of the way there. You can't turn around and drive home now."
It's the message she'd give any creative on the edge of giving up: you could be so close. And it's exactly what happened for her.
Holy Days has since opened in 400 cinemas, topped the box office in New Zealand, sold out in its US screenings, and been selected for TIFF's 50th anniversary edition — a film with three women over 40 in the lead roles, no weapons, no heist, nothing formulaic about it at all. She hopes it becomes exactly what Stand By Me was for her own generation: a comfort film, the one you watch with your mum and then, one day, with your own child.
There is something to be said for a woman who was taught, like so many, to be competitive, to be pitted against other women, to be polite above all else — and who has learned to turn that all the way around.
To lead with heart. To champion and celebrate those around her. To favour warmth and truth over politeness, agreeableness or self-abandonment, every time. That, more than anything, is what Nat Boltt seems to be walking us toward.
In her closing words, Boltt returned to the numbers we're so often trained to focus on. "The followers, the reach, the platform — versus the real impact you can actually have," she says.
"What can you do in your direct circle? Treat it as a microcosm of the bigger picture, and do your best there.
You're only one person, but the ripple effect can be strong, if you're doing it with genuine intent. Maybe that's the answer to the overwhelm, in the end: bring it in, shrink it down. Make your ripples today, then let them go. Check in with your own centre and heart each morning, and ask — what can I do today?"
It's what we're taking with us here at FREQ too — stepping away from this conversation determined to make our own corner of the playground a little better each day.
FREQ Sovereign Cover 2026
NAT BOLTT @natboltt
Executive Producer:
VERNARD GOUD – LuvnGrace @vernardluvngrace
Co-Producers:
STEVEN ROBERTSON @stevenrobertsonart
JAZ GILL @jazgillofficial
Interview & Editorial Direction:
LOUISE GEORGE, Editor-in-Chief FREQ
Editorial written by:
SOPHIE FRENCH, Editorial Manager FREQ
Photographer:
IULIA AGNEW – @iulia.agnew
BTS photographer:
GREG PESEMO – @soulfulshotsbygreg
Wardrobe:
JANET ROSS – @janetadrienne
ELENI TSAPAS – @eleni.media
Make Up:
MARLAYNA PINCOTT – @pincottmakeup
JEWEL MINOOSE – @looksby_jewel
Hair:
RAYMOND – @raydidmyhair of @lurevancouver
Stores:
Mine & Yours - @mineandyoursco
Shoes & Sunglasses – @stylereissue
Jewellery
Fiss Designs - @fiss.designs
Location:
The Hollywood Theatre – @hollywoodtheatrevan
