Maiah Stewardson

While this article uses she/her for consistency, Stewardson uses she/they pronouns.^[1]

Stewardson began acting classes when she was seven.^[2] She came out as bisexual in her year 12 and faced internalized biphobia.^[3] Stewardson is also queer.^[4]

"I think my introduction into any kind of queer content was Blue is the Warmest Color, which was not a great start at age 14. I’ve been rewatching a bunch of my favorite queer content and have returned to projects like Booksmart and Bottoms, which are euphoric and joyful. While you have these big, epic works like Portrait of a Lady on Fire, where the queerness is very prominent, projects like Booksmart where the queerness exists and sort of oscillates around the characters is something I really love. These are projects that are quite unequivocally camp and don’t mind being big and joyful and funny. I think I’m speaking a bit to my 15-year-old self that wishes I was around that kind of boisterous, unapologetic queer content, so I’m diving back into a lot of that now."

Stewardson splits her time residing in Adelaide and Melbourne.

At age 16, Stewardson played Jade in Windmill Theatre Company’s production of Girl Asleep. She reprised the role in the 2015 film adaptation of the same name.^[2]

Stewardson has trained with 16th Street Studio, Howard Fine and Larry Moss.^[1][5] She won the Emerging Artist of the Year award from the Adelaide Critic Circle for her work on A View from the Bridge.^[5] She undertakes projects of screenwriting, acting, film-making, slam poetry, spoken word, podcasting, advocacy and, after her own depression during COVID-19, mental health work. Stewardson advocates for LGBTQ+ rights and plus-sized representation.