When Jana McKinnon came to Australia, she never intended to act – let alone land the lead role in season two of the Stan Original series, Black Snow. The Austrian-born Australian actor had been forging a successful career in Germany when her grandfather became ill, drawing her back to family in Far North Queensland. “I was intending on staying two months and I ended up staying two and a half years,” she tells RUSSH.
With her trip extended, she began contemplating finding work in Australia, when a local barista mentioned he had a friend in the arts. The friend in question turned out to be fellow actor Brenton Thwaites, who connected McKinnon with her now-agent. It wasn’t long before McKinnon landed the role of Zoe Jacobs in Black Snow, a young woman who hasn't been seen since her 21st birthday party in 2003, after disappearing from her small town in rural Queensland.
It was a particularly fitting role for McKinnon, who had watched season one of the series with her housemates in Cairns just months before the audition came up. “I was like, ‘Wow, I'm going to have to do this because I love the show so much,’” she recalls. The setting of the series also struck a personal chord. McKinnon was raised by her Austrian mother and Australian father—both former street performers—and split her childhood between Vienna and Australia’s Northern Rivers region, which she and her family travelled through by van. Despite this cross-continental upbringing, when she thinks of Australia, it's her family's native Far North Queensland that feels most like home. “When you live in Cairns… people sort of think you live on the moon and and no one really knows what it's like, what it looks like, what the people are like,” she laughs. “When I think of Australia, I think of the rainforest up there and the cane fields.”
Black Snow season two sees McKinnon share the screen with Travis Fimmel, Kat Stewart, Megan Smart, and Dan Spielman — a quintessentially Australian ensemble that she slips into effortlessly, though most of her acting experience until now has been German-speaking roles in European productions. This versatility is likely also the result of McKinnon's cross-country upbringing, which put her in good stead to be an actor; skipping across the globe from project to project. "I can arrange myself and find my 'spots' anywhere. It's like a superpower that I have. I can immediately find my coffee shop or find my gym; it's all those things that make you feel like you have a community," she says.
Having honed this adaptability most of her life, shortly, McKinnon will be transitioning from living out of a suitcase to renting her first apartment, back in Vienna. "The project of my life right now is getting furniture for this apartment [..] and making a nice space for myself so that I can venture out again and feel more comfortable being on the road," she says. "I'm actually quite happy about having a little break and just like putting things into places in my flat."
Though she might be on a 'break', McKinnon's life is anything but quiet. Her other goal is to finish her degree in anthropology — a reminder that, despite her worldly experiences, she is only 25. "[Anthropology is] really closely related to filmmaking in a way that I'm really keen to explore," she explains. She's also in the midst of auditioning for new projects, having jumped into an Indie film in Portugal soon after Black Snow wrapped. As for what's next? "I've always wanted to play a vampire. I feel like vampires are back," she teases.
Every episode of Black Snow season two premieres New Year's Day only on Stan.
