Kathryn Newton’s world just got a little more freakier. The modern-day scream queen first stepped into the horror genre in 2012’s Paranormal Activity 4. She went on to grapple with malevolent forces, the unknown and otherworldly beings in the TV series Supernatural and The Society, as well as feature films Freaky and Lisa Frankenstein. Newton also sank her teeth into the vampire-thriller Abigail, directed by Radio Silence, the filmmaking collective of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. The trio reunited for the upcoming Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, a sequel to its devilishly fun 2019 predecessor.
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The movie opens mere seconds after the original’s iconic ending, where a cigarette-smoking Grace (Samara Weaving) sits after surviving a nightmarish game of hide-and-seek, one that resulted in her Le Domas in-laws exploding into smithereens. Blacking out, she wakes up blood-soaked and handcuffed to a hospital bed. Enter Faith (Newton), Grace’s estranged younger sister and emergency contact. Before the two can catch their breath and work out longstanding issues, the siblings get sucked into round two of the deadly game. Once again, all hell quickly breaks loose.
Newton spoke to ComicBook about the art of screaming, blood splatter, getting the crap beaten out of her, and nabbing the coveted role of Cassie Lang in the third Ant-Man movie.
Your character Faith gets ball-gagged and dragged into this insanity. What does she initially make of it all?
Kathryn Newton: I don’t think she understands the significance of what is happening and the stakes. No one would. I am Faith in that regard. Everyone is like me. I’m like, “You know. This is how it is. You are not going to hurt me. I would never hurt you.” And that’s not true. We don’t know other people. Everyone is right, and everyone is wrong. Faith is certainly ignorant to the level of violence and evil that these people are in front of her. And there’s no way she is going to listen to her sister. Why would she? So, she’s got to learn the hard way.
What were your thoughts on the sisterly dynamic and the way it evolves over the course of the movie?
I approached this as a yin and yang. She’s the Midnight Run of it all, that DeNiro movie. She’s the straight man and I’m the funny guy. That was a small part of it. It was way smaller than I thought. It was mostly allowing Samara to lead this movie and for me to support her. Every scene was different. I thought it was going to be a buddy comedy. I was wrong. Every scene was high stakes… running for our lives and emotional drama. All of the comedy just came from me being myself. The role was written for me, in my voice. I tried to add jokes or make jokes happen. We didn’t need any of that. The story is funny enough on its own. It was really playing the reality of every scene, and Samara showed me how it was done on day one, and I just followed suit.
This movie features scared-sh*tless screams. Primal-rage screams. Utter-disbelief screams. How do you go about delivering unique nuances for each different scream that reflects the emotional state that your character is going through?
Screaming is such a bodily reaction. It’s from your core, maybe like singing and the kind of note you are trying to hit. But if you don’t have any emotion, nobody is going to feel anything. It’s just whatever the scene is calling for. If it’s a scary sh*tless scream, it might be a little high-pitched. I don’t plan them. I wish I could scream like Samara Weaving. Her scream is so good. It feels so good in the back of your chest, just watching it. It’s so guttural every time. I don’t have that thing she has for different screams. But I practiced my scream when I was on Paranormal Activity 4. When I was 14, going to that screen test in the car. “I am going to scream really quick and tell me how bad it hurts your ears.” I tried not to hurt anyone’s ears, except the sound guy. There’s not much you can do.
It’s surprising that you or Samara didn’t lose your voice.
We didn’t. Isn’t that crazy? We did not lose our voices. We were so in it. We developed super-human strength.
Both Grace and Faith have their moment to shine and both have their own separate nemesis that they face. For you, that’s Titus (Shawn Hatosy). Can you talk about filming that confrontation because it gets pretty brutal?
I think the movie was True Romance, with Patricia Arquette, where she’s covered in blood and gets beat up. Is that True Romance? I watched that movie cause that’s what Matt told us he wanted it to feel like. He wanted everyone to feel terrible. They actually cut a lot of the fight. It was a lot worse. It was more violent and uncomfortable to watch. Not that it’s fun to watch me get beat up, but there’s a fine line between being fun and not fun. We kept it fun. We had a week of rehearsals, but I’d say two days with Shawn and I. It was a long fight scene and a lot of pages. We had two half days to shoot it. We had a great stunt team and I am very athletic. I was very excited to give the audience something. It’s actually way harder to take a punch than to throw one, I found. To sell the pain is kind of fun. I was like, “More blood. Give me more blood. I will spit it on him.”
Faith suffered a lot of kicks to the gut.
I know. Look, I am here to tell the tale.
It’s almost a rite of passage in a Radio Silence production to either be splattered by blood or immersed in blood. How do you prepare for those sequences? How do you psyche yourself up for the blood cannon?
You block them out, so by the time the next one comes around you’ve forgotten what it was like. And, also, to tell you the truth, I am thinking about the fans. I am thinking about the audience. This is what we want to see… More blood. Bring it on. I hope it hits me. I make sure that thing is aimed right at me, so it gets a good launch and doesn’t miss. I want it to be great.
In a split second, you spit some blood out. Was that already on the page or fake blood just ended up in your mouth?
That was scripted, I think, where I spit on Shawn. That was scripted. No, it wasn’t. The line was scripted. I did get more blood. I love that stuff. That stuff tastes good like caramel. I got him really good. When it was his coverage, I got him so good.
I read somewhere once that a director said a genre film is fun because an audience knows what is going to happen, and we all know I am going to spit blood on somebody or somebody is going to explode on me. The question is how are we going to tell the story that’s going to keep the audience invested. I think I figured that out on Supernatural. I love that show. I felt a lot of freedom. I was very young. I didn’t have any fear. That energy is the same with Matt and Tyler. I just didn’t have any fear. I don’t have any fear in these movies because these characters are begging for someone to do something with them. If I just showed up and said the lines and screamed, I don’t think anyone would love the movie. It might be a good movie, but it wouldn’t be great. For me as an actor and an artist, I just get to do whatever I want. Not in a way that wouldn’t fit in the movie. I mean we are searching for the best idea to make the most creative movie and the best film. I love me and Sam in this movie. It’s my favorite part. Genuinely, if you look at the whole cast, everyone is incredible.
My favorite performance, besides me and Sam, is Shawn Hatosy. He is a really incredible actor and does more than what is on the page. He brought something so special and weird. It’s that special thing only he could have done. It’s funny because he would look at me and be like, “Is this working?” I am being completely unhinged and I am like, “It’s brilliant.” It’s what we need. It’s what you need to make a great genre film is an artist doing their thing. But not everyone is like that. Not every movie is the same. This just has to be that kind of playground. Matt and Tyler invited that. There are different kinds of directors who need different things. I like, also, being told what to do. “Don’t do anything extra.” This just happens to be how Matt and Tyler operate.
Lastly, you joined the MCU in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Is there still more Cassie Lang story to tell? Could she pop up in one of these Avengers films?
I love horror. I love comics. Marvel is so big and big in my heart. It’s a big universe, so who is to say what could happen.
Have you ever had any conversations regarding Young Avengers? Cassie leads that team.
Did she? [laughter] I don’t know anything. I recently went to Disneyland, and it’s always fun to go see Ant-Man over there. Sometimes there’s a Cassie Lang walking around. Did you know when I was 8-years-old… I’m not sure when Iron Man came out… I’ve been an actress since I was 4. I saw Iron Man, and I walked out of that theatre, and I was like, “That’s a movie star. If I want to be a movie star, I’ve got to do a Marvel movie.” I told myself by the time I was 25, if I did not get a Marvel movie, I was probably not going to be an actor. And I got it when I was 24. Maybe I was 21. It was a long time ago that I shot Ant-Man. But, yes, dreams come true. That’s what is so special about Marvel and Disney movies. Dreams are possible. Even Ready or Not, it’s a fantasy-magical movie. I know it’s a horror-comedy, but there’s a lot of mythology now and the world has expanded. You can’t tell me that there’s not some wizardry going on.
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Courtesy of Bones Film
