No Exit: Havana Rose Liu Is Having A Blast With Hulu’s New Thriller

In 2017, No Exit dropped into bookstores and offered up a thrill ride which immediately earned acclaim from critics and other readers. Many of those readers have crowded the comment section of the trailer for 2022’s No Exit, a film based on the novel which is set to hit Hulu on Friday, sharing their excitement for the movie. At the front of the adaptation is Havana Rose Liu, starring in her first leading role for a feature film. While the intense film put Liu in some sticky situations (literally, it got messy), the up-and-coming star seems to have had a blast while working on the film in New Zealand and had just as much fun reuniting with her co-stars to talk about the film over Zoom.

“I think it’s so amazing that there is this hungry fan base around the novel by Taylor Adams,” Liu told ComicBook.com, as seen in the interview above. In the film, she plays Darby, a young woman who escapes a mental hospital in hopes of reaching her ill mother. There are some deviations from the novel but the overall premise remains; Darby get caught in a snow storm and stuck at a visitor’s center truck stop where she discovers a kidnapped girl with no knowledge of which person around her is the kidnapper. “I think it’s an awesome book and I can totally understand the fervor of of the wanting to see what this movie’s gonna be,” Liu said. “I also think it adds a lot of pressure because, you know I wanna do right by everyone. So, I think it’s a whole mix of things.”

Liu performs under pressure, though. Not only was she all smiles during a full day of press conferences and interviews but she delivers a menacingly good performance in No Exit. Darby finds herself in visceral situations which call upon some scarily deep emotions from the actress, each of which she nails. The film pairs her with some acting veterans and other up-and-comers who are simultaneously in the midst of breakouts. Familiar faces include Dennis Haysbert (known well for his All State commercials but also roles in 24, Far From Heaven, and Heat), Danny Ramirez (who recently appeared in Marvel’s The Falcon and The Winter Soldier), David Rysdahl (who has had great success in festival circuits with That’s Not Us and Black Swell), and Dale Dickey (who boasts more than 100 acting credits, including Hell or High Water and Marvel’s Iron Man 3).

“I think I try to focus as much as possible just on the script,” Liu explained. “I didn’t want anything else to come in and change the way that Darby had been built for the script, especially because there are changes made to her character, pretty major changes to her backstory that I think are really integral to how the film plays out. And I would say that the film and the movie hold really all the same ingredients, they’re really the same. They’re really the same beast but maybe from different angles.” 

The beast called for some intense days on set, starting with a lesson from the snow generation. Despite being set in a blizzard, No Exit filmed on a stage in New Zealand in the middle of the summer. All of the snow was fake. When the crew was trying to generate a windy snow effect for Liu to endure as Darby on set, she caught a bit more than she bargained for but stuck it out for the take. “I remember it was like very early on in the shoot, I was very nervous and we do a take out in the parking lot, snow everywhere, and what we didn’t super factor in is that the snow dressing on all of the woods which was made out of paper would also pick up in the fans that were blowing the foam snow,” Liu explained. “So it’s already blizzarding with this foam snow, but then also the fans were picking up everything that was already dressed on the ground and on the trees. And so I remember doing this take and my eyes, like everything looked like it was burning. And I, I remember like trying to be strong and be like, ‘I just have to push through this!’ I was so nervous and sort of insecure that point that I was like, ‘This is fine, I’m gonna be fine,’ and then I remember like Damien came up afterwards and I was like weeping because I just couldn’t.” From that point forward, they fixed the snow and wind generation.

Unlike the first encounter with fake snow, the production of No Exit did offer up a unique advantage for its cast. The film shot in chronological order, a rare style of filmmaking. “It was really a pleasure for him to be able to work chronologically,” Liu explained. “And I think that I can say that very much the same and also say it also made the scenes that are difficult and the ones in succession that are difficult, even more difficult because you are working with them all in one chunk.” No Exit isn’t afraid to push the limits of how heavy or dark it gets, something which eventually took its toll on the cast and crew. “I remember there were days on set where it was like a specific stretch that once you see the movie you’ll know what I’m talking about, and I remember crew members were like, just walking off, like being like, I need a break, I need to breathe. Like this is so intense, and we need a moment to sort of like breathe around this.” Fortunately, they all came back to get the job done.

You can see ComicBook.com’s full interview with Havana Rose Liu in the video above! Are you excited for No Exit? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram! No Exit starts streaming on Hulu on Friday.