Elizabeth Olsen has done some pretty intense dramatic scenes in her films (Martha Marcy May Marlene, Silent House, Oldboy, Avengers: Infinity War) and TV Shows (Wandavision) but her new HBO Max crime drama miniseries Love & Death might’ve pushed her too far – but not for the reason you may think!
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(Love & Death SPOILERS Follow)
In Love & Death Olsen plays Candy Montgomery, the real-life housewife accused of killing her friend Betty Gore (Lily Rabe), whose husband Allan (Jesse Plemons) she was having an affair with. Montgomery’s trial hinged on the question of whether or not she killed Betty in self-defense – a moment the show depicts as horrific, but unclear, in its initial stages. The most pivotal sequence of the show is when Betty and Candy are in the Gore laundry room, where a cordial discussion about the affair spiraled into a feral battle between two women, which ended in a bloody, horrific, fashion.
According to Elizabeth Olsen, filming that laundry room sequence with actress Lily Rabe was a bit too much for her – mostly due to the fact that Rabe was six months pregnant at the time!
“Lily was six months pregnant. It was awful. She had a double. And they also could erase [her belly] in post. But she was in a little shirt with a six-month belly! It was crazy,” Olsen told THR. “And she really wanted to do everything. Lily is a really physically strong human being, and so it was like real tension, physically, and there was an element where I felt safe because we had choreography, but there was an element where I didn’t want to do everything. So it was a lot of things.”
Apparently, Rabe’s dedication to doing the scene was so strong that Olsen had to (in her own words) ‘tap out.’ All the Marvel Avengers action in the world could prepare her to do an ax fight with a pregnant lady:
“My experience with more fight sequences isn’t hand-to-hand fighting. And so it felt kind of scary at times. And then there were moments where Lily asked me to, with the rubber ax, make contact with her body. And I tapped out and was like, “You’re going to have to do this with my stunt double.”
The end result certainly helps convey Elizabeth Olsen’s trepidation, as Candy and Betty’s fight is horrific even though the show is only slowly (but surely) revealed to the viewers each week. Comparatively, Olsen’s murderous run (in front of a green screen) as Scarlet Witch in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness looks tame.
Love & Death is now streaming on HBO Max.
