Steven Prusakowski
If you think you know what type of role Camila Morrone will take on next, you may want to guess again. Up until this point, the actress was probably best known for stealing scenes as the quietly powerful 1970s rock ’n’ roll band photographer and cheated on spouse in Daisy Jones & The Six. It would have been easy for her to follow this Emmy-nominated work with similar roles. Instead, Morrone refuses to play it safe, slipping into vastly different lives and souls with every project.
As a guest on TV Topics podcast, Morrone discussed her expectation-defying choices, something she does not do to surprise fans, but to challenge herself, pushing her far outside her comfort zone. As she shared during our conversation, “That is very much the goal, to explore all the genres and as vastly different characters as I possibly can. I was kind of doing a 180 trying to find something different from the last thing that I played.”
This year alone, the actress took on two wildly different roles: Roxana Bolaños, a complex, driven woman aiming to outwit those around her in the dangerous world of Colombian arms dealing opposite Tom Hiddleston and Diego Calva (an upcoming guest on TV Topics) in Prime Video’s The Night Manager. Then, in her most surprising and demanding transformation yet, Morrone went dark… very dark for Netflix’s psychological horror Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, stepping into the skin of Rachel, a bride-to-be trapped in a nightmare situation at the family wedding gathering from hell.
With each new role, Morrone proves you cannot judge Camila’s book by its cover when the cover and all the pages keep changing as she disappears into vastly different characters. Our conversation dove deep into the intense demands of carrying a horror series, the emotional and physical toll of living in such a heavy headspace for months, and also some of her biggest fears.
Camila, a self-proclaimed TV junkie, tries to watch it all, recently binging season two of Beef, Margo’s Got Money Troubles, and catching up on the final season of Euphoria. Her viewing choices are as diverse as her role selections, spanning from heavy dramas like True Detective to brilliantly uncomfortable comedies like The Rehearsal. Be sure to listen to the full conversation below where we really dive into her television influences and favorites.
Morrone shared what attracted her to the role of Rachel in the Duffer Brothers-produced Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen: “I’m really the opposite of Rachel. I’m super chatty and outgoing… and Rachel’s complete opposite of that. I thought this character is so dark and kind of unapologetic and so heavy and paranoid and alert and always thinks someone’s out to get her. She’s got this edge and this darkness and she’s awkward and she’s weird in her own skin. That’s so far from anything I’ve ever played before. And again, that’s the thing that I’m looking for is like that butterfly stomach drop where I go, ‘Oh god, can I do that?’”
On sustaining the horror performance across episodes, Morrone explained the importance of exploring the character beneath the woman driven by her love of her fiancé into an unexpectedly thrust into the ultra-creepy, threatening environment: “Especially with horror, you can’t play somebody who thinks they’re going to die 24/7 because that’s not interesting. It’s not nuanced. It’s not complex. It’s the moments where she thinks she’s going to be okay, the moments where you see her connecting with Nicky (Adam DiMarco) and she’s enjoying herself and she’s relieved and then again, things are heightened again and she’s back to thinking she’s going to die. It’s constantly like the really high highs and the really low lows for Rachel. And I have never played someone with such drastic stakes.”
Rachel’s motivations to push through all the madness, partially by the generational family bloodline curse (haven’t we all) and by love. These qualities make Rachel more than a potential victim in a horror story, but one who is much more relatable, explaining why finding the balance is so vital to Morrone. “I really wanted to sell that relationship and that love and that history between these two characters that are days away from their wedding… how do you keep rooting for Rachel and Nicky till the very end until you’re not.”
“Horror is an incredibly difficult genre,” confessed Morrone. “The camera is right here… all your thoughts have to be really real. And then you get into five, six, seven, eight takes of crying hysterically or trembling. Those are the moments that I actually felt very dropped in and connected. You have to imagine what it would feel like if I knew that I had 72 hours to live and then how do you give variations of that so that you’re not just playing only one note which is just fear the whole time.”
In addition, there are the practical effects which required Morrone to be surrounded by and ultimately immersed in blood, creating challenges of its own. “It was fun because I’ve never done it [practical blood effects]. It’s kind of those moments where you’re like, ‘Wow, I’m really an actor. This is movie magic.’ The blood was challenging because it’s sticky and it gets stuck to everything and you’re rigged up all day and it’s heavy on the dress. But no complaints ’cause it looks so great and it’s just another day as an actor, trying something new.”
It is no wonder why the performance took a physical toll on the actress. “I remember looking at the call sheet and being like, we’re on day 17 and I have 65 more days till I wrap. How am I going to sustain this? How am I physically and emotionally going to sustain this character who is going through it,” confessed Morrone. “For the first time in my life when I wrapped this job, I actually felt unwell. I’ve been exhausted before or I’ve been relieved to finish something, but it wasn’t that. It was like a purging, an emotional purge of just having to live in her head all the time and be spooked all the time for five months.”
The effects of the unsettling mindset creeped into her real life as well, she shared, “I mean, I even would go home and find myself seeing things over my shoulder, like hearing a sound and questioning it and locking all the doors. I’m not trying to be method, but you do carry some of these things with you when you go home at 4 in the morning. When I finished, I just had to shed it for a few weeks.”
Playing Roxanna in The Night Manager was in great contrast with playing Rachel, who is “driven by her love for her partner. That’s ultimately why she was going to sacrifice herself. Very different women.”
“Roxanna is quite emotionless and detached from her internal world. I think she’s very much a survivor. She’s not empathetic. She’s not sympathetic. She’s quite coldblooded. She’s like an absolute player on the field with these guys. She’s got this toolbox. She’s constantly picking what tool she want to use. When she wants to use her sexuality, or use her threat, or kindness, is going to be the most beneficial in that moment… It’s a manipulation game. It’s a chess game.” The results are captivating – a half a world and complete persona away from her work as Rachel.
What does Morrone have coming next after playing a blood-soaked bride-to-be and a Colombian arms dealer? If you guess a mysterious, scandalous woman in Gilded Age New York for the classic period piece The Age of Innocence, you are probably as excited for it as we are.
What’s next for Camila is anyone’s guess.
Be sure to watch Camila Morrone’s incredible transformations across The Night Manager (streaming on Prime Video) and Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen (on Netflix). And just as importantly learn much more about Camila including so much of the tv that shapes her as an artist, and why she would choose to have maggots poured down the back of her shirt (a part of a horror-themed, this or that set of TV Topics questions) and much more.
(Subscribe for more TV Topics episodes on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast provider where you can find me talking TV with all my guests including Carrie Coon, Paul Giamatti, Ethan Hawke, Uzo Aduba, and dozens more.)
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