🎧 The Breakout Star of Summer’s Breakout Thriller
Willa Fitzgerald on her performance in the surprising 'Strange Darling'. Plus: A post-Telluride, pre-Toronto cheat sheet
On Apple Podcasts, subscribe and listen here
If you’ve heard anything about the new indie thriller Strange Darling, it’s probably that you shouldn’t hear too much about it in advance. A stylish serial killer saga that starts with a blind date and goes to some unbelievable places from there, Strange Darling isn’t exactly a movie based on a twist, but it works best when its audience goes in with certain expectations and has them entirely upended.
That makes it a little tricky for the star of Strange Darling, Willa Fitzgerald, 33, to promote the role that marks a major breakthrough in her career. It was even harder when the film first premiered at Fantastic Fest last year, with the actors strike still ongoing. Fitzgerald, previously seen on the TV series versions of Scream and Jack Reacher, and her castmates were unable to talk about it at all.
“Making a movie is always hard, and you always have those moments where you feel like it might not be birthed,” Fitzgerald tells me on this week’s Prestige Junkie podcast, now that Strange Darling is, in fact, safely out in the world. “When we found out that it was going to be at Fantastic Fest, we were excited because it felt like a good home for the movie. There also was a little bit of fear that it would maybe be our last chance to celebrate it — because you never know what is going to happen next for a film.”
In our conversation, Nashville-native Fitzgerald and I stuck largely to broader, spoiler-free details, like how she built her on-screen relationship with co-star Kyle Gallner for their incredibly intense scenes together, and how having actor Giovanni Ribisi behind the camera as the film’s director of photography made a difference in her performance.
But, warning, we also got into spoilers! It was the first time, Fitzgerald told me, that she’d really been able to get into detail about the truth of Strange Darling, and the work she did to create a believable character despite all the wild directions the story takes her. So if you haven’t seen this terrific movie, don’t listen to the conversation past the 52-minute mark. But once you’ve seen the movie, you’ll absolutely want to hear what Fitzgerald has to say about it.
The episode also includes a conversation between me and IndieWire’s chief critic David Ehrlich, who is newly home from the Telluride Film Festival and has the scoop on some of the weekend’s buzziest premieres — including a few titles I’ll get to see in Toronto in a few short days.
One last reminder: Next week’s podcast episode will be recorded live in Toronto with Hugh Grant joining me to talk about his role in A24’s upcoming thriller Heretic and so much more. If you’ll be in Toronto, I hope I’ll see you there!