Bow down to Ready Or Not’s Samara Weaving – your new horror queen who isn’t going down without a bloody fight.
Imagine being drenched in ‘syrupy’ fake blood, popped in a lace wedding gown in minus five degree temperatures and made to scream at 4am after being on set for 12 hours – all the while Adam Brody is chasing you down with a shotgun. For Samara, this is all in a day.
The Australian actress leads the cast of Ready Or Not, a blood-thirsty horror already gaining a tonne of hype ahead of its release in the UK.
The soon-to-be-cult-favourite centres on a game of hide and seek in a creepy mansion – what could go wrong?
A lot.
As newlywed bride Grace Le Domas, Samara is fleeing from her terrifying in-laws who are out to kill her before the sun rises.
Starring Adam Brody as her new brother-in-law Daniel and Andie MacDowell as her mother-in-law Becky, it’s directed by Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and, frankly, is terrifying.
For 27-year-old Samara (who will next be in the Bill And Ted reboot) she was living the breathing the horror, as she described the blood-covered set.
And, boy, does she ace the classic horror shriek.
‘I’m a very good screamer, I can do a good guttural scream,’ Samara – the niece of Matrix legend Hugo Weaving – laughed with Metro.co.uk.
‘I didn’t want her to be this damsel in distress. I wanted her to be strong and not run up the stairs when everyone in the audience is yelling “go out the front door!” I wanted her to be calculated and smart about how she handled it and quick on her feet, but still be truthful. She’s genuinely freaked out, obviously.
‘Screams come [naturally]. It’s really therapeutic!
‘It’s 2am and you’re freezing and covered in sticky syrup meant to look like blood, you’re quite uncomfortable but trying not to complain because everyone is in the same boat, so screaming a lot, I got it all out.’
Samara had a similar foray into showbusiness as her co-star Adam, bonding with the Seth Cohen actor over growing up on a popular TV show (Home And Away, ‘is pretty much the OC but Australian’, she joked).
Asked whether coming from the same school of acting as Chris Hemsworth – who starred on Home And Away from 2004-2007 – equipped her with the tools to take on Hollywood, she agreed it threw them into the sometimes-cruel world of showbiz headfirst.
Citing the long-running Aussie soap as ‘gruelling work’, Samara admitted it did instil an aspirational sense in her to go further, push harder.
But much like Chris recently admitted, the move to Hollywood isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be.
‘I didn’t leave Australia until I had a role in the States, which I think for a lot of actors you go “okay, I’ll move to LA and it’ll happen”, but no one knows you there,’ she said.
‘I’ve seen a lot of people go over and run out of money and the ball isn’t rolling or they get a bit down, it’s tough this industry.
‘[Home And Away] is basically everyone’s first role, if you start at 16, and you got it by auditioning one time. I didn’t have a fully-realised reality of how hard it is to actually get a role, especially in LA.’
Despite being hunted, throwing herself into pits of rotting animal carcasses and having your mate’s teen crush point a rifle at you – we have to say she’s not doing so bad in Tinseltown.
Ready Or Not is in UK cinemas 25 September.
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