Madelaine Petsch on Acting in ‘The Strangers – Chapter 2’ While Covered in Fake Blood and What’s Next in the Twisty Third Movie: ‘Who Really Is the Antagonist?’

According To The variety SPOILER ALERT: This article contains mild spoilers about “The Strangers – Chapter 2,” now playing in theaters. “The Strangers – Chapter 2” star Madelaine Petsch has proven her Scream Queen bona fides through her performances so far in the planned trilogy. The second film, in theaters now via Lionsgate, finds the actor much more in control after being terrorized by the mysterious title baddies in the first film, a reimagining of the 2008 hit. The sequel opens with Maya (Petsch) wounded in a hospital, mourning the death of her fiancé at the end of last year’s “Chapter 1.” But she can’t sit around healing for too long, as the three masked killers are almost immediately after her again. Instead of running, Maya eventually chooses to stand her ground and fight back. Petsch spoke with Variety about surviving the intense shoot, how she was able to take control as a producer and the upcoming third film that will end Maya’s journey. How are you able to conjure big emotions like screaming or crying on camera once a scene starts? Honestly, so much of my work happens before I get to set. I spend so much time with the character on the page, really building out how she would respond to certain situations. By the time I get to set and I’m put in that situation, it’s just whatever comes out of me. I think the most important thing for me is to let my mind be blank as Madelaine when I’m going into a character. After running around covered with blood on set all day, do you have a self-care ritual? It’s so funny, because doing press for the first movie, I didn’t get that question at all, and then for the second, I’ve gotten it so much. It made me realize I have a terrible decompression system. I don’t do anything afterwards, but I barely slept during those movies, and that must be why. For so much of the film, you’re covered in blood and mud and running for your life. Given that Hollywood is so focused on being glam, is it liberating to shoot with the focus on a different side of your physicality? Absolutely, it really is, when it’s embraced. I remember on set they’d say, “Add more dirt. Add more blood,” and it was such a free experience. No one cares about what I look like in this movie, they care about if I’m selling what’s going on in the film, and that’s really cool. It was very liberating as an artist to be looked at as that and not as something additive physically. At one point, you have a wild scene fighting for your life against a boar. Did you act opposite an actor in a MoCap suit, or a tennis ball or just use your imagination? Oh my God, imagine if it was a tennis ball? Originally, they told me it was nothing. I remember when we first got to Slovakia, I asked, “How do you shoot something like this? I’ve never in my wildest dreams done anything like this,” and they said, “It’s just going to be you.” I said, “That can’t possibly be right, that doesn’t make any sense,” so I eventually convinced them to hire a creature actor. He wasn’t in a MoCap suit; he was in a black version of those green screen suits, basically a black latex suit. He just had eye holes open, but he acted as if he was the animal. He made the sounds and it was so helpful. I genuinely don’t know what I would’ve done if I had to do it alone, which is what the original plan was. There are parts where it’s stepping on me and my body gets lowered … If I didn’t have something there, how am I going to do that? You’re a producer on these movies, and you’ve held that role on several of your projects before. What kind of control and creativity does that give you beyond acting? It’s different for every project. I think the blessing of my career so far has been that every time I’ve become a producer on one of these major studio films, it’s been very natural. I’ve been asked to come in and act, and then, as I’ve been on set, they’ve asked me to come on as a producer. So it feels additive, which is really important. For “The Strangers,” that gave me a lot of creative control, which is a blessing and a curse, because I had to really work on being in the editing room specifically and not overanalyzing the way I looked, which is so funny because we were talking about how freeing it was. But then you get in this room with your face on a giant screen and think, “Oh my God, my forehead’s so wrinkly. Do I need to go get Botox?” So it was a lot of self-reflection I had to do when I started editing these films, but there is a lot of creative control that comes with that. Do you want to try other jobs behind the camera, like writing or directing? I actually rewrote the “Strangers” films with [producer] Courtney [Solomon] on set, so I definitely have a little bit of a bug for writing. I don’t think I am quite developed enough as a writer to write something from scratch, but I can rewrite fairly well because I think I can go into the character’s perspective, which is how I get into everything. In terms of directing, I have a really big passion for it, but I know I need to gain a lot more knowledge before I do it, so I’m just focusing on acting and building up my production company right now. Your character kicks a lot more ass in this movie and fights back against the Strangers. Was that something that was important for you to amp up going into the second film? I think the beautiful thing about these films is that it’s very rare to get the script for three movies at one time that are a trilogy or franchise of films. With this situation, I was able to carve out a very clear character arc for Maya, where she starts as a regular girl on a road trip and she’s in this crazy circumstances and in denial the whole movie. As it progresses, you meet her in this movie, and she is coming to terms with: How much is she willing to do to survive? Can you be pushed past your breaking point? What happens when she is? How much of her humanity is she willing to lose in order to survive? By the third film, you’re in a place where she’s a shell of who she once was, and I think that’s the blessing of shooting all three at once. I was able to carve out a very clear character arc because this situation would absolutely change a person. What can you tease about the next movie? Number three takes a turn into territory I never thought a horror movie could go. It plays with a magnetism that you wouldn’t expect, and it becomes almost a question of who really is the antagonist of this film? On Oct. 8, you have a rom-com headed to Amazon Prime Video called “Maintenance Required.” Given that you see so many scripts, what about this one stood out to you? I really love my character, Charlie. I think she’s magnificent because she’s really passionate about one thing, which is car mechanics. She’s completely oblivious to almost everything else going on in the world, including love. I think it’s really charming to see a film like this where usually a man who says, “I don’t care about love” and “I just care about cars” and the girl’s like, “Love me back!” In this situation, it’s opposite, and I think that’s really wonderful. Also, that’s a muscle I haven’t really gotten to tap much is the comedic, sweet muscle. As an actor, variety really is the spice of life. So it was the perfect storm of what I was itching to do in the moment, and Charlie being such a magnetic character and being so stuck in her ways and unique and strong, and the creative team being wonderful. It was a dream.