Tatiana Maslany is tickled by my description of her messy new horror movie with Osgood Perkins, The Monkey – ‘I want to do something “entertainingly disgusting” – I love that so much,’ she laughs, of her decision to sign on for her role.
The Monkey has been making serious waves prior to its release, having racked up 100,000,000 views of its first trailer in 72 hours – an indie horror record, apparently – before it was later banned from being shown on US TV by major networks due to its ‘excessive violence’ and graphic content.
Perkins is also a filmmaker of exciting stature, coming off the massive hit he had with Longlegs, featuring Nicolas Cage’s terrifying titular serial killer, but The Monkey is something completely different.
Rather than a nerve-shredding sense of doom throughout, this short but shocking movie all-but laughs at death, constantly throwing blood and body matter at the audience with its string of ever-more grisly and inventive slaughters.
And this is what appealed to Emmy-winner Maslany, 39, who fans will know from the likes of Orphan Black and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law – and who has already worked with Perkins again on upcoming cabin-based horror Keeper.
‘I was so obsessed with working with him and loved the experience so much – I was reminded of why making movies can be so fun, even if you have a budget of $0, so I just wanted to work with him, no matter what,’ the Canadian-born star enthuses.
‘But then when I read the script, it was tonally so very different from what we’d done [on Keeper] and what Longlegs was, so I was really excited by that big swing.’
Adapted by Perkins from the Stephen King short story of the same name, The Monkey follows twins Hal and Bill (played by Christian Convery), who discover a vintage toy monkey belonging to their father in the attic as youngsters.
After realising this drummer monkey is linked to a string of horrifying deaths, killing the moment it bangs its sticks, they try to rid themselves of it, but the monkey won’t be silenced easily – as Hal (played as an adult by Theo James) finds out 25 years later.
Maslany plays the boys’ mother Lois, an unusually frank and slightly morbid representation of motherhood, whose strong voice appealed to the actress.
‘She talks to her kids like they can handle it – she doesn’t condescend to them. Maybe that also veers into she has no boundaries with them – but I think her intention when they’re in the graveyard, talking about death, is [to] arm them with some of what she’s learned and some of the incomprehensible nature of all of it. I can’t imagine being a parent and having to talk about that with kids.’
*Spoilers ahead for The Monkey. You have been warned!*
If you’ve seen the trailer, then you already have an inkling of what’s in store for Lois, as Maslany’s screaming face, with a gaping mouth and blood pouring from her eyes, is the second image flashed on screen.
It’s gory stuff – and we’re not even at the deaths by trampling, impaling and explosion yet, by the way – but Maslany got a thrill out of doing everything practically, with a full rig and a bladder of blood being pumped off camera, and just a touch of CGI afterwards ‘to kind of amp it up’.
‘Those moments are so exciting and nerve-wracking, because you only have one shot at it [as] once you’re covered with blood you kind of have to leave set! So it’s always thrilling to get to do very practical things because everyone really has to pay attention,’ she shares.
It’s also an emotionally charged moment as the audience realises what is about to happen to Hal and Bill – and that also really struck Maslany as particularly powerful and shocking.
‘It’s sort of devastating and has to break your heart and be unbearably gruesome in a sort of real way,’ she puts it, of the careful balance that had to be managed. It sounds like it’s stayed with her in the same way it will haunt audiences.
There are also plenty of funeral scenes in The Monkey – a by-product of that many deaths – although Perkins keeps it humorous in a slightly outrageous way with a questionably qualified priest and some perfectly judged shots and cuts. One of these involves a lingering look at Maslany lying in a coffin. Is that as creepy a place to lie as an actor as you’d imagine?
‘It was gross [and] weird to be in it. I didn’t love being inside,’ she reveals, before sharing where her mind went. ‘I didn’t love the smell of being inside of it – and not that it had been used! But I think I was like, “Has this been used?!”’
As Maslany already has another collaboration in the can with Perkins, 51, she clearly enjoys working with the actor-turned-writer and director, who many will recognise as Elle’s dorky friend David in Legally Blonde, or for playing a young version of his father Anthony Perkins’ infamous villain, Norman Bates, in Psycho II.
She sees him fostering unique voices and loves that he’s always most interested in ‘somebody with a weird idea’.
‘One of his massive strengths is just seeing what’s special about a performer or a technician and allowing them to do that, which is not always the case. Sometimes you are asked to just stay in a box that works.’
‘Every day is a puzzle to be solved, and the weirder choices are always getting highlighted and supported and attempted, and if they don’t work, then we try something else. There’s a lot of space,’ she adds.
Given how huge Longlegs’ success was – it grossed $126.9million (£100.1m) on a sub-$10m (£7.9m) budget – and how the hype around Perkins’ follow-up seems just as buzzy, I ask Maslany if she sees a shift towards audiences rejecting bigger budget blockbusters in favour of indie projects; Oscar favourite The Brutalist was also shot for under $10m (£7.9m).
‘I dream of that because it does feel unsustainable that every film has to be a major, massive budget thing for it to be counted as a film and for it to have a theatrical run,’ she says. ‘What’s exciting is I think people are over that, they’re not interested in that, they’re showing the kinds of movies they want to see.
‘I think there’s a lot of fighting for independent film to come back [and] we need it desperately, because it’s the only place voices aren’t heavily curated by corporate interests – it’s the only way that voices that are actually from the filmmaker, from the creators, will get spotlighted.’
The Monkey will be released in cinemas on Friday, February 21.
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