Elisabeth Moss Was in Awe of Kate Hudson Filming Wild Body Horror Movie Shell | Interview

Emmy winner Elisabeth Moss is no stranger to the horror genre and now stars in a wild body horror movie called Shell. ComingSoon spoke with the talented actress about working with co-star Kate Hudson, one of her surprisingly difficult scenes, and more. Directed by Moss’ The Handmaid’s Tale co-star Max Minghella, Shell is out today in select theaters and on digital.

“Desperate to reclaim her career, once-beloved actress Samantha Lake (Elisabeth Moss) is drawn into the glamorous world of wellness mogul Zoe Shannon (Kate Hudson) —only to uncover a monstrous truth beneath its flawless surface,” says the synopsis.

Tyler Treese: Elisabeth, you play an actress who isn’t at her peak, and we see a real vulnerability to Sam. What aspect of the character did you really find most interesting about this role to play into?

Elisabeth Moss: I think the vulnerability of her. You know, I’ve played characters recently – especially on Handmaid – who are so strong and so heroic. This is a person that’s much more like every day. It’s much more kind of like us, like an everywoman, and like the most similar character I feel like I’ve played is maybe Peggy in that everywoman kind of sense.

So for me that was really fun. It’s fun to be strong and it’s fun to be the heroine, but it was kind of a welcome break to be vulnerable and insecure and funny and goofy and not the strongest person in the room. That was fun for me.

It’s also interesting because, as you were saying, you play this very vulnerable and grounded character, but this film gets very over the top and wild in a lot of ways. When you’re playing within a satire as this movie really embraces as it goes on, how do you approach that as an actor? When do you know when to lean into the ridiculousness and when is it funnier to just play it straight?

You know, it’s very much written as if I was the straight man. That was kind of just what it was like. I didn’t have the crazy wild moments. Those were obviously reserved for Kate [laughs], which she does really. And she’s so out of this world, and I just think she’s doing like some of the best work of her career. I mean, I’m not the only person to say this. [It’s] universally acknowledged.

So it was in the script that I was always the grounded [and] grounding force. Definitely, there are times where she’s like, maybe funny Sam, but funny in a very relatable, vulnerable way. And that was something that Max and I talked about before. [That] was the best thing probably for the movie because the movie is so wild and fun and entertaining and very camp like that I had to be the grounding force, otherwise it was gonna be just silliness all around [laughs].

One of the more over-the-top scenes you do have is when you’re projectile vomiting on just everybody around you. How was it filming that sequence?

It was really hard. It was one of our hardest days because to do that, we needed to do it practically, like, and or we wanted to do it practically. I guess you could do anything via effects now, but we wanted to do it practically and it was really hard.

It was really hard to project all vomiting because to hide the tube… it sounds so silly, but just doing things practical, it’s such an art, and special effects is such an incredible art form. It’s really difficult. Like blood rigs are some of the hardest things to do and to make look good and to operate, and those kinds of practical special effects are really difficult.

And so this was hard. And just the literal, like, if you don’t mind being bored for a second, the literal placement of the tube next to my mouth. But without seeing it on camera, like the angle, but making the angle of my body and the angle of my head match the vomit coming out that was connected via a tube to like a guy with a tank [laughs]/

The timing of that and everything… I’m not gonna lie, it was really tricky, and it was one of our more frustrating days, trying to get that right. Obviously, there’s also the issue of once you projectile vomit on somebody, there’s a good 30-minute cleanup there. […] So we rehearsed it over and over and over and over again without the actual gag happening, pun intended. So we just tried to get it as close as possible. And of course, the first take didn’t work [laughs].

You eventually got it. It’s a great scene in the film. It is one of my favorites. So that hard work was worth it.

Thank you.

Kate Hudson has such an interesting role in this as well, and she brings a real magnetism to her character. How is it playing off her and feeding into that kind of allure that Zoe has over Sam at first, because she just has a cult of personality?

Elisabeth Moss: Yeah, I remember saying to Max before we started, like, there is no sort of work I’m gonna have to do on how Sam feels about her character because this is about Zoe. This is how I feel about Kate. She’s an icon. She’s obviously an incredibly talented actress. She’s also like just an icon of beauty and of Hollywood.

She’s somebody that has done… I’ve seen almost every single one of her movies. She’s somebody I’ve admired. We’re pretty actually close in age, but she was far more successful than I was, and so I watched all her movies and so I had this kind of like, and still do, I’m slightly in awe of her… well, more than slightly. And she’s just so cool as well. Like she’s kind of got that cool girl thing and she has this “it factor” she always has, right?

Since Almost Famous, she’s always been that girl, and so it required zero acting. The first scene, when she comes up and talks to me, I did have that feeling of like, “Oh my God, Kate, she’s talking to me. She’s so cool.” She’s so fearless. Which is something I didn’t know like that. She’s very adventurous as an actor. She tries things, she loves to explore, she loves to try different things, and she’s constantly trying to make it better. She doesn’t phone it in by any means. She comes in and she wants to do it again, and she wants to try something else.

Like you’d think, like you’re a movie star, you don’t really have to, you just have to show up. She does not feel that way. She is such a hard worker.

Source: Comingsoon.net