How Maika Monroe & Mary Elizabeth Winstead Made The Hand That Rocks the Cradle Feel Fresh

ComingSoon spoke with The Hand That Rocks the Cradle stars Maika Monroe and Mary Elizabeth Winstead about their roles in the new remake. The duo discussed their performances, making the film feel unique, and more. It is now streaming on Hulu.

“Mary Elizabeth Winstead stars as Caitlin Morales, an upscale suburban mom who brings a new nanny, Polly Murphy (Maika Monroe), into her home, only to discover she is not the person she claims to be,” says the official synopsis.

Tyler Treese: Maika, I really loved your performance in the film. What I enjoyed was that you put all these little touches into your performance, be it a small look or a small break in the character. We see that there’s something more to Polly, and we start questioning her motivations. You really used the slow burn of the film to your advantage. So how was it finding those little moments to express that there’s more than it initially seems?

Maika Monroe: More than meets the eye. Well, it was important to me to really have the inner dialogue and inner monologue that was going through my head, really nailed. Because a lot of what I’m portraying is not how I’m actually feeling. I’m sort of putting on this facade, pretending to be someone that I’m not. You don’t see Polly on her own very often. You kind of get little glimpses of it.

So I really wanted to take advantage of those moments to sort of let the audience in for a moment, but still have a mystery to it. So yeah, it was just making sure that I knew exactly what was going on in my head and then sort of seeing what sort of physicality came from that, I guess.

Mary, your character is just fiercely devoted to protecting her children. You’re a mother yourself, so how is it putting that passion you have for your child into this role and really showing not just the worry that a mother has, but also the strength and determination that really comes with motherhood?

Mary Elizabeth Winstead: It was probably easier for me to tap into it because I am a mother, and so those anxieties that Caitlin is grappling with are kinda live on the surface of my brain, so it’s not really too hard to go into and to imagine if these things were happening, like how difficult it would be.

So yeah, I definitely could tap, like you said, into that “what you would do if somebody had your children that you didn’t trust?” You would do anything to stop that from happening. So that was also the kind of anger that starts coming at a certain point in the film when I’m realizing what’s going on. It brought up a lot of just anger and determination in terms of how you would feel if your child was in that situation. So yeah, I just kind of leaned on that.

Maika, I spoke with Rebecca De Mornay recently, and she had mixed thoughts initially when this was announced, but she thought of A Star Is Born, and she thought about how many times that had been remade and was made unique each time. After seeing this, it was clearly made unique and has its own feel, so I think you all accomplished that for sure. How important was it for you to make sure this had its own thing? It’s gonna be called a remake a thousand times, but it really is its own film.

Maika Monroe: Yeah, I think it’s incredibly important. Also, I love the original, and I think when it came out, it made such a splash, and it’s such an iconic title, and everyone has heard of the film. But you know, a lot has changed since the nineties, and I feel like what Michelle and the team did really made it modern and current.

Also, something I loved about the original, but it’s different with this, is that the original is a bit more flashy and heightened, and the classic sort of like an over-the-top nineties thriller, which is so fun. And I think this version is very grounded, very believable. You can imagine this situation happening to you, and that’s what I think is really powerful about this. But it really does… I mean, reading the script, it felt like a completely different movie, just having sort of the same surface-level plot of a nanny coming to a household.

But that’s why I wanted to do it, though. It felt like a fresh take.

Source: Comingsoon.net