ComingSoon’s Jonathan Sim recently spoke with actors Hunter Schafer (Euphoria, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Kinds of Kindness), Dan Stevens (Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Abigail, Beauty and the Beast), and Jessica Henwick (Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, The Matrix Resurrections) about their roles in the new horror movie Cuckoo, which is out on August 9.
“Seventeen-year-old Gretchen reluctantly leaves America to live with her father at a resort in the German Alps,” reads the official synopsis. “Plagued by strange noises and bloody visions, she soon discovers a shocking secret that concerns her own family.”
Jonathan Sim: Hunter, in my review of the film, I said that this was your scream queen debut. When you were developing your performance. Did you ever take any inspiration from any iconic screen queens in cinema history?
Hunter Schafer: I feel like I remember looking at—what is the movie with the trans-masc person?
Silence of the Lambs?
Schafer: I don’t know. The Scream Queen thing is very sweet, but I do believe that in order to take on that title, you have to have done multiple horror movies. So I look forward to maybe being more deserving of it in the future.
Well, I look forward to seeing you in more of these roles in the future. Let’s go to Dan and Jessica. You’re all playing very intricate characters who have a lot going on underneath the surface. I want to know from you both what aspects of your character were you the most excited to experiment with when portraying them on screen?
Dan Stevens: I think that sort of the charm of König is kind of fun to play with that he believes that he’s running a very idyllic, beautiful place. And how sort of counter that runs to the story that we see through Gretchen’s eyes. The more I got to enjoy my job and my environment, the weirder it seemed, I think.
What about you, Jessica?
Jessica Henwick: I loved getting to build out that relationship with Mila, who plays my daughter Alma. At first, I was slightly insulted that I had an 8-year-old daughter, but then once I accepted that she was a yummy mummy, a young yummy mummy, then it was fine. I also loved—this is like such a random thing I love—but I really loved the costumes because it’s so different. It’s such a different look and aesthetic from anything I’d done before. I remember early on, Tilman was like, he wanted me to wear this furry white sweater, and he was like, I keep having these dreams where I see you in a furry white sweater, and the sun is coming behind you, and I can see the individual hairs. So I really wanted to help do some justice to Tilman’s dreams or nightmares.
Schafer: That was a cute, cute outfit for sure.
Stevens: It made you look like a swan.
Schafer: You looked really good.
I’m happy to say that there’s one moment in Cuckoo where a certain character shows up where once they showed up, it was one of the most terrifying things I have seen all year. So for all of you, is there a moment in any horror movie that you’ve seen that sticks out as the scariest scene that’s gonna stick in your brain forever?
Henwick: When I was really too young to watch this film, I watched Halloween H2O. Do you remember… I think it was an ice skate down the center of the face?
Yes.
Henwick: It gave me a fear of shoes with sharp objects attached to the shoes. Like I was quite afraid in ice skating that I was gonna get my face impaled.
Yeah, that sounds brutal. Dan, Hunter, anything?
Stevens: There’s a scene in The Shining where Jack Nicholson is making out with this beautiful woman in a bathroom, and then she kind of like evolves into this kind of thing. And that just made me scared of making out with people.
Hunter, anything scared you?
Schafer: First thing that comes to mind is there’s this movie, Mama, have y’all seen it? Mama? Yeah. And it’s not a visual, but the noise that she makes. I think the first shots of her are like, you can’t see her. She’s in the dark, but you can hear her moan noises she makes, and that stuck in my brain ever since I heard that.
Stevens: Good noises in Cuckoo.
Schafer: Yeah, good noises in Cuckoo.
Stevens: Freaky, weird noises in Cuckoo.
