Camila Morrone in Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. Gabriel Perez Silva/Netflix Logo text [This story contains spoilers for Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen.]
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen may have tested Camila Morrone’s hopeless romanticism to the nth degree, but she still believes in the concept of soulmates, albeit with a few caveats.
Created by Haley Z. Boston, Something Very Bad is a heightened exploration of the angst involved in choosing the right partner. The eight-episode Netflix horror series chronicles the five days leading up to the impending nuptials between Rachel Harkin (Morrone) and Nicky Cunningham (Adam DiMarco) at the latter’s remote family lodge in upstate New York. From overzealous in-laws-to-be to an ancient family curse, Rachel eventually learns the hard way that Nicky is not the one. But she still exits stage left with a sense of optimism in who and what lies ahead for her.
Related Stories
TV Streaming Ratings: 'The Pitt' Hits No. 1 Overall for the First Time
TV Streaming Ratings: Tyler Perry's 'Beauty in Black' Reaches No. 1
For Morrone, the notion of soulmates is more nuanced and pragmatic than the stereotypical version that pop culture often presents, but she continues to keep an open mind.
“I think soulmates can exist, but everything requires work, luck and timing,” Morrone tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I definitely don’t have googly eyes disillusion when it comes to, There’s one person meant for you until the day you die. It’s guaranteed, and it’s just a matter of time till you find that person. I like believing that, but as a child of divorced parents, I’m also a realist.”
Morrone’s go-for-broke performance as Rachel Harkin is the latest addition to the growing list of awards-worthy performances in the horror genre. From James McAvoy (Split) and Toni Collette (Hereditary) to Lupita Nyong’o (Us) and Mia Goth (Pearl), the majority of these highly committed and incredibly challenging roles have gone unrecognized. Exceptions are few and far between, be it Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins’ Oscars for Silence of the Lambs (1991) or Kathy Bates and Natalie Portman’s respective little gold men for Misery (1990) and Black Swan (2010).
But Morrone believes the script has started to flip in regard to the awards potential of horror-based performances. Weapons’ Amy Madigan and Sinners’ Michael B. Jordan both won Oscars this year, and Inde Navarrette’s bravura turn in Obsession is the talk of the town currently.
“It’s so cool that we’re opening up awards for this genre that requires really gut-wrenching and often crippling performances. Something has changed the tide in a good way these last few years,” Morrone says. “There’s just a lot more diversity within the genre now, and people are recognizing that these performances are really hard to pull off.’”
Below, during an FYC conversation with THR, Morrone also discusses the great lengths she went to bring Rachel to life across a grueling and bloody five-month shoot in Canada’s wintry season.
***
Let’s get to the heart of what Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is truly asking: Is one’s fondness for cinnamon gum the ultimate red flag in a relationship?
(Laughs.) Not to me because I love cinnamon gum! So I guess I’m the serial killer in the relationship because I’m all about cinnamon gum.
Nicky (Adam DiMarco) was representing your community then.
Funnily enough, I actually relate more to Nicky more than I do Rachel. I’m a lot more of a hopeless romantic and an optimist. I’m maybe a bit naive. I have a Golden Retriever energy to me, so I’m much more Nicky than I am Rachel.
Camila Morrone as Rachel Harkin in Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. Courtesy of Netflix When I first learned that you were the lead of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, I thought it was a logical progression from your supporting roles on Daisy Jones & the Six and The Night Manager season two. You’ve led a few indies over the years, but given that Something Very Bad is a high-profile project for Netflix, do you consider it to be your most prominent lead role?
I did a [2019] film called Mickey and the Bear, which was my first lead in a feature. I did a co-lead for Never Goin’ Back, an A24 Comedy. Then I was the lead of a film called Gonzo Girl with Willem Dafoe, which was directed by Patricia Arquette. That’s going to come out very soon. So it didn’t feel like the first time leading a project, but it definitely was the first time that I felt this kind of pressure and responsibility. The material was so challenging, but being a TV show, it’s a lot more commitment at eight times the length of a feature. So I was very much spearheading and heading this family/relationship drama, and I had to have the audience root for my character from the pilot to the finale. This specific story doesn’t work unless the audience believes Rachel and is rooting for Rachel. So being the lead of a horror TV series was singular in that I felt a pressure I had never felt before.
When Rachel and Nicky travel to a remote part of upstate New York to meet his creepy-at-first family, Rachel’s pot-smoking habit is established very early. Thus, she’s paranoid. That leads her to wrongfully conclude that the Cunninghams were trying to kill her. How much did that mistake affect your ability to trust her judgment going forward?
I still believed her the rest of the way because the circumstances were so unique. Had those things happened to me, Cami, I would also believe that the family was trying to sacrifice me. They were all acting bizarre, and she had a bad yet familiar feeling from her visions and memories of this place. We had to have a reliable narrator. There’s moments where the audience does question her, but Rachel is ultimately a reliable narrator in the story, albeit the most paranoid and dysfunctional one. Everything that she sees and experiences is actually happening to her.
The feminist part of me loves that she’s vindicated in the end and that she was right the whole time. Ever since she was little, she’s had this awful looming feeling of her history and what happened to her mother. And episode four’s backstory basically validates her entire childhood and a life full of paranoia, which is very satisfying.
Adam DiMarco as Nicky Cunningham, Camila Morrone as Rachel Harkin in Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen. Courtesy of Netflix When you’re number one on the call sheet, you set the tone for the cast and the crew. Who did you model your leadership style after?
I had just come off of working with Tom Hiddleston [on The Night Manager season two], and I have to give him his props because that man is such a professional. He is the most hardworking and the most prepared person on set, and he has the best attitude with the least amount of complaining. He’s the first person in, last person out. I saw how Tom carried himself and the show emotionally through those six months of filming, and he had very challenging work on that series in the way that I did on Something Very Bad. So I was really inspired by how he works, especially with this being my first time as number one on a call sheet with a big ensemble. You try not to think of yourself in that way, but the truth is that there was an extra pressure for me to keep everyone’s spirits up and maintain the focus.
To me, Something Very Bad dismantles the clichéd idea of a soulmate, specifically that there’s one magical person out there who can provide a permanent honeymoon phase. The show illustrates how we embellish stories so that we can tell ourselves and those around us that we’ve achieved a fairytale romance. In actuality, there are no shortcuts to a great relationship. It takes work. How similar or dissimilar do you read the show’s commentary on soulmates?
I think the show leaves it ambiguous. It’s up for the viewer to identify with either believing in soulmates or not believing in soulmates. The ending shows cases of both soulmates being real and also soulmates not being real. Nicky and Rachel are not soulmates in this case, at least not to Rachel.
But I do have a less romanticized point of view than the clichéd idea of soulmates. I think soulmates can exist, but everything requires work, luck and timing. I definitely don’t have googly eyes disillusion when it comes to, There’s one person meant for you until the day you die. It’s guaranteed, and it’s just a matter of time till you find that person. I like believing that, but as a child of divorced parents, I’m also a realist. I still have a wide point of view on love. I like to believe that there is a soulmate for anyone who wants it, but anything great in life requires great sacrifice and a great amount of work.
Rachel’s potential brother and sister-in-law, Nell (Karla Crome) and Jules (Jeff Wilbusch), survive the curse, and while that implies that they’re soulmates, they’re not soulmates in the classical sense. They bicker and argue all the time, but they’re brutally honest with each other in a way that the other doomed couples weren’t. That was their advantage.
Yeah, that’s not a “soulmate,” that’s just their version of it. What works for one couple might not work for another couple. That’s what’s so great about the show is that it poses all these questions, and then you finish the finale, going, “God, I don’t know who I’m rooting for. I don’t know what I believe in anymore. Do I really believe in the norms and traditions?” I like a show that leaves you evaluating your whole life and also questioning the things that you thought you knew with certainty before.
Camila Morrone as Rachel in Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. Courtesy of Netflix Whether it’s the Emmys or the Oscars, horror has generally been underrepresented. There are exceptions, of course, but it’s definitely a tougher hill to climb. Why do you think that is?
Perhaps there’s a cliché around horror, specifically slasher-horror. Not everyone is attracted to blood and guts. I was not attracted to those kinds of films before I started working in the horror genre on this show, but I would encourage those people to explore the many different types of horror: horror-thriller, psychological horror, emotional horror, relationship horror, family horror. There are so many subgenres within the genre, and there is something for everyone. You just have to find what your taste is. I love Black Swan, and Natalie’s performance was very much a part of a psychological thriller/horror.
What other horror films have you gravitated toward?
I remember being very moved by Hereditary and Midsommar. I really wanted the Florence Pugh role in Midsommar. I sent in a couple auditions, and that was the first time that I had read a horror script that I was really attracted to. I was one of those very sensitive kids. If I watched a horror movie at a sleepover, it would soak into my brain and my bones. I would dream about it and have nightmares about it forever. So I really only started watching horror in preparation for this.
Haley [Z. Boston], our showrunner, made me a big list with a lot of different films. It ranged from Birth with Nicole Kidman to The Celebration, which is a family drama. Funny Games was another one that’s just cutthroat, brutal horror. There was the creepy and bizarre Dutch film, Spoorloos, aka The Vanishing. Then there were classics that I hadn’t seen like Carrie, Rosemary’s Baby and Possession.
Well, between Michael B. Jordan and Amy Madigan’s Oscars for Sinners and Weapons, hopefully the tide is turning.
Yes, and they’re now making a Weapons prequel about [Madigan’s] character. It’s so cool that we’re opening up awards for this genre that requires really gut-wrenching and often crippling performances. Something has changed the tide in a good way these last few years. Look at what’s happening now with Obsession. I also went to see Backrooms last night. There’s just a lot more diversity within the genre now, and people are recognizing that these performances are really hard to pull off. Making horror is also just as difficult, especially sustaining it through an eight-hour TV show. Haley says, “Once you expose the scary thing, then it’s not scary anymore.” So making people feel something for eight consecutive hours is an art in itself.
I don’t want to sound like I’m devaluing your Emmy-nominated and heartbreaking role on Daisy, but I would think that Rachel from Something Very Bad has a much higher degree of difficulty, physically, emotionally and mentally. The places you have to go in the horror genre should count for something.
Well, thank you for saying that because that tells me that I’m growing in my craft as an artist. I’m interested in the more challenging roles. Every time I pick a project, I ask myself, Is this a real challenge for me? Am I really scared to do it? Am I terrified of failing at it? And if the answer is yes, then I have to do the job. I only want my career to be stepping stones of more challenging and complex roles that feel further from me. Whether it’s horror or comedy or sci-fi or drama like Hamnet, I really aspire to have a filmography to where I can look back when I’m older and feel like I challenged myself in all the genres.
That’s why Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is by far the most challenging experience of my career. Like you said, to stay in Rachel’s headspace from episode one to episode eight, with all the blood and tears, was truly exhausting. It was five months of shooting including exteriors and night shoots in a Canadian winter. I’ve never felt like an athlete in the way that I felt like an athlete doing this. Every single episode I knew I was climbing a mini-Mount Everest. I also had to pace myself physically. If I went too hard in episode one, the audience would have nowhere new to go by episode eight, and I would have no gas left in the tank. So it was a very methodical balance of giving it my all for 16 hours, and then going home to wake up a few hours later so I could do it all over again.
Camila Morrone as Rachel Harkin in Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen. Courtesy of Netflix Could you fall asleep with ease? Or were you wired from the work?
I definitely took sleeping pills on this job, for sure. It was super hard for me to come down. As a cast, our circadian rhythm was so rocked. I didn’t realize that you shoot horror mainly at night, so most days would have a 6 PM call time till 6 AM. It got weird, delusional and eerie. Even if you laugh it off and think it’s not seeping into your blood and your bones, the adrenaline stays with you once you’re at home in a dark room.
Something Very Bad is a very superstitious show, so hopefully Ted Levine is your good luck charm this awards season. He co-starred opposite Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins when they became two of the exceptions to win Oscars for a horror movie in Silence of the Lambs.
We need Ted Levine’s good luck. I definitely wouldn’t mind some of his magic.
Do you know if the name Rachel had anything to do with Anne Hathaway’s Oscar-nominated role/character from Rachel Getting Married? Jonathan Demme directed Rachel Getting Married and Silence of the Lambs, so I wondered if Haley Z. Boston was working in some layered connections.
I highly doubt it, but you never know with HZB. She’s got a lot of tricks up her sleeve.
Rachel and Nicky potentially earned bad luck through a number of ways. He didn’t hold his breath through a tunnel; Rachel then made eye contact with the taxidermy dogs. There’s also the moment when Portia broke the mirror during Rachel’s first dress fitting. And most of all, Rachel and Nicky not only saw each other on their wedding day, but they had sex before their wedding. How much do you buy into superstition?
Growing up in a Latin household, it’s in my blood to be superstitious. Ours are a little different. My mom always raised me with the classics: You can’t open an umbrella inside; you can’t put your purse on the floor or you’ll lose money; you can’t pass salt hand to hand. No hats on the bed was another one. And every time you pass a cemetery or a grave, you have to touch your left boob and make the devil’s sign with your fingers and bite your tongue.
I can’t say I’ve heard that one.
(Laughs.) Yeah, they’re very specific. I don’t know what each one symbolizes, but my mom instilled such a fear in me that I just have to follow them.
Overall, what scene gave you the most anxiety going into it?
Probably the oners in episode seven. They were just hard to film and get right. We sometimes did 25 takes, and it was very frustrating. If I felt like all the technical things went right, I didn’t feel like my performance was right. Or, when my performance felt right, we’d have to start over because something went wrong in the background or it wasn’t where it needed to be. So those days of running through the house with an amputated toe were really exhausting.
Also, when I was running through the forest and finding the effigy in episode two, it was negative 11 degrees during night shoots in Northern Canada. I had these tires on my boots to keep me from falling, but I still kept falling while doing stunt work at 4 AM in the freezing cold. I decided to wear a skirt with combat boots in the pilot and second episode, and I later regretted that during my exteriors, because I had to wear about six layers of warmth underneath it all. So I definitely got traumatized by shooting in the winter, but all of those difficult elements made the job more rewarding when it hooked the audience. That’s the best gift on earth. It feels like Christmas
The champagne concoction that was highlighted by Rachel’s amputated toe, did anyone on the crew opt to consume it since you/Rachel did not?
They haven’t come forward with it yet, and I think that they should.
Gus Birney as Portia, Karla Crome as Nell, Camila Morrone as Rachel Harkin, Ted Levine as Boris, Adam DiMarco as Nicky Cunningham, Jeff Wilbusch as Jules, Zlatko Burić in Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen. Courtesy of Netflix When she finally rejects Nicky’s attempt to restart the wedding, his bloodline starts dying in the reception room. She then approaches the Witness (Zlatko Buric ) and says, “This is what you meant?” What did she think was going to happen? Did she think it would affect future Cunningham weddings?
I believe she didn’t understand the gravity of the blood and the fact that it comes out of everyone at the same time. She didn’t realize the immediacy of it and just how many people would die from not in fact being soulmates. She was so in survival mode, and she had no reference point as to what would happen if it all went wrong. When it does, she’s like, “This is what you meant? Hundreds of people are bleeding and screaming in agony and asking for my help, and I can’t help anyone.” I don’t think she had any way to understand the gravity of what would happen.
What do you think has the better odds of a season two: Something Very Bad or Daisy?
Right now, Something Very Bad, but I don’t know what the storyline would be. Would it follow a different couple? Would it follow Rachel’s life as a witness? I just don’t know where it would go.
It’s probably too obvious, but waiting a decade and allowing you and Adam DiMarco to age would certainly serve a season about Jude Cunningham’s wedding. You could then flash to the missing time in between as needed.
I think it’d be a great choice. We did that with The Night Manager. It came back ten years later, and it worked. So why not?
Your Night Manager and Something Very Bad characters both made big decisions that led to bloodbaths.
Yeah, I guess I like to play women with an impact.
Is there any clarity yet regarding you and The Night Manager season three?
Oh, none. If you hear anything, please tell me.
You’ve already reunited with Netflix for the upcoming Age of Innocence series. You were shooting it while promoting Something Very Bad. It must be difficult to rewind your headspace to a year earlier when you’re completely consumed by the current project you’re shooting.
For sure, but it’s champagne problems. There were so many years where I didn’t work as an actor, and all I wanted was that feeling of being overwhelmed and having to balance multiple things at once.
When I was shooting The Night Manager and working on my Colombian dialect to play a Colombian arms dealer named Roxana, I was auditioning, chemistry-reading and call-backing on the weekends for Something Very Bad. I was trying to morph myself into Rachel, who’s the polar opposite of Roxana. So I went from a Colombian arms dealer to an introverted, pot-smoking, paranoid girl. Then I pivoted to play the Countess Ellen Olenska from a classic piece of literature in the 1870s’ Gilded Age.
The common thread between all these characters is that they’re just badass women. They’re very strong and strong-willed. All the female characters I’ve ever played come out on top and win. I just love playing that.
*** Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is currently streaming on Netflix.
THR Newsletters
Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day
Subscribe Sign Up
