Even ‘Longlegs’ Star Maika Monroe Was Kept in the Dark Over Nicolas Cage’s ‘Shocking and Overwhelming’ Serial Killer Transformation
Eager to see Nicolas Cage in his full regalia as the titular serial killer in Osgood Perkins’ “Longlegs”? Join the club.
Much has been made of distributor Neon’s canny choice to obscure the villain of Perkins’ latest film in all its marketing. That air of mystique was already in place long before a single trailer was cut. Hell, even Cage’s co-star Maika Monroe, who plays the FBI agent hot on the satanic serial killer’s tail, didn’t “meet” Longlegs until Cage’s last day on set.
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“Oz wanted to keep us completely separate,” Monroe told IndieWire during a recent interview. “No one showed me any photos of him. Oz wanted it to be a complete surprise for that scene when we interact for the first time. Just imagine that. It was completely shocking and overwhelming. The first time I met him, the cameras were rolling, and they called action. I opened the door, and there he was.”
In the film, beloved genre all-stars Monroe and Cage face off after Longlegs’ decades-long reign of terror across the seemingly safe suburban confines of the Pacific Northwest has pushed the FBI to try something a little different to catch their unknown baddie. Longlegs never sets foot inside the homes of the families he’s responsible for annihilating, and with that lack of evidence (and all the questions it inspires) hanging over a murder spree that shows no signs of stopping, young agent Lee Harker (Monroe) and her apparent psychic gifts are put to the test.
When the pair finally meet face to face for the first time (or is it?) in Perkins’ queasy, suffocating feature, they’re both well aware of the other. But little can prepare viewers — or the already-rattled and intensely interior Harker — for the full freak-out of Cage’s Longlegs get-up.
“It was insane. It was absolutely insane!” she said. “As you know, he completely transformed. There’s no trace of Nic in there, his voice, his mannerisms. He was very much Method on this. So it was in character, and it’s a very disturbing character, to say the least.”
Of the choice to obscure Cage’s full visage, Monroe is a fan. It worked on her, didn’t it?
“I think it’s just such a brilliant way to do this movie,” Monroe said. “I think nowadays, there’s so much in the media, I’ll watch a trailer, and I’ll be like, ‘Oh, I know what this movie is about.’ It’s so brilliant what they’ve done with this. It’s like another extension of the film.”
And, rest assured, Monroe and Cage did find some time to bond.
“It was actually very cute,” she said. “We filmed that scene and it was his last day, and so we finished filming, and then we just had to [shoot] some stills at the end. So the photographer comes in, and we’re sitting across from each other, and he’s just like, ‘Ah, well, by the way, I’m a really big fan of yours,’ completely back to Nic’s voice. ‘I’m like, what is happening? Am I in a dream right now? What is happening?’ … It was a very surreal day for me.”
Monroe said Cage even shared that her “It Follows,” which is soon getting a sequel from filmmaker David Robert Mitchell, is “one of his favorite films ever.” She added that Cage’s compliment included the Oscar winner sharing that it was “so amazing to be working with” her. She laughed, remembering the moment, “And I’m just like, ‘Right back at you, buddy!'”
Unlike Cage, Monroe said she doesn’t typically stay in character during a shoot. “I go back to Maika,” she said, when “cut” is called. “You can’t necessarily snap out of it, but I’m definitely not the Method type of actor. It just isn’t for me. I have massive respect for it. I think it’s incredible, and I think certain roles, especially, you need to do that. I think for Nic, you kind of need to stay in that space. There’s no part of Nic that exists in that character, but I think for me, just for mental health reasons, it’s just nice to be able to step out of that world.”
Monroe was, however, very eager to step into Perkins’ world for “Longlegs.” “When I read this for the first time, I was so obsessed with the world,” Monroe said. “I hadn’t had such a visceral reaction to a script in a long time. This was one of those projects where I was like, ‘I need to do this.'”
“It was crazy, reading the script, because the first 30, 40 pages, I was like, ‘Oh, I know where this is going,’ and then there’s so many great twists that you get to at the end,” Monroe said. “You’re like, ‘Wait, wait, I have to go back and read again.’ And then you understand, you’re like, ‘Ah, now this all makes sense.'”
The actress first met Perkins at a coffee shop, a meeting in which the filmmaker described every inch of his vision for the film, including, yes, what Longlegs would look like. “I wanted the role so bad. I wanted it so bad,” Monroe said. “After the meeting, when I talked to my team, I was like, ‘He’s so amazing. I feel like we vibed on this.’ And my team was like, ‘He loved you, but he actually just doesn’t think you’re right for this role.'”
The only question in her head: “What do I have to do?” Monroe and her team opted to self-tape a selection of scenes — one with Blair Underwood’s fellow FBI agent character in which Lee breaks down the case, another with Alicia Witt as Lee’s mother — and sent them posthaste to Perkins. She got the job.
“That’s my job, I’m an actor, and if you know me well, [and you this] this role, it is very different from who I am, but I just wanted to prove myself and prove to him that I could do this,” she said. “Some of my favorite roles are the ones where there’s very few lines of dialogue. There’s a lot that can be conveyed through the eyes, through emotion, and I think there’s a challenge to that, too. Reading this and understanding where Lee comes from and her childhood and the trauma and family relationships, there’s so much there, and I think it’s very common for people to suppress and push a lot down. I just thought it’d be very interesting to play with all those different layers to this character.”
Early looks at the film have already drawn comparisons to other crime thrillers, especially the Jodie Foster-starring classic “Silence of the Lambs,” with scream queen Monroe taking a crack at her own version of Clarice Starling. That was definitely appealing to the “The Guest” and “Watcher” star, who has long trafficked in scary movies of all stripes.
“I love, love, love crime thrillers,” the actress said. “I just think it’s such an incredible genre. I grew up loving ‘Zodiac,’ ‘Memento,’ ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ of course, it’s one of the most incredible movies. Something that I love in a movie, and that I think ‘Longlegs’ has is, when you get to the end — the same way [I felt] when I reading the script — it’s like, ‘Wait, I want to go back so I can understand.’ There’s all these little secrets, there’s all these little hidden moments, and you have to be a brilliant filmmaker to be able to pull this off, which Oz did just so exceptionally well.”
As for her other creepy co-stars? Monroe has plenty of love for them, too, especially the large dolls that Longlegs crafts as part of his nefarious plans, and which often feel just as uncanny and evil as their sicko maker.
“The first doll that I met was the first one that we find in the film, which I think is one of the most haunting ones,” Monroe said, acknowledging that they are “quite big” and designed to “make you feel uncomfortable.”
Remembering those dolls, those supporting standouts, Monroe shuddered a bit but seemed eager to get back to the message: Here’s something for the audience to discover in their own time. “They’re just incredibly disturbing,” she said. “I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll leave it at that.”
Neon will release “Longlegs” in theaters on Friday, July 12.
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