Three years after breaking through at the Emmys for her supporting role in Daisy Jones & The Six, Camila Morrone is back in the awards discussion thanks to Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen — this time as a lead actress.
“That sounds scary!” she tells Gold Derby about being on the Emmy ballot for Netflix‘s horror limited series. “There are some incredible women who are going to be on that ballot. There are going to be actresses that I’ve watched all of their work my whole life. I hope to be in that conversation, but I’m also genuinely so proud of the show regardless, and so proud of myself for breaking into a genre that I was really intimidated by.”
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen was created by Haley Z. Boston, who also served as showrunner, and produced by Matt and Ross Duffer. It tells the story of Rachel (Morrone) and Nicky (Adam DiMarco) in the tumultuous week leading up to their wedding at his family’s cabin. Before tying the knot, they deal with some truly horrific occurrences, including warnings from strangers and a potential serial killer stalking them in the woods.
“The most challenging part for me in playing Rachel was trying to understand her headspace and her inner world,” Morrone says. “She’s someone who’s very skeptical, very wary of the world, very mistrustful. It was a departure from me and who I am. Going into the horror space for the first time was also incredibly daunting for me”
Morrone had no idea the horror genre would be so “physically exhausting and emotionally taxing.” As she explains, “You’re doing six, seven, eight takes of watching people bleed out, or people you love die, or imagining the most horrible circumstances. You know it’s not happening in your mind — but not your body. Your nervous system doesn’t know the difference when you’re opening a door and finding the dead fox, and for all the jump scares that happen throughout the show.”
The actress points out an Easter egg hidden in plain sight within the show’s artwork: “What’s really cool about the poster that people don’t know is that you can see the reflection of Nicky in Rachel’s eyes!
“She’s like a deer in headlights” in the poster, Morrone continues. “She’s so hyperaware. I always envisioned Rachel as having antennas, and someone who’s totally intuitive, but also very susceptive to and aware of other people. She’s a behavioral psychologist. She’s someone who’s very observant. I find her to be the person who’s removed but who’s clocking everything.”
The title is a mouthful, and she didn’t actually learn the very bad thing that was going to happen until much later in the process. (Spoiler alert: it happens in the finale.) “It’s interesting to play a character that has a gut feeling that something bad’s going to happen,” she says, “because it’s not a note that you can play all the time, or else it becomes incredibly redundant. It’s something that is always with Rachel.”
Regarding the show’s practical makeup, Morrone says, “It is so easy to get the blood on, and so difficult to get the blood off! We saved the bloody scenes for the last week of the shoot, and I actually think it contributed to the emotions that you see on camera. We were very much at our breaking point emotionally and physically coming off a five-month shoot. Taking off the blood was definitely a process. It’s incredibly sticky and claustrophobic — anywhere you touch you get stuck.”
Rachel’s wedding dress “ended up getting incredibly heavy soaking up all this blood,” she continued. But in the end, “The white dress covered in red is such an iconic moment. I hope that it’s going to continue to be iconic in the future and that people will always pull from that as a reference. For me, I was so inspired by female performances like Sissy Spacek in Carrie and the way we were able to follow one character through an entire journey and really feel her angst and anxiety.”
The cast of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is full of “heavy hitters,” Morrone admits. “It’s so fun because we had such a great mix of younger newcomers like myself and Adam DiMarco and Gus Birney. And then you have Jennifer Jason Leigh and Ted Levine, who are icons and have already done some of the most incredible performances and are historic figures in film. It was hard to not get distracted!”
While she “wasn’t necessarily method” acting on the show, Morrone says, “I’m the only character who is living in a horror story. Nobody else knows that they’re in a horror show. And so, I had a very singular experience where I was isolated in that I had to stay in this state throughout the shoot. … I couldn’t take Rachel and make her a silly girl who has no stakes. I’m playing someone who is quite tortured internally.”
The showrunner and directors on this project were all women, which is a big change in Hollywood from decades ago. “I came into the industry at a time where female directors were receiving opportunities for the first time in what feels like maybe ever,” Morrone says. “I’ve been so lucky that I think 80% of my filmography I’ve worked with female directors. And I have to say, it’s one of my favorite ways to work.”
