Andie MacDowell Takes Aim In Ready Or Not

By Gill Pringle

In the new horror comedy Ready Or Not, Samara Weaving plays the down-to-earth Grace, who has just married into the wealthy Le Domas family, who have made their money via their collection of hugely successful board games. But after saying her vows, Grace learns that the Le Domas family likes to play games for real, and that their spirited take on “hide and seek” involves guns, knives and varied forms of medieval weaponry…and she’s the victim After a career built on much loved romantic comedy-dramas like Four Weddings And A Funeral and Green Card and bona fide classics like sex, lies and videotape and Groundhog Day, Andie MacDowell now takes on her first horror role with the film, bringing wild-eyed intensity and physical gusto to the character of Becky Le Domas, the loopy, snobby, bloodthirsty family’s unhinged matriarch.

What attracted you to your first horror role?

“It was such an interesting and well-written script. There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to do this. It was such a fascinating character, and I also love comedy. The mixture of horror and really intelligent clever comedy was so enticing. I never was a true horror fan, but after this experience, I am. I really enjoyed the levity and fun and brightness of it – even if that is so contrary to what it should be. So much of this was concentrating on the comedy, and always looking for the humour.”

How did you prepare for the physicality of this role?

“Luckily, I’m in good shape. I do a lot of yoga and take good care of myself, so it was something that I was already prepared to do. I got hurt though. What happened was, we got in the room and we had the stunt guys watching us and we know what we’re going to do. And we know the scene so we’re talking out loud and we’re just going for it 100% and they had given her a fake prop to hit me with and it was hard – that’s what we didn’t realise – and immediately I got a lump on my head. You know how easy it is to get a lump on your head if you get hit? Then everybody panicked when I said, ‘I need ice right away.’ Because I knew what was gonna happen. But it really wasn’t a big deal. I just needed to shoot in a few days so I was just trying to get the lump to go down as fast as I could.”

The film’s directors, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, and producer Chad Villella, told me that they had the biggest crush on you. Were you aware of that?

“No! I did not know that. That’s Chad. That’s so sweet. They were really open to creativity and welcomed my contributions, which doesn’t always happen. They were excited to hear if you had anything to offer to the character – just little things. ‘Holy dick!’ was my line…it was something that my dad used to say, so I was so happy that they let me say it. But it worked with the character. It was nice they would let me do weird things like that.”

Do you have a bucket list of genres that you want to do? Like you did nudity in Love After Love last year and now you’re doing horror?

“Well, Love After Love was only different because I finally took my clothes off! I probably should have taken them off in my 20s! But I grew up in a very conservative atmosphere and family and in my generation most actresses used to hire body doubles for those nude scenes. But I think I had an awakening as to what the human body is, and a much more European approach to it. I didn’t want my kids in their acting [MacDowell’s daughters, Rainey and Margaret Qualley, are both actors] to feel any shame whatsoever about their bodies, and if they felt like their bodies were an important and relevant part of the story, I wanted them to feel safe because I felt like I had so much shame projected onto me about the body and nudity as a child. It took me raising my children to finally feel more comfortable about my body. I wish I had walked around naked in movies earlier, but I waited until I was an old lady and then took my clothes off!”

So you no longer have anything to prove?

“In some sense…but in this business we’re always proving ourselves. I wish we weren’t, but it’s always about your last job.”

Is it important to show a strong woman in these films?

“Yes, especially in Samara’s case – she didn’t want to look victimised and wanted to look heroic. That’s an important image for all women to have – not to have those old images of the pathetic woman crying and needing help and unable to rescue herself. It’s very important to have female characters that are self-sufficient and capable of rescuing themselves and maybe other people.”

Did you encourage your daughters, Rainey and Margaret Qually, to get into acting?

“Well, they grew up dancing. Both of them really excelled, but Margaret – who’s in Fosse/Verdon and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood – was really serious and spent time going to dance camp and choreographed her own dances and had a really great experience. She did it so intensely that she started to burn out. And then in 11th grade, she took an acting class and for the first time, she experienced another art form and fell in love with it. She took all the discipline that she had learned in dance and put it all into acting. So, I just stay out of her way. She got her first role when she was 17 [The Leftovers] but early on I would do some auditions with her and it was mind-blowing what she could do. I could see that she had an innate talent.”

Do you see yourself in your daughters?

“We have a lot of similar interests. Rainey is super-compassionate, soft and sweet – much sweeter than me or Margaret. We would both say that. Rainy has a huge compassionate heart; she rescues kittens and feeds them. She’ll sacrifice everything in her life just to rescue them. So, we all like animals and I’m in that mix with her, only hers is bigger. And that’s nice and we’re all very physical and we all like to do yoga – I’ve been doing it for 32 years, so there isn’t a kind of yoga that I haven’t done. They both still do dance.”

Four Weddings And A Funeral was recently re-done for TV by Mindy Kaling, and you have a guest role which is very different from your original role. How do you feel about it?

“If you blink, you’re not going to see me. I’m only in it for two seconds, so don’t be expecting to see me in there. I was thrilled to do the two seconds that I’m in there. I read it and it’s really great and it’s gonna be a huge success. I’m a huge admirer of hers, and I’m glad that she gave me the two seconds. I was in London doing the One Red Nose Day And A Wedding fundraiser [a short film mini-sequel to the original film]; the original cast all got back together so it all worked out. It was convenient to all show up and do that one day for Mindy and see everybody, which was great.”

How long was it since you’d seen Hugh Grant?

“I’d seen him here in LA. He’d got a Hollywood press award I think, and I went and presented that to him, so I had seen him at that. But not that often. It’s interesting, my life has always been about my children; I was a devoted mother and I didn’t really live out here so ever since I moved out here, I’ve had to kinda start from scratch making friends out here because all my friends were where I lived so I’m still in the process of acclimating myself to living in LA.”

Did you move to LA to be closer to your girls?

“Margaret brought me here. It was interesting because Rainey was already out here after she got burned out completely traveling around the world doing acting classes and doing a little bit of modeling – and she said to me: ‘Can we go and live in LA?’ I got [the TV series] Jane By Design, so we moved out here. It was a really cool experience, and we lived in Venice, down the road from Rainey.”

Ready Or Not is in cinemas now. Click here to read our interview with Samara Weaving. Click here for our review.