The Big Picture

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff chats with Alicia Witt about her experience making
Longlegs
.
Witt reveals that she actually had a dream about a scene in the movie — and she had that dream before ever reading the script.
Witt also shares some out-of-body experiences she’s had while filming, including one she shared with Maika Monroe.

If you prioritized seeing Longlegs this weekend because Maika Monroe and Nicolas Cage are the headliners, that’d make all the sense in the world. They’re stellar artists and, sure enough, they’re both phenomenal in the film. But, odds are, you walked out of the screening talking about another cast member’s work as well — Alicia Witt’s performance as Ruth Harker.

The Oz Perkins-directed film focuses on Monroe’s Lee Harker. She’s new to the FBI and quickly gets assigned to an extremely violent and disturbing case. Someone going by the name “Longlegs” has been murdering entire families for decades. When Lee impresses during a clairvoyance test, her superior, Blair Underwood’s Agent Carter, suspects she’s the one to piece together the cryptic codes Longlegs leaves behind.

With Longlegs now playing in theaters nationwide and absolutely soaring at the box office, I got the chance to chat with Witt about her showstopping work in the film. This is a Longlegs spoiler interview, so if you haven’t seen the film yet, be sure to bookmark this article for later.

[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Longlegs.]

Alicia Witt Dreamt a Scene in ‘Longlegs’ — Before Reading the Script

7:44 Related Oz Perkins Explains the End of ‘Longlegs,’ and It’s Bleak Perkins also discusses how he came up with the title for the film.

Agent Carter’s instincts were spot-on. Lee was indeed the right person to hand Longlegs’ files over to. Much to Lee’s surprise, however, this wasn’t a situation where she’d just crack the case and move on. While tracking down Longlegs, it became abundantly clear that he wasn’t operating alone. He had a partner, and that partner was Lee’s mother.

In one of the most chilling sequences of the film, Lee returns to her childhood home and witnesses her mother kill an FBI agent, and then shoot the head off of Lee’s own satanic doll. It’s an unforgettable and wildly unsettling story beat, one no one could have seen coming that exact way. But, Witt herself actually had a dream about it, and she had that dream before she ever even read the Longlegs script.

“One scene in particular that sticks out in my memory is the scene with Maika where she comes back to our house and she sees me there with the doll, and she’s starting to piece all of this shit together, and the nightmare of that. When I take her in my arms — oh, I’m just remembering this as I’m saying this to you. I had a dream about that scene! In fact,
I dreamed about that scene before I read the script.
The script had arrived in my inbox, and I had a dream that night about that scene. I won’t share the specifics because it’s too personal, but I did share it with Oz when we had our Zoom because I saw that scene in my dream as it pertained to my own experience. I saw a scene that never happened to me in real life, but I didn’t know the characters yet, so it was me. I explained to him what I’d seen and the way we ended up filming it was the way I dreamed it. It just happened that way! We didn’t orchestrate it. It’s how it ended up.”

Alicia Witt on Filming ‘Longlegs’: “The Voice That Came Out of Me Wasn’t Mine”
Image via Neon

Related This ‘Longlegs’ Scene with Maika Monroe & Nicolas Cage Is VERY Real While on Collider Ladies Night, Monroe recaps her journey from professional kiteboarder to certified horror queen.

That isn’t the only “out-of-body experience” Witt has had while filming.

“That was one of the rare out-of-body experiences that I’ve had over the course of my life. I had one with
Melissa McBride on
The Walking Dead

— it happened to both of us. I had one with
Michael Rapaport in
Justified

in the finale scene. We were lost to the world. I had one with
Al Pacino
where he had to slap me on the face during the camera rolling because I was having a panic attack.”

Now she adds Longlegs star Maika Monroe to that list.

“And I had one with Maika Monroe in that moment.
We were in some other realm together.
I was not expecting that. It happened. The voice that came out of me wasn’t mine. I remember looking at her from across the room as we went to our respective corners to get tidied up by the glam squad. I think it was cold out that day, so we were bundled up, and we kind of looked at each other like, ‘What was that?’”

Looking for even more Longlegs talk? We’ve got you well covered in that department! You can catch my full conversation with Witt in the video at the top of this article, and you can also watch my 45-minute Collider Ladies Night interview with Monroe below:

Longlegs is playing in theaters nationwide. You can get tickets below:

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