The Big Picture

Welcome to a new episode of Collider Ladies Night with
It’s What’s Inside
star Alycia Debnam-Carey.
Debnam-Carey discusses her journey from working on
The 100
and
Fear the Walking Dead
to taking on one of the most exciting acting challenges — performing in a body-swap film.

It’s What’s Inside
marked one of Sundance 2024’s biggest sales, and rightfully so. It’s phenomenal. Don’t miss it on Netflix now!

It’s What’s Inside quickly became one of my favorite films of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and I was beyond thrilled to get the opportunity to chat with director Greg Jardin and his ensemble while in Park City. But, one person was missing from the conversation and, if you’ve seen It’s What’s Inside, you well know that the film’s concept hinges on every single member of the cast being able to deliver top-tier work as a unit. Thankfully, Netflix scooped up the film at the festival for a whopping $17 million and now It’s What’s Inside is available to stream on Netflix. That meant the missing member of the group was busy promoting this massive genre storytelling feat, and you can bet I jumped on the opportunity to chat with her. It’s Alycia Debnam-Carey.

Jardin’s wildly impressive feature-directorial debut is a body-swap film. The night before Reuben’s (Devon Terrell) wedding, he reunites his group of friends for a little pre-wedding party. When an estranged member of that friend group, David Thompson’s Forbes, shows up, he has a mysterious suitcase in tow. He pitches they play a party game with its contents, a curious machine he helped design. They agree, hook themselves up to the device, and Forbes flips the switch. Suddenly, they all swap bodies. The game? Figure out who is in whose body.

The tension is high across the board and every single character in It’s What’s Inside rocks complex layers that are fascinating to explore via the body-swap scenario. But, one particular character’s situation comes with some especially high stakes because she’s got a lot to lose. On top of that, who she is and what she’s created has an especially heavy influence on quite a few members of the group. It’s Debnam-Carey’s Nikki, a hugely successful social media influencer.

While celebrating It’s What’s Inside’s release on Netflix, Debnam-Carey swung by the Collider Ladies Night studio to dig deep into Nikki’s predicament and break down how the cast prepared to complete some serious acting gymnastics and craft a seamless body-swap experience. On top of that, we also took some time to look back on her journey as an artist, beginning with the recognition that she was meant to be an actor, not a percussionist.

Acting vs. Percussion for Alycia Debnam-Carey
“I remember preparing for my audition and suddenly being like, ‘I’m not doing this, actually.’”
Image via Sundance

Growing up, Debnam-Carey juggled two different forms of art — acting and music. More specifically, she was a trained percussionist. “I was in a million bands doing different things, like orchestras and jazz ensembles. You name it, I was in it.” Debnam Carey continued, “But I think for me, it was more of a love and a passion, and wasn’t something that I then wanted to create a career out of.”

That decision was cemented in when Debnam-Carey was gearing up to audition for the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. She recalled:

“I remember preparing for my audition and suddenly being like, ‘I’m not doing this, actually.’
It was a real moment that I had that kind of shift.
I think because acting was always something I was doing in the interim, it sort of was like, maybe I’d fallen out of love with it a little bit and then had to refine that love. It’s such a competitive and taxing career. It’s not a meritocracy. It’s also very hard. It’s a lot of rejection, and I think you need to move with the ebbs and flows, and so I think maybe music has always been that kind of consistent passion and love-fueled backbone.”

After Some Quick Wins, Debnam-Carey Didn’t Work for a Year
“I didn’t work for a year. I had no money … I was just like, ‘Oh, I’m going home.’”
Image via The CW

Debnam-Carey’s instincts were spot on. A love and passion for music may always be there but after projects like It’s What’s Inside, The 100, Fear the Walking Dead and then some, it’s abundantly clear she was meant to pursue the acting path.

However, that’s not to say forging a career in film and television was without challenges. One of the most significant learning curves Debnam-Carey experienced upon making the move to Hollywood, one many artists grapple with? The realization that filmmaking is both an art and a business.

“I think I came into it with so much youthful innocent naivety of, ‘If you’re good enough, you can do it,’ and kind of had this bright-eyed bushy-tailed commitment to it, which I think you need. You can see that effervescence, you can see that enthusiasm from people, but there’s so much strategy, I suppose, as well, that I just don’t think I was really aware of. It’s continued in the 10 years that I’ve been working where, at every level, there’ll be a new understanding of how deep that stuff really goes.
There are so many politics — who you need to know, getting in the right rooms, meeting the right people, going to the right things.
I think I was just so pure in my response over here. Kind of like, ‘I’m just gonna come out and do my best.’ I think that’s so important to have, you should have that, but that’s when I think there was a realization of actually how much luck is involved. You can support that with hard work, and you should, and you need to, but if you’re really wanting to do it, there’s going to be periods of waiting.”

Sure enough, Debnam-Carey hit a period of waiting that she had to power through.

“I got really lucky the first year I was out here. I got two projects off the bat and I was like, ‘This is easy. Oh my god, it’s exactly what I thought it was gonna be.’ And then
I didn’t work for a year. I had no money. I had, like, $2,000 in my bank account, and I was just like, ‘Oh, I’m going home
. I’ve got to reconfigure, how am I doing this?’ Then, realizing that you’re kind of crafting the journey with the cards that are laid out in front of you. And I think there’s a misconception that people have of, ‘Oh, you can pick your projects.’ You can pick the things that you are saying yes or no to, but there are consequences to them.”

‘The 100’ and ‘Fear the Walking Dead’
“Comparison is the thief of joy, but it also robs you of your ability to have fun and discover more about yourself and what you’re capable of.”
Image via AMC

Finding one’s voice in a high-pressure business is often a challenging endeavor, but Debnam-Carey’s been fortunate to do just that in two particular supportive and creatively fulfilling environments — the sets of The 100 and Fear the Walking Dead. An impotent element of making the most of those opportunities? “The realization that your best creative being is who you are to your truest self. Because there is no one else like you.”

One of the first times Debnam-Carey put that thought to use? On The 100:

“I feel like I was exercising some of that on
The 100
. I think there was a moment where I was able to really be involved in the costumes and the makeup and hair. There was so much lore, and there was so much history with those characters in that story that there was a lot to play with. I think I was able to really entrench myself in that, and I think that was one of the first examples. Since then, it’s probably always been stretching myself to remind myself of that because
you’re always comparing yourself to someone else or someone else’s career
. As we know, comparison is the thief of joy, but it also robs you of your ability to have fun and discover more about yourself and what you’re capable of. It’s not easy. I’m always reminding myself, but I feel like I’ve slowly been fortifying that.”

On Fear the Walking Dead, Debnam-Carey got the chance to see what she was capable of in a brand new way — by working as a director. She recalled:

“I think it’s revealed itself in different ways, too. When I directed on
Fear the Walking Dead
, I think that was a moment where I was like,
‘I’m asserting myself as a creative in a different capacity, and I want to be expanding and growing.’
That is a part of my creativity, too, so I was so lucky that they were really receptive and wanted me to do that.”

A little further down the line, one of Debnam-Carey’s Fear the Walking Dead collaborators would identify yet another opportunity for her to seize her potential and expand her creativity yet again. It was Colman Domingo who suggested she get involved in It’s What’s Inside.

“It was actually brought to me by Colman Domingo from
Fear the Walking Dead
. One of my closest, nearest and dearest. I adore and love him forever. He was executive producing it, and he brought it to me because — although it had a horror bent, I really think of it as a sci-fi thriller, dark comedy. The horror really exists in the more psychological places … He brought it to me knowing, ‘This will expand your range. It’s new for you. It puts you in a different lane.’”

How to Make a Successful Body-Swap Movie
“It was suddenly terrifying to be like, ‘Okay, I guess now I’m performing in front of all these people I’ve just met.’”

17:58 Related Meet the Cast of Your New Horror Obsession: Netflix’s ‘It’s What’s Inside’ Netflix scooped up the buzzy title out of Sundance for a whopping $17 million.

In addition to affording Debnam-Carey the opportunity to tap into different genres and character qualities, It’s What’s Inside also gave her the chance to play with an especially ambitious and thrilling story structure. She noted, “It’s kind of an actor’s dream to play multiple different people.”

A creative dream, yes, but not one without great pressure. A body-swap movie simply does not work unless everyone involved can craft a fully realized character with a strong foundation for themselves and then effortlessly leave that behind and work within the blueprint their co-stars have established. In the case of It’s What’s Inside, Debnam-Carey and co. absolutely nail it, heavily contributing to the finished film functioning as one of the most brilliant forms of movie magic.

How exactly did they make that happen? Debnam-Carey walked me through their drama school-like prep process:

“We were all in a rehearsal period, which was quite an intimidating first experience. We were in an attic, there was a huge table, we were all around the table, and we went from the beginning — ‘Okay, it’s one read-through. You’re your character the whole way through. The second read-through, now you’re doing it as your character, but now you’ve seen how the other people do it, so now you’re trying to do it like them. Now we’re actually going to get up one by one and you’re gonna film the other person’s freakout.’ It’s like film school. This was like drama school.
It was suddenly terrifying to be like, ‘Okay, I guess now I’m performing in front of all these people I’ve just met, the actors that I’m gonna be with, and I’ve got to be good. I’ve got to live up to a reputation or whatever.’
And I think, at the same time, that meant that everyone landed on the same playing field. It meant that it neutralized everything because it was like, ‘Let’s get the silly, let’s get the stress, the intimidation out of the way. Now, you’re all just able to play.’ So I think, if anything, I really learned a lot from — I don’t know if people were saving face, but everyone was so ready to play, and that was inspiring. For me, it was like a level of, ‘Get out of your head. Stop trying to think of what everyone is thinking of you. Just do the best job that you can do.’”

Debnam-Carey’s Nikki Is at the Center of One of ‘It’s What’s Inside’s Most Complex Ideas
“There was so much about who wants to be her, who wants to hate her, who wants to be in her, who wants to control her.”
Image via Netflix

It’s What’s Inside is a hugely entertaining thrill. If you’re simply in the mood for a wild ride, it’ll be a big winner. But, one of the most rewarding elements of the film, is its thematic heft, particularly it’s ability to assess very real human truths via its high concept.

All of the characters in It’s What’s Inside tap into this, but one of the strongest storylines of the bunch in this respect — and the one that has the greatest ripple effect — is Debnam-Carey’s Nikki.

“We start out seeing her as a social media influencer who appears quite involved in her image and can be potentially quite narcissistic, but she is savvy and there is a real understanding of success and her potential and what her future can look like. So
she actually has a lot to lose
. She’s one of the characters that really has created a platform for herself that could be damaged, and one that she’s also very proud of. She’s kind of the most successful of the group.”

Success can spark some mighty complex and potentially dark feelings in others, which became abundantly clear to Debnam-Carey and the It’s What’s Inside cast the more they worked on the character. Debnam-Carey counted:

“When we started filming more and more,
we got into the way women are viewed through something like social media
, the way we perceive women, how we want to be perceived, these ridiculous beauty standards, the idea of what everything is supposed to look like. She is the model for that. She is the blueprint for all of that analogy. We also want to see that
while she’s a beneficiary of it, she’s also the victim of all those things
that are on the other side. In many ways, there’s a lot of the objectification of what Nikki represents, which is a far more layered note. You’re going into this movie and it’s like, ‘Wow, it’s a really fun, wild ride,’ but there are a lot of interesting layers beneath that, if you’re really interested in it. And the more times you watch it, I think you really understand that. At one point, in the middle of filming, we were kind of like, ‘Ha ha, it’s like, who’s in Nikki’s body?’ Because
there was so much about who wants to be her, who wants to hate her, who wants to be in her, who wants to control her
. There’s a lot of what she represents in our society.”

Looking for even more from Debnam-Carey on her journey in film and television thus far including her experience making It’s What’s Inside? You can catch our full interview in the video at the top of this article!

It’s What’s Inside A pre-wedding party descends into an existential nightmare when an estranged friend shows up with a mysterious suitcase.Release Date January 19, 2024 Director Greg Jardin Cast Brittany O’Grady , James Morosini , Gavin Leatherwood , Nina Bloomgarden , Alycia Debnam-Carey , Reina Hardesty , Devon Terrell , David Thompson , Madison Davenport , Myhraliza Aala , Francisco Diego Garcia , Dana Millican , Aly Nordlie Runtime 103 Minutes Expand

It’s What’s Inside is now available to stream on Netflix.

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