The Big Picture

Collider’s Perri Nemiroff sits down with the team behind Your Monster at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Melissa Barrera, Tommy Dewey, Meghann Fahy, Edmund Donovan and Kayla Foster break down their experience making the “genre-defying monster mash.” Barrera leads the film as a soft-spoken actress who finds her voice again when she meets a monster living in her closet.

Melissa Barrera will continue to thrive in the horror genre in 2024. Not only does her upcoming feature, Abigail, look like yet another wild and riveting ride from Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, but now she’s also got a Sundance selection poised to delight genre lovers as soon as it secures distribution. (And it better!)

Writer-director Caroline Lindy makes her feature debut with Your Monster, a piece based on “true-ish” events. Barrera leads as Laura Franco, an actress whose world is rocked when the person she thought was the love of her life (Edmund Donovan) leaves her when she needs him most, after powering through a serious illness. While at her childhood home recovering, Laura finds an unexpected ally — the monster in her closet. With Monster (Tommy Dewey) at her back, Laura taps into her suppressed rage, regains her power, and does what’s necessary to get the opportunities and respect she deserves.

While in Park City celebrating Your Monster’s World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Barrera, Dewey, Donovan, Meghann Fahy and Kayla Foster all swung by the Collider Interview Studio brought to you by Film.io to chat with Perri about their dream collaboration with Lindy, Barrera’s experience going to places with her character she didn’t realize she was capable of reaching, and loads more!

Hear about it all straight from Barrera, Dewey, Donovan, Fahy and Foster in the video interview above, or you can read the conversation in transcript form below.

Your Monster After her life falls apart, soft-spoken actress Laura Franco finds her voice again when she meets a terrifying, yet weirdly charming Monster living in her closet. A romantic-comedy-horror film about falling in love with your inner rage. Release Date January 18, 2024 Director Caroline Lindy Runtime 98 minutes Writers Caroline Lindy

PERRI NEMIROFF: Kayla, you’re getting the hardest question of the bunch today.

KAYLA FOSTER: Hit me. I’m terrified.

I’m giving it to you because, in addition to starring in the film, you also produced it. Some folks out there might not know what Your Monster is just yet, so can you give everyone a brief description of your film?

FOSTER: Yes. Oh god, I’m so embarrassed in front of the cast. [Laughs] Your Monster is a story about Laura, played by Melissa, whose life falls apart. It’s a true story, also. True-ish. I’m gonna keep talking …

Image via Photagonist at the Collider Media Studio

Oh, I’m gonna get to that.

FOSTER: [Laughs] Her life falls apart, she comes home miserable and meets the monster living in her closet, and they have a pretty fun love story. It’s about falling in love with your rage.

Brilliant way to explore that.

I have another question for you because when I was reading our notes, you called yourself a creative producer, which makes me really happy because that’s what I studied specifically. I feel like creative producers don’t get the same amount of respect as other types of producers, so what does it mean to you to be a creative producer?

FOSTER: It’s interesting. On an indie film, creative producing plus boots-on-the-ground producing is kind of what you have to do because everybody has to do everything, but in terms of how I would define my creative role on this, I was really in lockstep with Caroline the whole time. So, we got the green light for the film after she had done the short, but she wrote a new version of the feature, so this was brand-new to her. So I worked with her, we discussed every single word in that script together until three in the morning for months, and then on set I was right by her side, and then in editing as well. For me, also, to be a director, and especially to make something that’s such a personal story to her, I just wanted to make sure she, A, had emotional support and, B, had the creative support of somebody reminding her, “Let’s stay on theme. What are you trying to say here,” and making sure that she felt as proud as she could at the end of the day.

‘Your Monster’ Celebrates “Messy and Loud and Big” Women
Image via Sundance 

We have to highlight Caroline, for sure. I want to follow up on one other thing because you were so heavily involved in the script process. What would you say is the biggest difference between the first draft of the script and what everyone’s gonna see in the finished feature?

FOSTER: God, there’s been so many drafts. It got progressively more and more and more romantic. But the other thing was, it took a little time to land on what Laura did for a living. It’s based a little bit on a true story in terms of [Caroline] auditioning for someone that broke her heart, but that was for a different kind of project. The reason we landed on musical theater is because we had a really long talk about where we, when we were young women, felt like we saw women that were messy and loud and big and were applauded for it, and musical theater is really that space. It’s like, Patti LuPone is on stage screaming and everyone gets up and applauds that, and so we wanted Laura to get there and to have that experience.

I love that element of the movie. I can’t imagine this story any other way.

‘Your Monster’ Director Understands the Value of Collaboration on Set

Like I said, we have to highlight Caroline who can’t be here today, but for good reason! I was watching her Meet the Filmmaker video and it’s because she’s gonna have a baby and that’s wonderful! But we need to celebrate how damn talented she is. Tommy, I’m gonna come your way first because you also worked on the short film. How did the two of you first meet and when you first met, what was it about her that signaled to you, “This isn’t just someone I want to work with once, but maybe have a long-lasting creative partnership with?”

TOMMY DEWEY: I met Caroline as an actor. She was doing two episodes of a show I did called Casual. She’s a great actor. She won’t admit that, but she’s fantastic.

FOSTER: She hates it, but she’s so good.

DEWEY: She’s clearly very smart. We started talking about writing, but then went our separate ways. Then, I want to say a year-and-a-half or so later, I did the one yoga class I do every decade and she was there and approached me afterward, and she was like, “Would you read this monster thing and think about doing this?” I mean, she’s taking a leap of faith. I’ve never done anything with prosthetics, but something about our experience working together for those couple of days, I don’t know, made her think that I might be able to pull this off. So we did the short. It feels like it was six years ago. I don’t really know. I’ve lost track of time. But I kind of tracked the development process with the feature, and it’s this dream story. It never happens, but it happened with us.

You are pitch perfect as Monster here!

Image via Sundance

Meghann and Edmund, I want to throw another question about Caroline your way. What is something about her as an actor’s director that you really appreciated and you look forward to more actors getting to experience when they work with her in the future?

MEGHANN FAHY: The first thing that comes to mind is I think that Caroline just really loves actors. It is true that she’s a very good one because I saw her in a short that she did, and it’s so funny that she won’t accept that. But that, I think, is probably part of why she’s so good with actors. She knows how to talk to them and she’s genuinely excited by things that the actors will come up with. She’s like, “Oh, that! That! Yes, do that again!” She’s such a playful, supportive, open, and excited person who’s really good at communicating. I feel like, as an actor, what else could you hope for when you’re working with someone?

Does she have a monitor dance?

EDMUND DONOVAN: Oh, for sure.

DEWEY: She’s got a squeal.

DONOVAN: And it’s true, she trusted all of us and trusts actors so much. There’s a lot in the movie that wasn’t in the script where we were just kind of playing around and it ended up in the movie, and that’s because she gave us the reins. I had so much fun making this movie, and I credit that entirely to Caroline.

‘Your Monster’ Wasn’t Perfect Until It Made the Director Swoon
Image via Sundance 

Can you give us an example of something that wasn’t in the script?

DONOVAN: A bunch of stuff in the fight we have on the stage. Right?

DEWEY: You had that great line we were talking about yesterday.

DONOVAN: Yeah, I’m blanking, but there were so many things.

FOSTER: Jesse Green.

DONOVAN: Oh yeah, “The New York Times is in the audience.” That stuff.

DEWEY: “This is so fucking awkward.” [Laughs]

DONOVAN: Yeah, “This is so effed up,” I say at one point. There really are a lot for all of us, I think.

FAHY: She does this really fun thing where she’ll just yell from behind the camera, or wherever she is, “Say this!” And then you just try it. So it’s like she’s very present and then, as a result, you feel very pulled into the present moment as the actor too, so it creates this really cool space.

DEWEY: It’s a very rare quality for a director in their debut feature to be willing to sort of see where the day takes you. I think there’s a tendency to kind of want to over-control things, but she was really open to all of us actor nerds taking big swings.

FOSTER: Voice from the editing room — she cares so much about every person’s performance and giving the best version of that possible. Of course, keeping story in mind, she goes through every take, every word, every eye, every look to make sure that all of us were telling the truth in the best way possible. She really, really cares, and she loves these guys a lot.

Image via Photagonist at the Collider Media Studio

MELISSA BARRERA: And when we were shooting, especially when Tommy and I were doing the cutesy stuff together, it became a thing of, we wanted Caroline to come and be very excited and dance and yell. She would get on her knees and she would fall on the ground when it was the right amount of mushy, lovey deliciousness that she loves. So that was our goal in all of the things.

DEWEY: We weren’t willing to move on unless we got her swooning.

It makes me happy that she’s so expressive about it. I feel like we all need to be more open with how exciting and fulfilling it can be when you nail a scene like that!

Melissa Barrera Went Places She Never Thought Possible in ‘Your Monster’
Image via Sundance Institute

Melissa, I saved you for last in terms of my questions about working with Caroline here. It was already brought up that this is based on a “true-ish” story. How does it change the game for you when you’re working with a director with such a direct connection to your character who’s so willing to be so open with you about her experience?

BARRERA: It was beautiful. It was beautiful to have a director that is so specific about their vision of the movie, but also is willing to let you discover things, but is always beside you. I think that’s what makes great actors — a partnership with a great director. I actually think that’s what makes an actor great. That’s why you see so many of the great actors where they have these special connections with certain directors that they always work with because I think they have this thing, this communication. I always felt safe with her and I always felt like she was beside me but not dictating things, just guiding me to places that I didn’t even know I was capable of going. And she was. She knew that I could get to these places. I didn’t, and I was scared.

I remember in one of the first few days we were shooting that scene where I first discover the monster, and I’m on the couch and I’m wailing. And I was crying — there’s a lot of crying in this movie — and she was like, “I want more,” and I was like, “What do you mean more? I don’t know what you mean!” She was like, “I need you wailing. I need it to be loud.” And I was like, “I don’t know that that’s gonna feel real coming from me.” She was like, “It will. Trust me. Just do it.” And that’s how we ended up with what you see in the movie. But she was so sure that I could get to that place, and I wasn’t. But it was because of her telling me in such a loving way, and I just love her for it. I think she’s brilliant. I think any actor would be lucky to work with her.

That leans nicely into our Film.io question of the festival! They’re all about putting the power in the hands of the creators, so whether it is on this film or anything else you’ve all worked on, can you give me an example of a time when someone gave you creative control, maybe at a time when you knew you deserved it, but you didn’t think you were gonna get it?

FOSTER: This movie. Our team behind us, the rest of the producers, gave Caroline and I so much creative control. It was pretty unbelievable. Even just saying, “Okay, we have an indie budget, we wanna put a Broadway show in it, we want prosthetics, we wanna hire an Oscar-winner to do it, and it’s gonna be a 20-day shoot. You guys good?” And everyone said yeah, and everyone did it. It was really ambitious and it was really hard, and the product is really fun. I think that that’s a really rare thing. And can I say the word “really” any more times?”

It applies!

DEWEY: I say this as an actor, you said it kind of differently each time, so you kept it fresh.

FOSTER: [Laughs] The voice of Caroline has risen.

DEWEY: I would add to that, just in terms of this movie, I was welcomed into the design phase of the monster. I was going up to Dave Anderson’s lab — which is the most fantastic place, and everyone should be so lucky to visit that place — and go through drafts of the monster. I had no business doing that. That’s not my forte, but man, was it a cool ride.

BARRERA: Also, the process, it was so quick, but we were hanging out a lot. The rehearsals were during the shoot, and we would just get together for dinner and run some things. And Caroline, from the beginning with us, it was very cool because we would just get together, order Chinese, and read through and then work it out and change it in the moment. Kayla would be at the computer on Final Draft, and that’s how we came up with a lot of the banter-y things and a lot of the deep emotional beats.

I forget what scene it was, but I remember Caroline had something and I read it and I was like, “This feels very right, but I feel like I would say it differently.” Like, my Laura would say it differently than Caroline’s Laura, so I took her things and I kind of did, like, a little puzzle.

Image via Photagonist at the Collider Media Studio

FOSTER: Our fight scene. Wasn’t it that?

BARRERA: It was our fight scene.

FOSTER: It was our fight at the end, which changed completely when Melissa came in.

BARRERA: A thousand times.

FOSTER: It changed for me completely, and I had been with the script for months. And then she came in and it changed my whole arc of Mazie, was Melissa talking to us about her version of Laura. It was really cool.

BARRERA: Yeah, and just the openness of allowing me as an actor coming in to be like, “What do you think of this?” This is what your lines inspired [in] me and so I want to add to this. I actually want to say this, too. Just the collaboration of it all. The definition of collaboration.

Edmund and Meghann, anything you want to add to that question? A time when you got creative control when you didn’t expect it.

FAHY: This morning when I added Feta to my avocado toast. I thought, “Wow, what an incredible option.” [Laughs] No, I don’t really have anything to add.

A joke, but it’s a good option to have.

FAHY: Creativity comes in a lot of different forms. I did a show called The Bold Type for a while that I loved, and that was actually the first time I was on a set where I felt like my ideas were being taken into consideration, or if I wanted to change something, or whatever. It felt very collaborative in that way, and so I think that was probably my first experience with that.

DONOVAN: Yeah, a project I worked on, a show called Betty on HBO with Crystal Moselle, who I believe is an alum of Sundance. An incredible filmmaker. We had a script, but she really encouraged us to improvise. And it’s challenging, you know? That’s the role of the writer, creating that form, that structure, but it’s freeing when it’s done by the right person, and I felt that way with Crystal and similarly with Caroline. They’re the two people who I’ve felt that way with.

This last question might be a weird question, and it kind of puts you on the spot creatively, but it’s something that I’ve found myself thinking a lot about since watching the movie. How do you imagine your own monster might manifest and what would it look like?

FAHY: Well, my monster would definitely be as hot as Melissa’s. Let’s get that straight.

DEWEY: Thank you?

Image via Photagonist at the Collider Media Studio

I don’t think anyone’s gonna top that answer now.

FOSTER: No, I like that one.

FAHY: Gotta have a hot monster, guys.

BARRERA: I think that’s the reason that I don’t do ayahuasca, because I’m scared of that, so I don’t know.

DEWEY: God, I don’t know. As the monster in this movie, I have trouble thinking of a monster that looks different. But I think we could all use a little help standing up for ourselves. I’d hope that my monster would help me do that a little more.

That’s where my mind went. The idea of standing up for yourself, but in a way of fighting the urge to put yourself down.

DEWEY: Yeah, that’s great.

So I feel like my monster would be a monster version of me, maybe?

FOSTER: Maybe my monster is Patti LuPone. Thoughts?

BARRERA: I love that.

FAHY: Signed off on that.

Can we get a sequel? You’re a producer, make it happen!

FOSTER: Yeah, I got you. [Laughs]

BARRERA: I mean, I’ve always loved vampires, so I hope that my monster manifests as a hot Dracula.

Special thanks to our 2024 partners at Sundance, including presenting partner Film.io and supporting partners Pressed Juicery and DragonFly Coffee Roasters.