The Big Picture

Welcome to a new episode of Collider Ladies Night with
Heretic
star Sophie Thatcher.
During her chat with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff, she recaps her road to becoming one of the most exciting artists in horror right now.
She also revisits that devastating
Yellowjackets
Season 2 finale and discusses how it impacted her Season 3 performance.

What Sophie Thatcher’s managed to accomplish in recent years, in general, is downright phenomenal. But, as someone who proudly dubs horror her #1, I can’t help but be especially excited about how Thatcher’s solidified herself as a dominant force in the genre. Soon after Yellowjackets proved Thatcher was an all-around powerhouse when it debuted in late 2021, she scored the lead role in Rob Savage’s big screen adaptation of Stephen King’s The Boogeyman, became a part of Ti West’s X trilogy via MaXXXine, and now she stars opposite Hugh Grant and Chloe East in A24’s latest release, Heretic.

The wickedly sharp and chilling feature stars Thatcher and East as Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton, two young missionaries who are busy ringing doorbells in suburban Colorado. Trouble is, on this day, they ring the wrong one. When Grant’s Mr. Reed welcomes them inside, they think it’s an opportunity to get out of the rain while also telling him all about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, little do they know, Mr. Reed is well versed in their religion and others, and he’s determined to rock their beliefs to the core.

With Heretic hitting theaters nationwide, Thatcher joined me for a Collider Ladies Night interview to chat about her wonderfully horror-heavy path in film and television thus far. She looks back on that heartbreaking Yellowjackets Season 2 finale and discusses how it impacted her Season 3 performance. She also breaks down her experience working opposite Grant and East in Heretic to create a pitch-perfect lead trio for the film.

Making ‘Prospect’ with Pedro Pascal & Jay Duplass Was a Game-Changer
“I looked at everything differently because I was excited to be doing something.”
Image Via Dust (Gunpowder & Sky)

At the beginning of our conversation, Thatcher emphasized that she developed a deep passion for acting at a very young age. “I felt very intense about it early on, and I think my parents both knew that I was really dedicated and took it very seriously.” However, she did experience a point when that passion changed a bit. What brought her back to her roots in that respect? The 2018 sci-fi film Prospect in which she starred opposite Pedro Pascal and Jay Duplass.

“Doing
Prospect
and working with such cool people, and feeling like I could hold my own in my first movie, and feeling like it was natural, I was like, ‘Oh, this is exhausting but it’s really something that is satisfying.’ It was really stressful, but I’d never felt so emotional. I would go back to the hotel and just feel like everything was heightened and everything in life just felt really, I don’t know —
I looked at everything differently because I was excited to be doing something
. I was, like, 16 and just very angsty, just like, ‘Fuck my life,’ but then I finally did that and it just brought back this passion that I guess I had when I was younger when I was doing theater.”

Yet another hugely positive takeaway from her experience working on the film that sees a father (Duplass) and daughter (Thatcher) landing on a poisonous forest moon and navigating a number of dangerous threats while mining for valuable gems? The examples that both Duplass and Pascal set for her.

“
Pedro Pascal is fantastic
and watching him, I was always in awe of how quickly he could go to such great emotions, and such heightened emotions.
I loved how Jay Duplass would improvise with me beforehand
, and then we would get into the scene and he was very keen on world-building and character-building and asking questions.”

Thatcher would continue to encounter top-tier leaders on sets as she moved forward in film and television, amassing impressive credits. A favorite of the bunch? Yellowjackets headliner, Melanie Lynskey.

“
I think Melanie Lynskey is the perfect example of a number one.
And anybody could say that. She’s just a really beautiful human being. She’s just lovely and makes everyone feel like equals. We don’t really get that much time with her, but watching her from afar is just like, ‘Okay, if I’m ever gonna be a number one in a show, you treat
everybody
with respect.’”

The Wide Range of Talent on the ‘Yellowjackets’ Set

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In addition to Lynskey, Thatcher is surrounded by a wealth of talent on the Yellowjackets set — an ensemble full of actors who make their complex roles uniquely their own via their own personal approaches to the work.

Given Collider Ladies Night often focuses on the wide variety of acting techniques out there, I asked Thatcher for two Yellowjackets co-stars who have wholly different ways of tackling their work. She began:

“
Sophie Nélisse has this amazing ability to snap out of it and go to these crazy insane places and then just be fine.
It just shows that raw talent, and that’s something that I admire that I don’t always get. I feel like, to some extent, Natalie has kind of creeped into who I am, which is a crazy thing to say, but we’re three seasons in and I feel like playing Natalie is the most natural thing in the world. Whereas, I feel like Sophie doesn’t — I mean, maybe she’d disagree — but Shauna is a very complicated character, and I think they’re very different. But I just admire how she can snap in and out of it. And for me, with Natalie, my voice is lower now, all these little tiny things that I can’t really let go of in my body.”

From there, Thatcher jumped over to Liv Hewson who rocks one of the most wonderful qualities a scene partner can have — they’re always giving, even when the camera isn’t on them.

“I think Liv is probably the most in it and remains in it when the camera’s not on them, which is a really admirable quality. Sometimes I don’t do that, and I really wish I could, but I just get really exhausted and I can’t always give everything, and I think other people feel that. But
Liv is just always giving and always there to react. It’s a very admirable quality.
”

Saying Goodbye to Juliette Lewis’ Adult Natalie on ‘Yellowjackets’
“I remember bawling during the read-through.”
Image via Showtime

In addition to being surrounded by hugely talented scene partners in the 90s portion of the show, Thatcher also has the wonderful opportunity to share her character with one of the best of the best, Juliette Lewis, who plays Natalie in the present day timeline.

The show jumps back and forth between the two timelines seamlessly, in large part due to the exceptional casting for the 90s/present day pairings, Thatcher and Lewis included. However, in Season 3, Thatcher will move forward in the narrative without her present day counterpart. In one of the most earth-shattering moments of the entire series thus far, Misty (Christian Ricci) accidentally takes Natalie’s life in the Season 2 finale.

“There was always talk about it. I had a feeling it was coming, and then we had this New York Times shoot together, and she was like, ‘By the way, I’m not gonna be on the show anymore.’ I was like, ‘Oh yeah, I mean, I saw that coming.’ I think it was hard for her because she has been writing her own scripts, she performs in her music band — she has so much going on, and I get it.
To be playing Natalie, that’s kind of messed with me in ways, too. It gets really dark.
But she told me that she wasn’t doing it anymore, and I remember being excited for her because I can’t wait to see the stuff she’s written, or more of her music, the new movie that she’s in.”

While Thatcher was thrilled to see her other half go on to do even more phenomenal things with her art, she admits, “But then I also felt like, your character dying is like a loss, because I’ve spent so many years playing her. It just felt really tragic, and I remember bawling during the read-through.”

No, Thatcher’s version of the character wouldn’t be aware of her fate in the future, but knowing the conclusion of Natalie’s story has impacted Thatcher’s approach to her work in Season 3 as an actor:

“Going to Season 3, I do have a sense of freedom and I’m a little bit less obsessed with pinpointing the voice — I mean, it’s probably in me now. But I think there was a little bit more freedom and I could play around, and I was less pressured. The first season I was just like, ‘I don’t know if I’m comparable to her or as intense as her.’
That was always my biggest fear, that I wasn’t as intense as her. But I think in Season 3, you start to see more intensity
, and that I felt more room to play around. It was also, with Season 3, less pressure on myself because I’ve been doing it for a while.”

Perhaps it’s easier to say this as an outsider but, despite those personal doubts, Thatcher made a flawless pairing with Lewis every single step of the way. And, given I’ve always thought so highly of her work, I cannot wait to see where she takes things having even more confidence in herself in the role when Yellowjackets returns.

How Sophie Thatcher Became a Horror Movie Powerhouse
“I’m naturally drawn to darker pieces.”
Image via A24

I’m a big believer Thatcher’s range is limitless, but there’s also no denying that genre storytelling in particular has teed her up for monumental success.

“I’m naturally drawn to darker pieces. I like being really emotional, and it feels natural to be emotional on camera now. I feel like I’m always crying, and it just feels like a release.
It can be very draining at times, but I think there’s so much artistry in horror
and there’s so much creativity to be had and so much surrealism. You can play with the depths of reality and just so many different things. When you’re in something that’s a bit more grounded, you’re a bit more confined. So I think with horror, it gets to be more fantastical and you can use your imagination more, which is great.”

Not only does Thatcher credit the genre with being especially creatively fulfilling for her as an actor, but the more she works with horror storytelling aces behind the lens, the more she itches to write and direct as well.

“Chloe [East] brought this up, and I hadn’t really thought about it, but I think what was so interesting about Scott [Beck] and Bryan [Woods] is that they were very aware of possibly how the audience will perceive the film. They’re very self-aware, but they also know how a good horror film works. I think because there is a bit of a map to it,
I think a lot of horror directors are aware of what audiences feel
. I think sometimes when you’re doing other genres, there’s less awareness, because it is really about making that impact on the audience, whereas when you’re doing something that is more grounded, it’s more about being in the moment with the actors. So
I think that’s interesting to get that perspective and think from that point of view, which is making
me
interested in possibly wanting to direct or write
.”

Working Opposite Huge Grant & Chloe East to form the Perfect ‘Heretic’ Trio

Heretic is an extremely well written film, but there’s no overlooking the fact that such a script could never have soared as high as it does without the ideal ensemble, and Scott Beck and Bryan Woods found just that in Thatcher, East and Grant. In fact, similar to Yellowjackets, it’s an example of masterful casting, casting that results in characters that feel so specific to the artist breathing life into them that there’s no denying that these are their roles and couldn’t have been anyone else’s.

In fact, for Thatcher, Chloe East is Sister Paxton.

“She was perfect to act off of. She really did her work and fully became that character and just brought this unexpectedness and this earnestness and this likability that is within her, as you could tell from just meeting her. She’s so likable and so charming.
She’s just brutally honest as an actor.
Courtney [Eaton] has that too in her, where it’s like I can never see them lie. I just watch them time after time, and I know I lie as an actor [laughs], so I’m saying I can recognize it, and it’s hard to always be honest, and it really tears at you, too. And I think that’s why she works so well in that last monologue.
Watching it two days ago with my family, it just broke me. I started bawling.
”

As for Grant, holding her own opposite such a legend in this industry is one of the things Thatcher is most proud of in Heretic.

“
There was a fear of mine that I wouldn’t be able to be as vulnerable or open or as confident
, but I totally was, and I was confident thanks to him, thanks to Chloe. So to just have that confidence and hold my own, I think is a big deal. It’s a milestone in my career for myself.”

Looking for even more from Thatcher on Heretic, Yellowjackets, and then some? Be sure to catch our full conversation in the video at the top of this article!

Heretic follows a disillusioned former monk who embarks on a perilous journey to discover the truth behind a mystical artifact rumored to hold immense power. As he encounters various factions vying for control, he must reevaluate his beliefs and determine the moral path amidst an unfolding conspiracy.Release Date November 8, 2024 Director Scott Beck , Bryan Woods Runtime 110 Minutes Distributor(s) A24 Expand

Heretic is now playing in theaters nationwide.

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