There is no higher Evil Dead honor than to wield the chainsaw and Boomstick, and Evil Dead Rise star Lily Sullivan certainly makes the most of that opportunity in the new film.
She leads as Beth, a guitar technician who’s often on the road and isn’t the best at returning her sister Ellie’s (Alyssa Sullivan) phone calls. However, at the beginning of the film, Beth is compelled to head back to Los Angeles for a visit. What she hopes will be some much-needed quality time with her sister and her three kids (Morgan Davis, Gabrielle Echols, and Nell Fisher) turns into an utter nightmare when a Necronomicon surfaces. The book quickly consumes Ellie with its evil, leaving Beth as the sole guardian and protector of the kids.
With Evil Dead Rise now playing in theaters nationwide, Sullivan joined me for a Collider Ladies Night Pre-Party chat to recap her journey in the industry thus far from her earliest sets to living up to Bruce Campbell-level expectations as the Evil Dead film franchise's newest chainsaw and shotgun-wielding hero.
Sullivan took it back to her very first professional set experience, one that included three acting heavyweights and a whole bunch of important lessons to learn. Here’s what Sullivan had to say about the learning curve she experienced on the set of Mental directed by P.J. Hogan:
“I remember telling the director, because I didn't know how to cry, to tell everyone on set in front of everyone that I am a terrible actor, and he regrets hiring me. And he said it and Toni Collette was like, ‘What are you doing, dude?’ And I was like, [while fake crying] 'No, no, it’s fine. I told him to tell me that.’ And she was like, ‘Oh my god, this kid's got a lot to learn.' And that I did on that film set! Toni Collette is Toni Collette. Liev Schreiber is very interactive with the camera. Anthony LaPaglia is just loose. So I was like, there's no right or wrong way to do this, learn on the job, and I've been making it up ever since.”
Sullivan’s right; there is no one right way to be an actor. But, has she figured out a better way to conjure tears on set? Here’s what she said:
“I have now. I found actually the power of breath work really, where you kind of carbonate the inside as opposed to imagining your mom's passed away or something hectic, which I've done a lot of for years. It was actually Evil Dead [that] was a massive contribution to my process changing to exercise all of those intense boundary pushing circumstances that are so extreme. I had to use body work and breath work and primal screams, and just get in the body and get out of the head as opposed to fully intellectualizing, which I did for a long time.”
Sullivan’s Evil Dead Rise experience didn’t just bolster her craft in that one respect. It's actually the project she credits with helping her unlock her immense potential as an artist in general. Here’s how she put it:
“There's always on every job a moment where all of the work and the pre-work you've done, you find the character. Because most actors I feel like we all don't know. We're filming and we don't know who this person is fully as you're going. You're like, I'm just offering my essence and then the way it's cut, the lines, the given circumstances kind of shapes it to a degree. So there's always a flavor of it, but I'm not gonna lie, it was Evil Dead. That for me was fully in my guttural primal power. I think leading my first American movie as well, which is pretty wild. And also just being in a place of exploration, fun, not taking myself too seriously, getting really good at embarrassing yourself, and that is the biggest freedom of all. And also collaborating with Lee Cronin and Alyssa Sutherland was awesome. We had such a safe zone and it was like anything you had to offer, anything you were pulling out, that I think was the most chemical flare I've ever had as an artist thus far.”
You can feel the result of that chemical flare for yourself on the big screen right now in Evil Dead Rise! And if you’re looking for more from Sullivan on her experience making the film, as well as a little spoiler talk, you can catch her full Collider Ladies Night Pre-Party interview in the video at the top of this article or in podcast form below:
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