From the moment we see the character of Rachel in Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, she’s fighting something. At first, she’s quietly navigating the feeling that her impending nuptials might be doomed and worrying that her future in-laws have it out for her; then, later, she’s protecting herself from a dangerous curse that has poisoned her bloodline and threatens her life. For the limited series’ star Camila Morrone, getting the role of Rachel required a similar kind of mettle. “I definitely had to fight for it, but I think that’s the most rewarding way of booking a job,” says Morrone. “You really have to go tooth and nail and give it your all every single audition, and then you’ve just got to close your eyes and pray that you make it to the next round.”

In creator Haley Z. Boston’s Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, the Emmy-nominated performer (Daisy Jones & The Six) captivates in every frame of the horror series as Rachel, a young woman who has a complicated relationship with traditional ideas surrounding family and marriage, and struggles to survive (literally) the days leading up to her wedding. As her discovery of a generational curse reveals the traumatic story behind her parents’ wedding day, which led to her mother’s death, Rachel must come to terms with what it means to truly love another person, and whom she can really trust. “This was by far the most challenging role I’ve ever taken on, which I say with a lot of pride because I hope to always say that about my work and to always feel like I’m leveling up and challenging myself and taking on characters that feel really far away from me and feel like, ‘Holy shit, I want to quit this job before I even start because I’m terrified,’” says the actor. “It’s really like looking at Mount Everest and knowing that you have to climb it, and there’s this imminent dread and fear right before you start.” 

Morrone, who can next be seen as a very different kind of leading lady, Countess Ellen Olenska, in a forthcoming adaptation of The Age of Innocence, sat down with Tudum Magazine to unpack the emotional and physical toll of playing a character who’s in a constant state of paranoia, how the role pushed her as a performer, and more. 

How did this project first come to your attention?

Funny enough, I was shooting The Night Manager in Colombia and Spain, and I was playing a totally different character, the complete opposite of Rachel — I was playing a Colombian arms dealer, and I had a spray tan, fake nails, long hair extensions, and big gold hoops. 

It’s rare that I get a call from my team and they basically say, “Put everything down. You need to read the pilot immediately, and if you like it, you’re going to have to audition for it, and we’re going to have to go for it full steam.” When I read the pilot, I was like, “Oh, damn, this is one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to really push myself as an actress, and to go into a genre and a space that I’m unfamiliar with and really challenge myself.” 

There was nothing about the pilot and [the character of] Rachel that seemed like it would come easily to me. She’s very different from me. You’re talking about a character who’s an introvert, and she’s very wary, and she lives in this very paranoid state from the very first moment we meet her. So, that being the complete opposite of how I, Cami, run around the world and operate in the world, that was really intriguing to me.

Rachel is such a unique character in that she’s very honest about how she’s feeling, but there’s so much going on beneath the surface that even she doesn’t know how to make sense of it. As an actor, how did you develop that interiority?

What was important to me was the evolution of her paranoia and angst. I didn’t want to come in level 10 right when you meet her, because there’s so much left to go. You have eight episodes, and it was really challenging for me to find the balance. What was challenging and exciting for me was figuring out, how does horror live in your body? How does fear live in your body?  

When you’re filming eight episodes in a series, you’re often going out of order, so you have to remember what the character knows, what she’s been through, what she doesn’t know yet. And it’s a lot of back-and-forth. The task of keeping track of where Rachel is on her paranoia and fear scale was a job on its own.

How did you just wrap your head around sustaining that tension throughout months of shooting, and how did you shake it off at the end of the day?

Once you start, you catch a rhythm. But I will say props to genre filmmakers and actors — this is a beast of its own. To stay in a place of panic, thinking your life is going to be taken from you at any moment, and to be able to then sustain that for an 80-day shoot, which takes five months in the dead of winter in Canada, on night shoots, so your body is on a different circadian rhythm is really challenging. I think in some capacity, you have to use that for the performance.

So you look at your circumstances and go, “Wow, this is going to be really hard. I’m going to be exhausted. My body is going to feel like it’s breaking down. I’m going to have to go places I don’t want to go to emotionally when I’m really, really tired.” And you just have to embrace all of it and put it into the work. There have been some epic, epic, epic female performances in horror. I think of Sissy Spacek, and Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, and Possession. And I just look at these women and I’m like, “How did you sustain this for so long?”

There’s something that happens somatically when you are really in a scene. It feels like a lucky moment when you really feel like, “Wow, I’ve dropped into my character,” and I actually think I am in her circumstance. And a lot of times you’re in your head, and you’re judging yourself, but on Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, there were moments where I would look down, and my hands were shaking uncontrollably, and I was getting sweaty palms, and I could feel the chill down [my] spine. So much of that was just reacting to what was given to me, and I felt my body and mind sync up and drop in, which is kind of the best thing that can happen to you as an actor, because it allows you to get out of your own judgmental brain.

I want to talk about the last episode — I just imagine there was so much physical choreography while you’re also doing so much emotional choreography as well. Could you talk a little about shooting the finale?

It felt like a blackout those last four or five days that we were shooting the finale with the blood, because we got everything done before we had to get into the blood, and then we saved the last three days of shooting. The blood was incredibly challenging. Those oners [single, extended, uninterrupted takes] are incredibly challenging. We did more than 20 takes for some of those oners, and you are physically exhausted, you’re getting stuck to everything, your hair is sticking to your body, you’re spitting out blood that doesn’t taste great. It’s coming out of your nose and your eyes and your ears, and you’re crying hysterically and the dress is getting heavier and heavier as it gets bloody. It’s when you’re thrown one of those elements that just takes everything to a different tier of challenge and anxiety. I think it’s one of my favorite parts of the series, and it’s such a culmination of everything that we’ve been building up for. 

What did you feel like this role let you explore that you haven’t been able to before?

I think just my range of emotions. I think I had to break my fear of looking silly or stupid, or being cringe or making faces, and being a bad actor. I had to just let all of that ego and vanity go, and stop trying to perfect a performance or mold it or anticipate what it’s going to be. And I had to just let it all go and just drop into the moment.  

I would say it’s the most I’ve ever grown as an actor in this show, because I was truly terrified. I did not want to do horror. I thought it was for the big leagues, the actresses who are so talented that they are able to make you really believe that they’re going crazy or that they think someone is out to get them. And that’s such a scary note to play as an actor, to think that people are coming after you or think that you’re going to die in three days. How do you even relate to that as a person? How do you truthfully relate to that? How do you not intellectualize it and actually feel in your body like, “Holy shit, I’m going to die in three days.” It’s just so far away from anything I had ever thought about or experienced myself. So it was just a leap of faith, and I feel proud that I went for it.