Longlegs star Maika Monroe has spoken about her first time seeing Nicolas Cage in full makeup as the titular serial killer – see what Monroe had to say below.
- READ MORE: ‘Longlegs’ review: Nicolas Cage brings the batshit in seriously creepy serial killer movie
Speaking to Variety about the film – in which she plays FBI agent Lee Harker, who is tasked with hunting down Cage’s Longlegs – the actor said her first time seeing Cage was what is show in the movie.
According to Monroe, director Osgood Perkins made a conscious effort to keep the film’s stars away from each other until they crossed paths in a scene together.
“The whole lead-up to that was crazy. They had been filming with Cage for five days at that point, and it was his last day, probably three weeks into filming. The director chose to not have me see anything, not meet him, not see what his face looked like. He created this character, this thing, so I was so nervous.”
Monroe continued: “The PAs bring me up to this door that enters into the room where he is. The cameras start rolling on me and the director calls ‘action.’ I opened the door and what you see is all very real, and it was incredible. He’s unrecognizable, and so I didn’t feel like I was in a room with Nic Cage. I was in a room with Longlegs. After we finished that scene, he was done. He’s in this method world, but he was able to let go of it. We’re sitting across from each other and he leans over, in his full look and everything, and says, ‘Oh, I’m such a big fan of you.’”
In a conversation with Variety, Cage expanded on his fandom of Monroe: “I wanted to follow her after It Follows. Especially the first opening scenes when she’s tied into that wheelchair, getting pushed around. I felt terrible for her, and she just kept it through the whole movie. It’s a different energy than other actors have. It’s what makes it uniquely her, and her own thing is that Maika has a personality and energy that separates her from everybody else. She’s not like anybody else, and that’s a big compliment.”
NME reviewed Longlegs upon release, with James Mottram giving it four stars: “At its heart, Monroe is superb as Harker, offering up a buttoned-down performance that never breaks. Hopefully, Longlegs doesn’t get her pigeonholed as a Scream Queen; she deserves more. As for Cage, also a producer here, it’s just another worthy addition to his canon of crazies.
“Despite limited screentime, it might just be his most bonkers role yet. “Is it scary being a lady FBI agent?” asks one little girl of Harker. Well, when you’re confronted with Cage’s Longlegs, it most certainly is.”
Meanwhile, Cage has spoken about how channeling his mother for his role as Longlegs was “constructive”, “Not that she was satanic,” he clarified, “but her vocalisations, the way she would move.”
“She would talk, like, ‘Oooh, Nicky, you looked just like a little bird when you were born’,” he continued. “And that was just scary. I think my mom did as well as she could with the situation in which she was contending with, but it was still scary. So I thought, O.K., I want to make this character as a sort of homage to my mother.”
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