In the landscape of modern horror, few faces are as instantly recognizable — or as frequently covered in viscera — as Samara Weaving’s. Since her breakout in The Babysitter, the Australian actress has carved out a niche as one of the genre’s most resilient brawlers. But as she returns to her most iconic role in the highly anticipated sequel, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, Weaving isn’t just surviving the night, she’s running the show.
For the uninitiated, 2019’s Ready or Not is about a bride named Grace whose wedding night turns into a honeymoon from hell when she’s thrust into a deadly game of hide-and-seek with her wealthy (and very bloodthirsty) in-laws. It’s a family tradition that links back to an ancestor’s dubious dealings with a demonic entity known as Mr. Le Bail. Spoiler alert: Grace wins the game, but the newly minted widow’s night of body-exploding horror was just the beginning.
“We had so much fun making the first one, and we loved it so much, but we didn’t know if the world would enjoy it as much as they did, so it was quite a surprise that it got the audience that it did,” recalls Weaving. “Suddenly I started seeing people dressed up as Grace on Halloween, and people getting tattoos of my face on them and stuff. Then it became a real conversation of, ‘Oh, okay, let’s do another one,’ which was just so exciting, but definitely unplanned.”
Weaving is not only donning the blood-spattered bridal gown all over again, she’s also taking on a behind-the-scenes role. Stepping up as an executive producer, she worked closely with the filmmaking collective Radio Silence (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett) and Searchlight Pictures to ensure Grace’s evolution felt authentic. “It definitely was a collaborative job,” she explains. “I don’t think any one of us wanted to make something that we didn’t absolutely love. They were so great at hearing my ideas and taking them on board, and we all just wanted it to be the best movie it could be.”
If the first Ready or Not was a grueling game of cat and mouse, the sequel is an all-out war. The film picks up just seconds after the first left off, giving Grace no time to recoup. She remains one of the most physically punished protagonists in recent memory, drawing comparisons to Evil Dead’s Ash Williams, played by national treasure Bruce Campbell — a character Weaving is intimately familiar with after her stint on Ash vs. Evil Dead.
Gorehounds will be pleased that the sequel ups the ante with “blood cannons” that far exceed the original’s body-combusting climax. While Weaving jokes that she doesn’t exactly love being drenched in crimson goo, she embraces the necessity of it. “It is such an iconic part of the first movie, I knew that there’d be a lot of those in the second one,” she says.
However, she’s quick to share the credit for her “tough as nails” screen presence. “I do love doing my own stunts, but I also do need to give credit where credit’s due, and the stunt team on this movie, they’re absolutely incredible. They make me look very cool.”
That commitment to the “goo” led to a surreal moment during production near Niagara Falls. “I completely forgot that I was covered in goo,” Weaving laughs, recounting a quick sightseeing trip between setups. “I thought, oh, just while they’re setting up this next location, I’ll just quickly get one of the location guys to drive me to where you can see the falls really quick. I got there, and I realized, oh, wait a minute, I’m covered in blood. I am going to terrify everyone here.”
Her driver, Tim, wasn’t much help. “He went, ‘No, no, you’ll be fine,’ and just drove off. And so I’m wandering around Niagara Falls trying to hide from all these tourists who are just trying to have a great time, and there’s this bloody woman, just head to toe in gore. I got one selfie of me covered in blood by the falls, and then quickly got in the car and went back, but yeah, you forget sometimes.”
Beyond the blood and physicality, there is that impressive set of pipes. Weaving has become famous for a distinctive, primal, and incredibly guttural scream that has become her calling card. Interestingly, she didn’t know she possessed the “talent” until she was on the set of Ash vs. Evil Dead. As for her ritual to protect her vocal cords before a big take? There isn’t one. “I don’t know! I didn’t do anything before. It just comes out,” explains the natural-born scream queen. “It just lives in me, and is just ready whenever I need it. I don’t know why it doesn’t cut my vocal cords, it doesn’t seem to, anyway. I might be a bit hoarse the next day, but it’s not like it hurts or anything. I don’t know what to tell you, it’s just in there.”
One of the biggest draws of Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is its powerhouse ensemble, featuring horror royalty like David Cronenberg and the beloved Elijah Wood. But for Weaving, the highlight was “throwing down” with the slayer herself, Sarah Michelle Gellar.
“It was amazing. It was so cool,” Weaving gushes. “I think when they realized she signed on to do it, they wrote that scene with her so that she could do her Buffy thing, and I’m so honored that it was with me.”
The sequel also breaks Grace’s “lone wolf” status by introducing a sister, played by Kathryn Newton. “She’s an absolute delight,” says Weaving. “The idea of Grace having a sister was really genius, because in the first one it was just me alone, sort of experiencing this, so to have the second set of eyes and another perspective on it for the second one made it have a freshness that I think would have been difficult to find if it was just me experiencing that all over again. So I really loved having a partner to bounce ideas off of, and I think it had a lot of room for humor, too.”
And while she and Gellar shared the screen, they also shared a legacy: both are veterans of the Scream franchise. “She’s just the best hang. I just am obsessed with her, and I love her so much. I don’t remember if we spoke specifically about [Scream], but I should. I’ll give her a call.”
When dealing with the satanic themes on film, stories of “cursed” sets sometimes follow. While Weaving didn’t experience any ghostly visitations, she did witness something that almost caused her to break character — and it involved a costar of the hoofed kind.
“I don’t think anything spooky happened, but I will say what was cool was, there’s a scene with a goat,” she recalls. “And what was kind of amazing was, unprompted, everyone had to kneel in the scene. What was so cute and fun was that the goat kneeled at the exact same time. She just did that. I don’t know, it was just so cute and funny, and I had to keep a straight face, but I wanted to be like, ‘Woop! Look, she kneeled!’”
While the first film was a contained, intimate nightmare, the sequel reveals a much larger world of the occult and other factions influenced by the demonic Mr. Le Bail. So, could there be a third outing?
“There’s always room for more,” Weaving teases, though her pitch for the trilogy-capper might surprise fans. “We were laughing on set, saying that, what if the third one wasn’t a horror movie at all, and was just a rom-com of two sisters on holiday? But we’d probably really annoy all the horror fans.”
With a filmography oozing with blood-curdling cult classics, one might assume that the Ready or Not star made it a goal to be the horror genre’s next rising star. But as she points out, that really wasn’t the case.
“I don’t know if I’m an aficionado, but I’ve definitely been around it a lot,” Weaving says of her horror pedigree, which includes The Babysitter, The Babysitter 2: Killer Queen, Mayhem, Azrael, and a memorable opening kill scene in Scream VI. “I think when I got The Babysitter, that was my first big American movie, and because of the success of that, I was offered a lot of really cool genre movies, and then sort of fell into this horror universe, which wasn’t planned or orchestrated by any means, but I’m so grateful that it happened that way.”
The modern-day “scream queen” label, too, was also inevitable. It’s a title Weaving wears with a wink, though she has some thoughts on the industry’s vocabulary.
“I love the term queen, who wouldn’t? That sounds lovely,” she admits. However, she’s ready to retire one specific trope. “I think we should change ‘final girl,’ though. Unless we make it ‘final boy,’ as well, but I feel like no dude would go for that. So let’s make it ‘final woman.’”
When asked who sits on her personal Mount Rushmore of female horror legends, Weaving struggles to narrow it down. “Oh, God, there’s so many. I mean, Jamie Lee Curtis, Shelley Duvall, Mia Goth… there’s just too many to pick from.”
Whether she’s dodging satanic ritualists or navigating a partners-in-crime love story in her upcoming film Carolina Caroline, Samara Weaving has proven she can handle whatever the script throws at her — be it a battered wedding dress or a gallon of fake blood.
“I have two movies [coming up],” she says, wrapping up. “One’s called Over Your Dead Body with Jason Segel. If you’re a horror fan, I think you’d really love it. And then we have a slightly different genre, Carolina Caroline. It’s a really sweet ’90s Bonnie and Clyde love story. It’s really, really fantastic, and that’s coming out later this year, too.” ❖