There’s one scene in Ready Or Not 2 that Sarah Michelle Gellar wishes she was in, but she found a way to leave her mark there even though she’s not on screen. We sat down with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Elijah Wood to dive into cool Easter eggs and what it's like to play characters who land firmly on the psychosis scale (though they may not be the most psychotic characters in the ensemble).
On a sliding scale of evil, Gellar and Wood’s characters don’t quite have redeeming qualities, but I will say there may be moments when you may hate them slightly less than the rest of the evil ensemble. Thanks to the layers these two actors brought to their villainous characters, there are moments where they are (almost) verging on likeable! And if you know anything about the world of Ready Or Not, that is no small feat!
“Well, I think you have to look at the motivations for each of the characters. For Ursula, if you take out the whole devil part of it… She was raised by a powerful father in his image” Sarah Michelle Gellar explained. “I think we've all met people like that who are raised with one sole purpose, and you don't really get to know yourself because you think that's all you are. If you sort of remove the devil, you have a job to do. You want to be good at your job. You take away the part where you work for the devil, and then you just have a person who has a bad boss.”
In the world of Ready Or Not, the upper echelon of society serves satanic forces in exchange for ultimate power and world domination. These are the people who run the world, descended from families who made blood sacrifices and swore oaths of allegiance, committing unspeakable atrocities against innocent people in exchange for that power.
“You can level the character,” Gellar added. “But I think truthfully, and Sam [Samara Weaving] said this best actually, because someone asked her about playing Grace and being scared in every scene, and she's like, ‘Look, if I just play scared in every scene, it's a boring movie for the audience to watch.’ So instead, she's scared angry, she's funny angry in the sense of, how ridiculous is my life? She's angry. I think it's the same for us. Every character had to give them levels.”
In addition to the levels for each character, Wood explained the layers for each character as the experience goes on. “You're also just sort of reacting to the world around you,” Wood expanded. “But to that point, I think they're all true to themselves, these characters. No one's outwardly evil. They all believe in their own way that their reality is the right one, that their deal with the devil is that they're going to do good things with it, and they believe that those things are righteous. So everyone's coming at it from the same place. No one's coming at it with sort of twisting their mustaches. Everyone kind of believes with conviction about their worldview.”
“And that they're the right person to be running the world,” Gellar said. I mean, I think that's the true thing about power, right? Everybody has their reasons for wanting to be in power. We may not agree with them or we may.”
As for the biggest evil on the sliding scale of evil in this ensemble, Wood’s money is on Titus Danforth, played by Shawn Hatosy. “I think your brother [Titus] might be the most psychotic, though. Shawn’s character is definitely perhaps a psychopath.”
“Yes, he's definitely a psychopath,” Gellar agreed with Wood punctuating, “Yeah, he's a psychopath.” Gellar is quick to point out the reason behind Titus’ lunacy, “But I also think that comes from inferiority of being in his sister's shadow. So as he starts to see the power closer and closer, it's what unhinges him. Or you could just say we're all just fucked up. I mean, it depends on how you want to look at the movie.”
The movie’s major battle scene takes place in an eerie abandoned party venue, with half-drunk glasses of booze and food that will never be eaten, set to an '80s power ballad. This isn’t giving anything away, but it needs to be said in order to set the scene a bit. “I left a little sneaky thing in that scene because I love that scene so much. I made a whole place card of tables, and it's my family,” Gellar shared. It’s the first Wood has heard of this, and he reacted with an excited “Get out of here.”
Gellar lists her family members, “It's Charlotte, Rocky, and Freddy. I was there that day waiting for one shot, which I didn't even know if they were going to get to. It was a long day, and I was hanging out. I took the place cards, and I changed them all. And so there's a table for my family at that party.”
Wood marvels at the prospect of the place cards making it on screen, “That's amazing. Cool Easter egg.”
Ready Or Not 2 is in theaters March 20.
