Last Updated on February 3, 2025 by Angel Melanson
Unfamiliar with Olivia Taylor Dudley's filmography? Then you're duly charged with watching her in The Magicians, Syfy's mid-2010s series adaptation of Lev Grossman's novels, best summarized as a gruesome, horny Harry Potter.
While you're watching that show's five seasons at home, Dudley is currently playing screens at Sundance in Touch Me, the sophomore movie from Hypochondriac director Addison Heimann. To date, Touch Me ranks among the best work Dudley has done in her career, in what is, with little argument, her most outré film. As Joey, she represents one half of a noxious, mutually codependent friendship; the other half is Craig, played by Jordan Gavaris, who is emotionally aloof by way of bratty petulance.
When the plumbing in their apartment goes to literal shit, Joey hits an eject button and rings her former beau, Brian (Lou Taylor Pucci), who wears tracksuits like armor and may actually be an alien with interplanetary designs for us hapless Earthling schmucks.
Joey and Craig don't care about that. They care about his tender caress, which functions like heroin administered via SAD lamp. Assertive slacker comedy is partly foundational to Heimann's screenplay, but Dudley is his scaffolding, communicating Joey's varied emotions — longing, resentment disguised with contempt, anxiety — with startling enough fidelity that when Touch Me arrives at a key character moment near its climax, seeing her reveal one more of the character's sides provides as much of a jolt as what's sure to be the film's buzziest scene: an all-timer of cinematic “interspecies intercourse,” where Lovecraft and shokushu zeme collide.
FANGORIA had the pleasure of speaking with Dudley about that one wild beat, as well as the qualities that draw her to new projects, the “trauma, actually” motif prevailing in contemporary genre cinema, and how, within Touch Me's riotous patchwork of horror niches, she and Heimann struck the right balance between what people show up to see in horror films (creatures, carnage, and kink) and what people relate to in their personal lives (depression, dejection, and dispiritedness).
I'm curious about what you look for in your roles, especially at this stage in your career. I think of you mostly in the context of The Magicians and also in terms of Dude Bro Party Massacre III, or She Dies Tomorrow. What do you look for in new work?
I wish I were at a point in my career where I could get offers left and right, but I do get to pick through things, and I'm very attracted to genre. I love horror, I love sci-fi. I've talked about it before in interviews, but the movie that got me wanting to become an actress was The Exorcist. When I was five, I watched that movie, and it floored me. I didn't understand what I was seeing. All I knew was that I wanted to play pretend like this girl in the movie was doing. I didn't even realize that was a job, obviously, at five.
Horror is a wonderful vehicle for telling human stories. Addison's movie says so many dark, difficult things about being a human being, and the reason you're going to sit through us talking that much about trauma is because there's all this sci-fi alien sex stuff happening. I love how genre can take something difficult to digest, and make it digestible.
My friend David Lawson, a producer on this film, was a producer on She Dies Tomorrow. He called me one day and said, “Are you down to do this alien movie where there's alien sex, and it's really freaking weird? I don't know how to explain it. Will you read it? I think you're the weirdest one, so you might do it.” I told him, “Hell yeah!” I loved it immediately and met with Addison the same day. I'm so grateful that that's how it happened. It feels like a gift that this came my way.
It's like Addison took what I consider the soul of The Magicians – incredibly funny, romantic, violent, scary, and sad – and condensed it into this hour-and-a-half movie. Though maybe “romantic” is not the right way to describe it.
Yeah, it's not the first word that would come to mind!
Brian might call it romantic. Touch Me feels incredibly well suited to what you are capable of as an actress. I'm curious about its generational element. You mentioned how genre can drive home how hard it is to be a human. The blunt question is, how much does it suck to be a millennial, or a zoomer, at this moment?
It sucks. Being a millennial has become the butt of a joke. But we've been through a lot, we've seen a lot, and we've had to endure a lot. There's a very strong millennial voice in this movie, but I also think it's going to appeal to all generations. I hope that Gen Z watches this, finds things they think are funny and interesting, and learns something from them.
Addison has such a clear voice. I was laughing immediately while reading the script. The movie opens with an eight minute monologue from my character, which is bold, and I thought, “Who the fuck does this guy think he is that he can do this?” I kept reading, and said, “Oh, it warrants it. It totally works.” I started relating to Joey because she's so similar to me. I was diagnosed with OCD and anxiety as a child; it's something that I've had to work on in therapy and with medication my whole life. Having those types of mental illnesses and challenges is something a lot of millennials can relate to.
And everybody loves alien sex. Who's not going to like alien sex? [laughs] I'm hoping it'll appeal to all kinds of people. There are so many monologues about trauma; Addison and I worked together on some of them for Joey, based on my own life experiences. Oddly enough, there's a lot to pull from and relate to in this movie. It's such a weird movie, but it's relatable at the same time; I don't know how he pulled that off .
I think it has a lot to do with Craig and Joey eventually confessing to each other. The film gets how hard it is to be genuine about your childhood stuff, especially the abuse both characters suffered. Trauma is a “thing” in horror right now. The monster isn't a werewolf; it's your dad's temper when you were a kid! But the movie isn't didactic. Do you look for that finesse, where the script doesn't say, “There's a monster, but really, the scary thing is trauma”? Is it important that the two things mesh?
Yeah, that's the tricky thing. That's the fine line that we're walking. When I read the script, I thought, “If he can't pull that tone off correctly, the movie doesn't work.“ All of the actors had the same thought: “We need to make sure the trauma that is talked about in the movie is handled correctly, or else why are we doing any of this?“
Addison is so good at writing human dialogue and making it flow. He's speaking from the heart about his own experiences of trauma, depression, and anxiety. I think from the start, it was coming from a very real place of trauma. That's why it works throughout the whole film, and it was important to me to stay true to that.
There's a monologue Joey has when she's alone that I requested. I said, “I think we need to know a little bit more about Joey's background, even just for myself. Let's talk about it and make sure that I know what happened to her.“ That spurred what actually happened to her and then that later conversation with Craig. It all came together.
It's easy to talk about the alien sex, all the crazy stuff, the hip-hop dancing. That's fun. But I like it when people want to talk about the heavier stuff. I feel like that trend in horror has to do with the fact that filmmakers these days, we're a bunch of millennials dealing with our feelings. We're the first generation that's going to therapy willingly, so we're working through it. That's what's so great about genre, that you can really go deep and be completely ridiculous.
Of course, now that we've talked about how [trauma] is the meaningful part, and how it's easy to talk about the psychosexual stuff, I actually want to talk about the psychosexual stuff! That's another trait in the roles you've taken. I'm curious if that's a draw. I imagine the psychosexual alien stuff is less relatable, unless you've been kidnapped by an alien and I don't know about it.
[Laughs] What if I was admitting that I'd been abducted by aliens? No, I've been obsessed with aliens since I was little. It's one of my favorite things. I have three dogs: Alf, Seti, and Leeloo Dallas Multipass. Growing up, my grandmother and I all we did was look for aliens and UFOs on our ranch.
The sex part was just, to me, necessary. That's how I approach it. I'm not looking for crazy alien sex movies or anything like that. Or, on The Magicians, any sort of crazy fox sex, you know? But if it works for the story, it works for me.
Addison took so much time to make sure that I felt comfortable with it. He's generous and comforting. If you're not comfortable doing something, you're absolutely not going to do it. People say that a lot about directors, but it's important to him that everyone is comfortable and happy. In a movie like this, you have to be, so that you can really go for it.
I've done my fair share of intimate scenes in my career, but nothing quite like this. We had X amount of tentacles, and people operating them around me and figuring out ways of shooting where it would cut together. I'm an executive producer on the movie, and I was in the edit every single day, so I got to be part of cutting that scene together. We had so much fun with it. It's beautifully shot and makes sense for the character. I'm really proud of it. I just think it's a rad scene.
That's the stuff that we're paying the price of admission for when we go to see horror, right?
It's entertaining, it's pretty, it's cool. And at the end of that scene, I find it emotional.
There's another trend: the whole “sex scenes in movies are bad“ thing. Are you familiar with the new Puritanism?
Yeah, yeah.
This movie very firmly rejects that idea. Alien tentacle sex is necessary because it feels to me, that what Joey is trying to do by indulging in Brian's touch, his sexual magnetism, is to not address her trauma. She's trying to ignore it, right?
She's trying to work through things too. I'm not quite sure why that's become a trend, and it's okay, but I don't relate to it. I don't have a problem with sex. I think it's a really important part of art because it's raw passion. I just think a lot of people have a lot to work through in the area of sex, so why not help that with art? Working through sexual trauma is a huge part of Joey's story, so of course we have to touch on that. Ignoring that and making it a bad thing would definitely not be the move.
I think all trends are worth looking at and understanding. But ultimately, as an artist and an actor, I always want to be exploring myself, my own trauma, my own relationship to sex, and how I can have that in my character. I find it interesting. I really try not to judge it.
Even the most transgressive material you see in movies can still have emotional, cultural, and spiritual value. It's meaningful to see, insomuch as we can see what's happening during the – what is it? The “interspecies intercourse”?
Yeah, interspecies. Oh my God, I've said it so much now.
I wish I'd written that line down.
It's so funny every time Pucci says it.
He's perfect for the role. But as you mentioned, people are operating the tentacles; it's an intimate moment that is non-intimate at the same time.
It's the least sexy thing on earth when you're filming, and people holding these puppets are spraying you with glycerin while you're trying to move, and they tell you, “Don't move like that.“ But you find your way.
We'll keep you posted on wide release news for Touch Me. For more, check out our list of genre films we're excited to watch at Sundance.
