In a heated ensemble of bigger than life characters; Rose (Cailee Spaeny) is the slow burning one staying at the El Royale. She is a kidnapped girl whose fate is not what we expect it to be. She is brought to the hotel by Emily (Dakota Johnson) but as we quickly find out, she is also waiting for someone else to come for her. Roles are rapidly overturned as Rose shows her true colours to all the other guests. A priest in search for something not very spiritual (Jeff Bridges), a singer running from someone (Cynthia Erivo) and an FBI agent trying to understand what is going on (Jon Hamm) will have to put up with the problems she is bringing to the lobby.
As the film rolls its dice on Blu-Ray, DVD and digital download, Cailee Spaeny, best known to genre fans for her role in Pacific Rim: Uprising, talks about getting to understand the American era of cults, bonding with Dakota Johnson and sharing the screen with Hollywood legend Jeff Bridges…
NOTE: This interview includes spoilers from the movie
Would you say that Rose is a by-product of the California culture of that era, in what way?
I think the cool part about the script is that each character is a chunk of that era. For example: music is a characteristic of that era and that’s what Cynthia Erivo’s character shows. Miles, the bellboy, he was in the vietnam war. So each character kind of represents a different aspect of that time.
You did a great job embodying the 60s/Manson-esque cult mentality, did you do any research or reading into that era to inform how you were going to play Rose?
Yes, I did lots of research. I think Chris Hemsworth’s character doesn’t really represent the Manson cult as he has different qualities. He plays a different version of that, but I did research all of the different cults among which there was the Manson’s one. It’s not a super happy thing to spend your time with, still, Drew sent me a list of documentaries that I saw: Children Of God, Jonestown… those kind of things. Almost every night I was researching cults, which is not that nice, but I got to learn a lot of things.
I’ve started this movie thinking: “Why would anyone join a cult? How do you get your mind to that point?”. But my job was exactly that: to understand that those people found in those cults their community, their friends and Rose found the person she loved. All these cults start with a good message, then things get ugly and start a life of their own. A lot of people who have had rough backgrounds just want to find a home and this represents Rose very well. A rough background and the need to be part of a community.
The saying ‘not everything is as it seems’ rings true for Rose and the audience is quickly proven wrong on their initial assumption of your character. What was it like to evolve in to the Rose we see in the final scenes?
I just tried to stay in the moment as the character. I tried not to get into my head too much, thinking what the audience is thinking. Some actors can do this but for me if I go to work I’m just thinking about what the character has in mind, I don’t think: “Oh this is too much for the audience".
Which scene was the biggest challenge to shoot?
The final killing. We wanted something slower than the other deaths. It doesn’t happen as fast as most of the other killings, because that is one of the big final deaths. We’ve fallen in love with Miles and his character and we wanted that to be very brutal, I mean in the way I twist the knife across the stomach. It is very hard to watch even for me, still it got a little silly while filming because me and Lewis Pullman were just: “This is so crazy! What is this scene?.” But it’s supercool to do these kind of scenes, it’s like: “Is this my job? Am I going to murder you right now?” and he’s a friend of mine so we got a little giggly at times. But one of the things Drew wanted to get across was to have a very brutal death for Miles.
For me, personally, the most challenging scene was when Billy Lee dies. In that moment, all of Rose’s life comes apart and it happens so fast. I know the other actors are talking about how it was emotionally draining, but most of the time my character was having a lot of fun. Swinging on the chandelier, looking at dead bodies, she’s kind of doing her own thing. But that moment it was the most emotionally draining moment.
Was it always you on the chandelier or a double?
We did have doubles on set but it was me swinging on the chandelier, it was very cool. One covered from my bucket list.
Were there a memorable behind the scenes moment?
So many memorable moments! Because it is such an intense script, it’s an ensemble cast and there aren’t that many people in the movie (except for the 7 main characters), therefore we all got pretty close. There were so many great moments. A lot of times Jeff Bridges would have his panoramic camera on him and right before there the rolling call he would pop into the different rooms and just take pictures of us. That was so fun!
Drew would play music through speakers in some of the most intense scenes. Music that would keep us in the mood, very 60s and usually very dark, there were time when Cynthia [Erivo] would take song requests from the cast and crew and would sing for us. So many great moments!
Do these moments help?
Yes for sure, I think it’s just nice to know we’re all there to help each other, we’re all in to make a fun movie, we all had each others backs and knew how delicate for the actors the scenes were and how emotional they were. And so i think the cast, crew and Drew were all having each others back trying to make everyone’s job easier.
The majority of your scenes were shot with Dakota Johnson and Chris Hemsworth. How was it working with them?
For Dakota, thankfully we had a bond offset so the bond was there also during the scenes, there wasn’t too much of work, or acting or even pretending. We were sisters and I felt we already were when we started working, so that was nice.
With Chris he came later in the shooting process, basically his first day was the first time we saw him, and our first scene was a very intimate scene by the jukebox, when he touches my face. It was a little bit difficult to create that bond right in that moment, but he is such a pro and such a nice guy that he never made it hard. I mean it is always going be awkward when you have that scene first, but he was great.
Every actor learns something new with each movie they star in. What did you learn from this movie?
I just had such a lucky experience working with incredible actors, getting to see their work ethics, their different techniques… Jeff Bridges is such a legend! Getting to watch him and see how he worked was a blessing. Something i really like that he did, was that he never came on set like “Yeah yeah I got this, can we please roll? I’ve been doing this for years!”. Every time we got on set he was always asking questions, there was never anything he already knew, he always wanted to learn more. He was not coming in like the big hot shot he is, he never acted like that, he knew everyone’s name and said “Hello” and “Good morning” to everyone when he walked on set. This makes such a difference, it set a wonderful tone for this experience for me. But getting to watch all these actor and seeing how kind and professional they were... I was like a sponge on set, I soaked it all in.
Bad Times At The El Royale is out now on digital download, DVD and Blu-ray.