Melissa Barrera was both “terrified” and “excited” about the chance to get some laughs in her new movie Your Monster — but not even a romantic comedy could fully pull her away from her Scream Queen roots.
“In my contracts it says that I have to be covered in blood by the end of a movie,” Barrera, 34, exclusively joked to Us Weekly ahead of the film’s release. “But it is a thing with me and I truly love it. I find it very funny because to me, [Your Monster] is a Halloween rom-com, because it has horror elements, but if someone’s expecting to go into this to see a horror movie, they’re going to be disappointed because you’re going to be laughing your face off for most of it.”
In Your Monster, which hits theaters on Friday, October 25, Barrera plays Laura Franco, an aspiring and soft spoken actress undergoing cancer treatment when her boyfriend (Edmund Donovan) dumps her. When it seems like things just couldn’t get any worse — and after a good cry and one too many texts to her ex — Laura discovers a furry beast (Tommy Dewey) living in her closet. The twist? The pair quickly go from begrudging roommates to something much more when sparks fly between them.
While there’s plenty of “darkness” that exists in the film — often stemming from unlikely places — Barrera insists that Dewey’s Monster is less scary and more the “charming, sexy beast” of any Disney fan’s dreams.
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“He’s for [anyone] who was bummed when the Beast turned into the Prince at the end,” she told Us. “This is for all those people, including myself, that were like, ‘Oh, no, turn back. The Beast was better.’”
The romance that blossoms between Laura and Monster was a major draw for Barrera, but so was the chance to reconnect with her comedic side on screen. After starring in some of the past decades most notable horror films, the Scream actress was excited to show off a different side of her talent.
“For the last, I think, three years of my life, people have only seen me in horror,” she explained. “So I think it’s cool to show them a different side of me, but then also a little familiar touch of, like, ‘OK, it’s still connected to the horror genre.’”
Wading back into comedy wasn’t without it’s hesitations; Barerra confessed Laura was a “terrifying” part to take on after settling into the role of Final Girl — even those who watched this year’s brilliantly executed horror-comedy Abigail saw her playing it straight — but she was also fully up for the challenge.
“I think comedy is probably the hardest thing to do because the timing has to be just right and even if the script is funny, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to translate,” she explained. “I was very surprised that [director] Caroline [Lindy] thought that I could do this without having seen me do anything funny. … So I was excited, I was nervous, but mostly I just loved the unique vision that Caroline had created. I loved the mix of genres.”
Your Monster, Barrera said, had all the “elements of movies” that she’s come to love: romance, horror and, surprisingly, music.
“It was just an exciting prospect to jump into,” she gushed. “And I knew it was going to be hard. We only had 20 days to do it, but that’s the beauty of independent movie making. You got to hustle and you got to make it work, and you got to move quickly. You can’t spend an entire day on one scene, like you can in studio movies. So it feels more raw and less rehearsed. It was an amazing experience.”
As for her undeniable chemistry with Dewey, Barrera said it was important that she didn’t get “in her head” about the pair’s on screen romance and instead just tried to let it flow.
“We had a few days before we started shooting that we were in Hoboken, New Jersey, and we got to do lots of table work,” she recalled to Us. “We would go to Caroline’s apartment and we would just order Chinese and sit around a table and workshop through some of the scenes. And Caroline was rewriting whatever felt more natural.”
Barrera called Dewey an improv “genius,” which made bringing their dynamic to life all the more enjoyable. “For me, it felt like I was making a movie with my friends,” she said. “I felt like we had known each other forever. It felt like we all went to college together and we were doing our thesis film for the university, and that’s what it felt like.”
“And it was just so easy with Tommy,” she continued. “Usually, when I am on a show and I know that there’s a romantic story line with a character, I try to say, ‘Hey, let’s go hang out. Let’s go have dinner, let’s go get a coffee.’ I try to spend time with the person to build that kind of history and to learn them so that it’s easier for me to go into that romantic beat. And I didn’t have to do that with Tommy. It was just there.”
And although some might think dressing Dewey up in a beastly costume would make romancing him harder, Barerra couldn’t disagree more. “It was so easy,” she said with a smile. “As soon as [Dewey] would turn into the monster, he would get so swaggy. It gives him another layer of confidence.”
Watching Dewey on set even made Barrera want to do a movie “covered in prosthetics” herself, thanks to how free it made her costar seem. “I feel like it’s just all the insecurities and inhibitions of you and your face are gone because it’s not even you,” she said. “I think it really helped Tommy and therefore me too, to just dive into this weird romance.”
In addition to being funny — and falling for that really hairy guy living in her closet — Your Monster also sees Barerra utilizing her musical talents. Although Laura starts the film singing both “out of breath and out of practice” due to her cancer treatments, the film ends with a stellar performance that shows off her unbelievable vocal chops. And while carrying a tune came easy enough, there was one vocal exercise she found nearly insurmountably challenging.
“This is actually the most screaming I’ve ever done, funnily enough, in a movie,” Barrera said with a laugh, recognizing the irony of her “Scream Queen” title.
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“I was just going for it. I am not used to screaming, and I didn’t realize it until, in the moment, where they were like, ‘And you scream.’ And I was like, ‘Oh my God, how does one scream? How do I scream?!’” she said. “I’m not a screamer in life! I’m a freezer or a fleer. When something scares me, either it goes inward or I run. So I had to figure out what would come out of me. And I guess that’s what [did].”
Your Monster hits theaters on Friday, October 25.
With reporting by Yana Grebenyuk
