Riven with anxiety, Samara Weaving found an unlikely balm: acting in a horror film<\/a>. \u201cI was discovering this inner strength that I didn\u2019t realise I had,\u201d she recalls over Zoom from her home in Los Angeles. \u201cBeing able to scream and run and chase people and fight back kind of shook the anxiety out of me\u2026 after that, I noticed I didn\u2019t need my meds!\u201d<\/p>\n The movie was Ready or Not, the 2019 scalpel-sharp, eat-the-rich slasher film<\/a> that transformed the actor from just another talented but under-the-radar Australian export perpetually confused with Margot Robbie<\/a> (don\u2019t worry, they\u2019re friends), to Samara Weaving, cult movie star beloved by the internet\u2019s gays and gorehounds. \u201cThey are the greatest,\u201d the 33-year-old smiles, referring to her burgeoning fanbase. \u201cAnd so wonderfully weird \u2013 I get nothing but love from them.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, Weaving has more or less two careers, bridged by the deadpan, slightly grimacing comic energy she brings to so many of her performances. One strand was kickstarted by Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in 2017, when she stole scenes as the much younger, dim-bulb girlfriend of Frances McDormand\u2019s ex-husband. That led to work that was a little more elegant than blood and sinews \u2013 think of the bouncy classical music biopic Chevalier, or her cameo as an aspiring actor<\/a> in Damien Chazelle\u2019s Babylon.<\/p>\n But then there\u2019s been, well, the blood and sinews: she was the Drew Barrymore-style opening-scene-victim<\/a> of Scream VI, the titular Satan-worshipper in Netflix\u2019s The Babysitter, and a canvas for all kinds of lashings of gore in the post-apocalyptic thriller Azrael. Even at home she sits amid extremes: behind Weaving is a rustic painting of pears and teacups, to her left seem to be unopened boxes of Funko Pop toys. And while she wears a simple black T-shirt, her face is supermodel glam and symmetrical, with ice blue, feline eyes.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like I have this more mainstream movie career, and then this dark, spooky underbelly,\u201d Weaving says. \u201cI like to do a genre movie and then something completely different. Like, OK, let\u2019s go do a period drama in France. But then I have to go insane in something.\u201d She\u2019s just shot back-to-back \u201cinsane\u201d ones \u2013 a dark comedy with Jason Segel called Over Your Dead Body, and a Ready or Not sequel. So she\u2019s overdue for some lightness. \u201cThe film I\u2019m going to do next doesn\u2019t have any blood in it at all \u2013 all my horror fans will be crying when they hear that.\u201d<\/p>\n The Nineties had this backwards feminism, this faux feminism, where you were compelled to \u2018free your body\u2019 but usually for the male gaze<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We\u2019re here today to talk about a film that uses all of Weaving\u2019s skillset at once \u2013 potentially because it was written and directed by her husband Jimmy Warden, who is perhaps best known for scripting the goofy animal-attack movie Cocaine Bear<\/a>. Borderline is a celebrity stalker romcom slasher film, in which Weaving plays a mononymous Nineties pop star whose home comes under siege by a man convinced they\u2019re meant to be married. A maniacally grinning Ray Nicholson, the genetically blessed son of the legendary Jack, is Weaving\u2019s by-any-means-necessary groom.<\/p>\n Warden wrote the movie for Weaving, but insisted she treat the script just as any other she receives. \u201cWe have a good working relationship,\u201d she says. \u201cWe can put different hats on \u2013 I can be the actress, he can be the director, and then we can put our wife and husband hats on later.\u201d<\/p>\n