The Strangers Chapter 3, Madelaine Petsch Interview

In chapter three, Maya is no longer even one percent the version of herself that she was when she drove into Venus, Oregon. She has lost every personal piece of identity that she had; she has become a shell of herself. And by the end, she is stripped of all of her humanity and left with the question of like: what is there left to live for, who have I become, and how do I handle that information?

Oh, they couldn't be more different if they tried. Maya, when you first met her, was carefree, in love, on a path to success, to finding her new job, potentially going to get married. And Maya at the end of movie three is grappling with like: do I even want to live? Is this even worth it? And if I do, do I want to join this person? I believe he’s stripped everything away from her intentionally to groom her to become one of them. And she’s also kind of considering that.

I think it will be divisive, which I like. I hope that, because we spent so much time with this character over four and a half hours, that it really feels earned where she gets to at the end of the film. That would be my dream.

I feel so truly blessed to have Gabe behind that Scarecrow mask because he not only took matters into his own hands and would come to set on days off and wear that mask and stand in the corner of my eye line just to scare me, and really embodied that character, but also when the mask was off was such a giving co-star and brought such fun and unique ideas to the table. And that final kind of battle scene that we have in movie three, the big at the end, the— it was originally written as a big blowout. And Gabe and I sat down and we really fine-tuned like: he thinks he’s been— he’s been in control this entire trilogy, and she walks in and she’s in control, and he’s okay with that. And finding how that balance worked, we did together. So I feel very lucky to have worked with him. And Richard is such an icon in the horror space, it’s insane. I mean, he’s just done literally every horror film I turn on, Richard’s in. And Emma is— is such a force in that Pin-Up mask. I mean, I don’t know anybody else who could have brought that character to life with such conviction and such clear, unique characteristics with a mask on. It was truly insane.

I think revenge and then ultimately like moral gray areas and this kind of like dichotomy of defeat and success that she experiences where it’s like: she’s no longer a version of herself that she ever wanted to be. She like kind of hates who she is and doesn’t even know who she is, but also like wants to potentially join this person and kill them. It’s like, you walk away from this movie with so many like opposing feelings for the character. It’s— it’s really strange. I’ve never seen that before.

I think that makes them way scarier. I think what makes the Strangers scary is that they are regular people who just want to kill. And so it is so much more terrifying when she sees Scarecrow mourning Pin-Up. She’s now killed somebody who mattered to this person. Wasn’t just a part of his— his like weird fucked up cult, but also like mattered to him on an emotional level. Like, that makes him much more on the path for terror.

I think it’s a lot about really Scarecrow’s journey to stripping Maya of every piece of who she is in order to make her like him. And I think he feels justified in doing that because he identifies this like darkness to her, darkness in her that maybe she doesn’t see, but he really sees. And so he’s trying to like bring this out of her and then ultimately like make him hate her so much and remove everything from her where she becomes like him by killing him, if that makes sense.

I’m most proud of the way we end this trilogy and also just for people to see this final act. I think movie one and movie two weren’t really finished films because it’s act one and act two of a larger story. And so when they finally get to watch act three, chapter three, they’re finally getting like an ending to the film. And I’m really excited for people to see that and see where we wanted to go all along. It’s really messed up, but it’s really earned because you spent so much time with her. The biggest challenge was ultimately time, though. Shooting three films at once is like a really crazy thing to do and we had so little time to do it, that time was probably our biggest challenge.

It’s definitely changed me as an actor. I think it’s like the opposite kind of bootcamp that Riverdale had. I mean, Riverdale was like: fly by the seat of your pants, just— you can do a scene in one moment that you haven’t even read the script for. Here I had all three scripts at once. And obviously we changed things over the course of time, but I had this kind of full character arc. I had the— the ability to use time to create. You know, each movie you feel like you’re meeting a different version of Maya from the experiences she had in the previous film. And I think there’s something really interesting about learning how to create a character in that scenario. I’d say that probably was— was the big takeaway for me as an artist.

Oh, I mean, not only is it like a fun experience to have with other people and to be able to talk— it’s such a conversation piece. I really believe the end of this film is going to create such discourse and conversation that you want to watch with people so you can walk out of the theater and be like: oh my god, what do you think happened here? And why do you think she did this? And is this justified? And what happened with this? I think that this kind of film does create that kind of conversation. And also, it’s mixed with sound to be so epic and so big and such a— it’s such a big world-building film and there’s so much silence in this film that when you watch it on a big screen, it’s going to feel like suffocating and you’re going to feel so like immersed in the world. It really is meant to be experienced on the big screen.