Interview: Michaela Conlin Talks Bad Trip and Pranks

Bad Trip is a wildly fun time filled with pranks and a beautiful story of friendship mixed in. Michaela Conlin plays Maria Li, the woman of Chris Carey’s (Eric André) affections. The prank-based movie follows Chris and his friend Bud (Lil Rel Howery) as they make the journey to New York City because Chris believes that Maria is also in love with him.

From their stops along the way to Bud’s sister Trina (Tiffany Haddish) coming after them in search of her car, it’s just a fun time filled with people around America showing how they’re willing to help others. (I’m still thinking about the man who watched Trina escape from a prison vehicle and just told her to run away.)

Talking with Conlin over the phone, she made it clear just how much fun working on Bad Trip was.

THE MARY SUE:  I liked Bad Trip a lot, and I think it’s a really interesting way of doing a comedy movie mixed with real-life people and interacting with them and trying to do all these little pranks on them. And so as an actress, is that harder for you, or is that what makes a movie like Bad Trip so fun?

MICHAELA CONLIN: Well, I think it’s really rare to be given an opportunity to even work in that space, you know, cause there’s not that many movies made like that. So that was, that was really cool. It’s definitely, I definitely had … I almost prefer it in some ways because, you know, you’re working with people who, I mean, they’re not actors, so they’re real people and their reactions are completely, you know, nothing that you could ever invent in your mind, which makes it so much more fun. And it was really … the crew of the movie, they really created this, like these safe spaces for us to work within. So it was like kind of controlled insanity if that’s the way to put it.

THE MARY SUE: Yeah. And it, it just seemed very fun. Like I, obviously there are things in the movie that I was like, “Oh no, someone’s gonna get hurt. Like some, some person’s going to get so mad.”

MICHAELA CONLIN: Oh I think they definitely did. I mean, I know that there were some people in some, you know, we would shoot scenes several times so they could get several different reactions from different groups of people. But I know that when Eric was shooting a bunch of different pranks, I think they, um, there was some, there were some scary moments for them, for sure. Yeah.

THE MARY SUE: It’s another level of like, comedy is already hard enough as it is. And I think it’s another level to it that makes all of you guys kind of shine in a completely different way, because you’re also dealing with like real people and not breaking, being like, “Hey. I’m so, sorry, this is a joke, like don’t get mad.”

MICHAELA CONLIN: Yeah. You really can’t. You have to … it’s sort of you have to commit or you die. It’s sort of like you just, you really just go for it and hope that it all works. But again, I mean, those guys are really, they’re real masters of it. And they really—you know, particularly the director of Kitao (Sakurai) and Eric have worked together for a long time on the show. And so they were really great about kind of crafting these situations and putting us in them. But there’s for sure, a level of complete randomness when you’re dealing with total strangers who are literally walking into a, you know, a hidden camera movie from the street, you know? I mean, they’re just living their lives. So that was really fun.

THE MARY SUE: And so, your career is kind of very wide-ranging because you were on Bones for a while, and so when you’re approaching something like this, is it something that you do that is more exciting and fun, or is it harder as an actress to approach this, knowing that kind of additional layer of work that’s going to go into it?

MICHAELA CONLIN: Yeah, I mean, I think after doing, you know, particularly Bones for such a long time, it’s such a specific genre of show, it requires certain things of you as an actor and, you know, as a person being on a show for that long. It was such a wonderful place to work consistently. And then when I left, I really just wanted to try different things. You know, I wanted to try to do comedy and work in the streaming space and do different kinds of dramas and just different genres of TV and films.

So this really came at a really great time because I was really excited to try new things and thankfully it just kind of, it worked out, you know? I met those guys and went through the audition process and, which was kind of long, you know? We went through a couple of different rounds of that. And then the screen test was, was a real-life prank situation in a mall here in Los Angeles. So that was really, that was really great too.

THE MARY SUE:  Are there still genres or storylines that you want to play with as an actress?

MICHAELA CONLIN: Yeah. I mean, I would say, you know, I think the writing sort of dictates that. It’s hard for me to name a specific genre right now. It’s like this movie, when I read it, I thought it was really funny and I knew of Eric’s work. So that was the reason I did it. So it’s sort of like project-specific and if the script is really great and the world is great, but yeah, I mean, I would love to see Asian faces in period pieces and different, you know, just completely, you know, things that we’re quote-unquote, not allowed to do. I mean, that would be fun, but yeah, I feel like I’ve gotten to go between For All Mankind and Yellowstone and Bad Trip, it’s definitely been fun to just try new things and yeah, I think that’s what you have to do if you want to keep working and keep challenging yourself.

THE MARY SUE: I always like to ask this especially with a movie like Bad Trip, which is one of those kind of just fun movies you can watch and laugh about and escape for a little while, but what do you hope audiences take away from this movie in particular?

MICHAELA CONLIN: I mean, I think after this year and with everything that’s been going on, just even currently in the world, I think everybody needs to laugh and to let go and to, you know, watch something really silly and funny. And that’s, you know, probably the first thing. I also think it’s really cool that the cast is … this is an all-ethnic cast for a prank movie, which is really, I don’t know if it’s ever even been done before, but I think that’s really cool. I mean, I think to laugh at this point would be great. And I think this is so crazy. I don’t know how you can’t, you couldn’t, it’s definitely worth seeing.

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You can watch Bad Trip on Netflix now!

(image: Netflix)

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