‘This movie changed me:’ Melissa Barerra and Tommy Dewey build an old-school romance in ‘Your Monster’
At a time when TV comedies are dramatic, dramas lean into being ‘dramedies,’ and all sorts of genres are being mashed-up to create the kinds of stories we crave, Your Monster is a film that speaks to this pop culture moment. TMS got to chat with the film’s stars, Melissa Barerra and Tommy Dewey about building this unique, Beauty and the Beast-esque love story.
In this dark comedy with horror and musical elements, Barrera plays Laura, a woman going through a cancer diagnosis and a traumatic break-up who discovers a monster living in her closet. Dewey plays Monster, which is as straightforward a character name as he could have. Though their circumstances are modern and dark, the fairy tale, Beauty and the Beast influence is never too far away. This is what appealed to Dewey the most.
“What I love about this movie so much,” he explains. “[I]s that Caroline [Lindy, the film’s writer/director] was not afraid to shoot a big, sweeping, kind of old-school romance.”
Meanwhile, Barrera appreciated how much this role challenged and taught her. She describes herself as a logical person, and talks about the fact that whenever she takes on a role, she goes deep with the director on why characters are doing what they’re doing. Yet, Laura makes a lot of choices that were inexplicable to Barrera, and ultimately, Barrera acknowledges that it’s her job as an actor to make the character’s choices make sense, even if they don’t make sense to her personally.
“I have to find a way to give a character grace,” she explains. “I can’t be outside of myself judging what she’s doing, which I would be as Melissa. I would be judging Laura so hard. Which was, I think, my biggest challenge in taking on this role, and what I loved about it.”
“This movie changed me,” Barrera says. “The experience of making this movie was so incredible and so beautiful.”
Dewey agreed, and the pair talked about how, despite shooting the film in only 20 days, the experience this cast and crew had together was surprisingly meaningful. “It felt like a really deep experience that on a shoot twice as long, you won’t feel,” Dewey said.
Barrera then got specific about what performing this role taught her personally. She learned a lot from Laura “about giving yourself permission to be messy and be weak and pathetic at times, and embrace all of it so that then you can learn from it and rise and build yourself back up”
She then admits, “Me as Melissa, I’m always very afraid of vulnerability, and so playing Laura taught me a lot about myself and about what society imposes on women and how we’re supposed to behave. That was a really beautiful journey that I went through as I shot and I think that, hopefully, when people see the movie, they also feel identified and give themselves permission.”
If you want to hear the full conversation, you can watch it over at the TMS YouTube Channel!
Your Monster is in theaters now.
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