Special Report: The Wrath of Becky

Old years, folks. It's should time people pay good money to see this movie. When they go out to a theater. They want cold sodas and hop pop corn and no monsters in the projection booth. Everyone for ten podcasting isn't boring off.

It's been two years since four Neo Nazis invaded my family's lake house and murdered my father. I'm sixteen now I've run away from three four Strholm. Do you go come? This is a Lanta con I've lived with her for the past year. We go now to a developing story.

They call themselves the Nobleman, and they may be coming here to Fumar whether or not the Nobleman decided to make an appearance at the town hall on Wednesday. Only time will tell. So are you gonna see this? You're just gonna stand there right this war Finally she did that on purpose? Do you go yea?

Saving our country and stopping the treason, one benchful mission at a time. The freedom, Freedom, free freedom? Who is it? It's Becky? You chop my dog?

We go to the cops. I got enough weaponry in my barn to start an insurrection at town hall tomorrow. Find the girl dog it was fun. Well, it lasted. It's not over yet.

Hey, folks, welcome to a special episode of the Projection Booth. I'm your host Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking with three people behind the movie Wrath of Becky. The film opens May twenty six, twenty twenty three, in theaters around the country. Be sure to check local listings, and if not there, look for it on streaming soon.

First up, we were going to hear from directors Suzanne Coote and Matt Angel, and after that we're going to hear from Becky herself, Lulu Wilson. Enjoy these interviews and definitely check out Wrath of Becky. How do you two know each other? How did you meet? Actually, our dads met before we were born, and somehow we didn't meet until we were in our early twenties.

Yeah, And I was working in development for my dad who as a producer, and Matt wrote a script, and so I did the coverage on matt script, and then he came in for a meeting to meet my dad and we were dating four months yea. And then he was working with another writing partner. I was still in development and at night the moment we'd write together, and then we were like, maybe we should drive together too and see if we can really fuck up our relationship. And we did it so far, and here we are. We just did our third song together.

We're married, we have a child, so it's nicely, we're very lucky, and it's just it just works. There's something about it works. I've always been curious when it comes to people that work together, especially when it comes to directing, how do you break up the work? We don't. When it comes to Becky, he wrote it, We broke it together.

He wrote it because I found out I was in my first trimester and I was like, I can't look at a computer. I'm so sick to my stomach. But when it comes to directing, we don't break up the work. We're literally conjoined at the hip. So that's the right joint.

Joint conjoin conjoint, I don't know. We're enjoined at the hip, and to the best of our ability, I'd say ninety eight percent of the time, we're making every single decision together. Yeah, because it just we're both engaged visually, we're both engaged with the actors. A big part of what we do is so that we're not going. Wait, I don't agree with that, because we don't have time to do that.

No one has time to do that. On films, prep is everything in terms of the majority of our decision making, and when it comes to the day and you're working with actors and you're working with things that come up on the fly, you call cut, you look at each other, you discuss, and then you go out as a united front and deliver that conversation. In terms of notes, I think it's very important when you're at least for us, I'll speak to our situation as co directors. It's really important that we're just constant communication and respectful of the other person's visions so that there is no you can't have resuptment build up. You can't lose arguments and go fine, you do what you want to do.

You get this wine at the next Yeah, it's not that it's our number one. The rule is we du get out until we convinced the other person that we're right. And then there's at some point, yeah, at some point someone goes, oh, I get your vision, Okay, I get it, you're right. What did your relationship to the original Becky Fel No, nothing outside of we knew the producers and we knew Lulu when they were making the first one. Yeah, we were actually neighbors with Lulu Wilson and her family, and I remember when they went off to shoot the first one and we had the conversation, we're into each other walking our dogs.

Oh god, we can't wait to work with you. It's going to be so fun. One day and we get to do a movie with you. I think we had just finished our first film. Yeah, cut too.

Yeah, it was great. He had been trying to do something with these producers at Boulder Light, JD Roffi and Tracy for a few years. So when they came to us and they said, would you be interested in coming on to write and direct a sequel to Becky? The idea of getting to work with not only them but also Luby Wilson was very appealing to us. And then it was the challenge of getting to do a sequel to a film that we really enjoyed.

It was all of that, and then we were off. When they came to you, did they have any ideas already in mind or was that a green field for you? All they said was it has to be bloody and you have to talk about the key and we really and they said and then they said, you have three weeks to write the script and we were like wow, okay. And I think there was one big conversation that we all had together about who was the bad guys would be? What's yeah whereas Becky?

Now? How long has it been? What does that look like? A lot of it just felt like it naturally poured out of us as we tried to put ourselves in Becky's shoes and address the questions of like, what would happen She'd be put in the foster care system? Would she stay?

Would she stayed? No? Way? Yeah, Becky's such a strong character. He makes it easy.

Yeah, is very strong decisions. It felt very clear to us what the evolution of this character would look like and fun for us to tap into what her buried trauma from the events prior to the first film, the events in the first film, like yeah, how would that present itself? And Becky at sixteen and the change in anyone from thirteen to sixteen is massively significant. So that was I was like cute when I was thirteen and then Psycho when I was sixteen. We just used her.

He is I I am her journals I Becky, Yeah, and in jail. Just kidding. Becky's in jail, Well she will be eventually, she'll break in, She'll break out. Let's be honest. She's got the free pass from the FBI now or the CIA.

That's true. I forgot about the Yeah, yeah, that's true. So yeah, I think it was. That's how we got involved. It was, it was.

I never would have known that it feels so natural, the use of the villains that you chose, just the way that you set up the movie. I honestly, I would have thought that it was the plan from the beginning that it went into the wrath of Becky. Wow, that is thank you some uneasy too, or yes, we wanted to do right by the fans. We wanted to do right by Nick Morris, who created the character, and Carrie and John, and we also wanted to do something that would evolve the franchise. I like to call it a franchise because I think it has potential and invite in a full new audience that would watch it be able to see it as a film that stands on its own two feet and then go, wait, this is a squel and go back and watch the first film.

We wanted to make sure it was a film for the fans and also film for all new audience members, to really invite them. And by the way, the film looks fantastic. Your DP is amazing. Julius Swing is fantast Pretty soon we'll be able to afford her if already. Yeah, she's fantastic.

She's unbelievable. So what were some of the challenges other than having to write this in three weeks? Let's see so hell movie, but like in a fun way. But it's low budget, very low budget, looks not little budget, much bigger than Yeah, what it was that was? That was our goal that we really sent out to a vobistion with Julia Swang and our production designer on the whole team was like, yeah, how do we make this look like a much bigger film?

So blood gags, practical blood gags, squibs, a dog, Lulu is a minor. All those things make it very hard to shoot. Eighteen days shooting days, it was like one taking go. We owe it all to our casting crew because I like to say it felt like we were shooting a play where you really have the money to do this one time, and it's a gag and you'd better get it right, and if you don't, we don't put in the movie, which is very scary because then you're it's the whole figure out in post thing, which we didn't have to do because everyone was so on top of their ship. Steven Boyer is our editor, another person to keep your eye on, and he's unbelievable editor.

And we cut this film in five weeks and that was because he really understood our vision and it was just it just worked. And that was how it felt from day from crap. Yeah, with all the different people we got to work with and heads of departments and stuff, and we're not like easy, like, we're very demanding and people were, well, we sit, we're painting the ass. Sure. Like our ad is from this movie is now like one of our closest friends and he has like white hair but he loves Oh my god, he's wait, I can't wait for him to see this.

Yeah, and we say he has a white hair. No, he doesn't have, but he blames us. You know. I love that in the first movie with Kevin James just playing completely against type, but really with this one too. Sean William's got.

What an amazing role and what a great performance he gives. I believe I can't wait for the world to see his performance in this movie. He's just so good. He's so good. I think he's going to be coming out of this people are going to talk about that performance, he will say in interviews, and I love to talk about this because it's shocking.

Everyone talks about Stiffler, but like when he came to Hollywood, he says, he came to play serial killers and that was the stunt and loved and then he landed American Pie. The rest is history. He's done some of my favorite comedies. But I think like Bloodline was what people started talking about, where he got to play a dark role, and then and now he's done The Wrath of Becky. And what was so fantastic is from the moment we had our first meeting with him, he showed up with so many ideas for who this guy was, how to ground him, how to make him a calculated, intellectual character, and it really helped us accomplish the satirical kind of parallel universe we were trying to create, where you can get away with a movie set in broad daylight and primary colors pop in and your heroine running around in a bright red jumpsuit slaughtering these people in fun ways because you have an incredible performance by Lulu Wilson that's grounded in real trauma, and then you have an incredible performance by your lead antagonist and it really gave us permission to hap fun with the world around them.

Get then that had two grounded leads. What's next for you after this one? Right now? Nothing because we're pens down, Yeah, in support of everything that we're fine for in the writers guilds and hoping the NPTP gets the ships yet with her ship together. But we had a lot of things we're looking forward to that are in the works for after this.

We'll speak to what we like to say if the world is lucky enough to see Becky come back and we're lucky enough to be invited back to the party. We had our ideas. We have a lot of ideas. Nothing was by accident in the second film. There were a lot of clues we dropped as to exactly what the third film would be if we had anything to do with it, and where we see Becky going.

But yeah, to us, it's like we know where we would take the story. Yeah, that's cool. It's like an exquisite corpse, like the writing exercise. Yeah, yes, yeah, very cool. Matt and Suzanne, thank you so much for your time.

This is such a pleasure speaking with you. Mike, really appreciate it. Have a good day. We've been acting since you were three years old. How did you even get into it?

Okay, okay, here's the story. I love telling the story. I have two other sisters, and my oldest sister was like a gap model when she was like twelve, and my mom, since I was a little baby child, took me with third wherever she went all of her castings for that, and I assumed that it was something everybody did and I was just waiting for my turn, and so I broke my mom down. She was resistant to it at first, meaning like me being a baby, but she gave in, and I started with just like print modeling when I was little, and then commercials and then spiraled out of control and here we are, and I'm not planning on giving it up anytime soon. My passion just keeps building and building.

When you are approaching role like Becky, how do you prepare for it, how do you even find the character. It was definitely a process, I think more for the second one than the first one, because I'm older now and I wanted to take it, take it way more seriously because I'm so passionate about this role in this movie and this character and the people involved. I worked with my fencing coach who also does stunt stuff. She helped me look normal holding crossbows and weapons and roll around because like I couldn't do forward roles, and she told me had to do that. And I spent a couple of months with her a couple of times a week, just like working all of that out because it was a very physically demanding role.

But then character wise, I had a lot of conversations with Matt and Sue's just about where we wanted to take this character in the development that she was going to go through, because she's been through a lot since the first and the second movies, and I wanted to make that apparent, and I wanted her not to be just this angry thirteen year old girls. Still she's sixteen out, she's been preparing, she's ready, and I wanted to make that clear to the audience, and I wanted to feel that as I was acting. Is this the first time you've ever revisited a character you've played before? Yes, it is, and it was really exciting, especially to have to be Becky because I myself am like obsessed with the character in the v It's a movie that I would be crazy over.

If I wasn't in it, I'd be the first person in theaters. I'd probably go multiple nights in a row. It's just so my speed. I didn't realize how fun it would be to get to play that character again, because you just build off of what you already have and gives you LUTs bring board into making something even better. I imagine you had to have had a stunt person for this.

But did you end up getting injured at all? Or were you pretty safe? I was very safe other than like the occasional bruise, Like, I was totally fine. I fell down a couple of times when I wasn't doing anything dangerous, because that's just like how I am. But I didn't know.

Everything was great and I was able to do a lot of stuff on my own, which is always big for me. On any set I'm on, I'm like, please let me just do it, because it's so fun and I want to have that opportunity, But no injuries. You spend so much time covered in gore and blood. What are they putting on in those scenes? Okay, I'm like, it wasn't the corn syrup blood.

It was something else because it tasted terrible first in the first bit, when I get covered in the blood they're throwing in on me, like a lot went into my mouth, and it was terrible. It would taste it so bad. Other than the taste, felt so cool, like I was amazing. After the first couple of days, though, I was like, okay, maybe we could stop with all this blood because it was like fifteen hour days being covered in blood. It was a lot.

But no just made it more fun because everyone was so supportive and so everyone was really looking out for me, making sure I was okay, and I so wasn't. Yeah, it was just like some sticky red goop. I don't even know. I should have probably asked when I was on set, what are you covering me in? But never thought too.

And since you're under eighteen, how long can you even work on set on a day? I can work long hours now because it's just like a whole thing, but like I can work long and work adult hours being seventeen, which is great, and Becky, I think was my second project being able to work adult hours, and it was great. Like that kind of movie, you can't really get done without working your ass off, and we all worked our asses off and I had a great time, like even in that twelve hour like sitting on set, being like I was just ready to go. On the weekends, I'd wake up and be like, can I just go to a word? I had such an amazing time on this set.

And you have such natural rapport with your co stars. You are going toe to toe with every single person on the screen with you. Yeah, And I got along with everybody so well. It was sad to kill them all, but I did not. Really.

It was amazing forming that connection and being able to sit with everyone at lunch and like debrief about what we were doing that day and talking about our favorite strong female characters. And it was an amazing experience. Through and through. I really loved and adjourned everybody on that set. I really hope there is a Becky three me too.

So what are you working on in these days? Right now? I'm in New Mexico filming a sci fi movie called Zeno, working with Kevin Hearts Production Company and the Jim Henson Company, which is amazing, unbelievable. It's been an incredible experience so far and we're only like week two, so yeah, it's amazing. And I have the first episode to fallow the House of Us.

You're coming here sometime in September. Thank you so much for your time. This is great talking with you. Thank you so much. Rolling down We're seventeen, racing out and my friends Mill Street Machiney got rolled over, Buzzet my rare view mirror got another chicket.

In my third one business, I lost my license that I had to take a course. Saw Brian guy who won't shut up about the board. I saw her in the back row, no expression on her face. How do I surround it? There's jesto done way.

I did not understand the stone and stand, so I turned to my friend Rino. Must be police, said board by Zina. Oh woman love with Becky in the star Way? Did she stave? And how if he fall for me?

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You asked her for a date? I hope her and wrist does not dan me man. I hope this isn't a way stop dying. Maybe he sees the spark of the divine. Oh why, I'm in love with Baggy and show every chains me?

But how I don't know she calls for me? Will she ever show with bim in love with Baggy the star where and I'm gonna get a ticket gets to her house on stime? And I'm gonna get in Nick gets to her house on stime. I'm gonna get a ticket getting to her house on time,