io9 recently attended a special screening of A24’s Death of a Unicorn starring Jenna Ortega (Wednesday) and Paul Rudd (Avengers: Endgame); they play a daughter and her father who accidentally run over a unicorn. And yeah, that seems about the sort of a film A24 would push for its cinema addicts.
After the film director Alex Scharfman led a Q&A with Ortega and other members of the cast (minus Rudd) about the dark modern fantasy comedy. Death of a Unicorn offers an art-house take on the same concept explored in Cabin in the Woods; it pits the destructive nature of a unicorn against some deeply unserious rich people—and a normie single dad (Rudd) trying to do his best for his daughter (Ortega) who unwittingly forges a bond with the unicorn they hit.
Ortega shared her biggest challenge was keeping a straight face while her co-stars—which also include Tea Leoni, Richard E. Grant, Will Poulter, and Anthony Carrigan—said and did the most ridiculous things as their characters extracted the unicorn’s powers.
“I mean this in the kindest way possible: I could not trust anyone on this set. I couldn’t make eye contact with anybody. I didn’t want to look at certain people,” she shared with the audience. “There’s a bit where Anthony walks by, and he’s talking about, ‘this isn’t the best use of time’—walking by using a clock as a barrier. And there’s not one take where I look in that direction.”
Ortega’s Ridley is definitely the film’s moral core and audience’s avatar, and the actor recalled enduring comedic torture to defend the unicorn. “There’s so many moments Paul was really playful [on set] that way, [and would] add little things. I think it’s strange, because I’m supposed to be kind of the most serious one in the film. Telling everyone why this is wrong, and nobody listens to me until the third act,” she said. “For me, it was definitely one of the more difficult jobs where I couldn’t break. I was supposed to be, like, on the verge of tears. It was brutal. It was talking to brick wall after brick wall after brick wall. Like, every day, it was just, like, more and more intense, like, more of a throat vein or a forehead vein trying to express to people why this was wrong. Yeah, it was terrible.”
Ortega continued to describe her experiences on-set. “Working with Paul, obviously, I was such a fan of his work previously, but also just such a sweet, normal, kind man,” she said. Fully joking, she added, “He was fucking hell. [He’s not here so] I can acknowledge the fact that he’s a dick.”
That good-natured rapport helped build the relationship between their characters. “Truly, though, [he was] so easy to form chemistry with. Yeah, like—he’s great, so easy to work with, [and] so much fun. [He] made the energy lighter, and I think because I didn’t get to have [comedic fun]—I had plenty of fun on this [finding] that balance and not bearing into the territory that’s not yours, and make sure that everybody is in every right place. And it was a little bit hard with Paul [to not break], but he’s just so supportive and just incredible to work with.”
Death of a Unicorn opens March 28.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
