Interview With Chase Williamson, Star Of ‘Sour Minnows’

Every time I cover the Fantasia International Film Festival, I know I’m going to find some hidden gems, instant classics, and all-around amazing genre programming, and 2026, which is Fantasia’s 30th year, has come through in spades.

One of the most unique and unexpected films I viewed this year is the surreal, experimental horror film, Sour Minnows, written and directed by Harrison Atkins (read our interview with him HERE) and starring David Brown (Cvnt) and Chase Williamson (I Blame Society).

Two friends stumble upon an unusual sight: six men sensually licking the pavement on an empty LA street. For Ricky, this moment ruptures something. As his reality grows porous, and his memories begin to slip and slide, he finds himself in contact with “The Yellow Thing,” an entity that wears people like costumes. As Ricky adapts to his expanding worldview, a delirious new logic takes hold.

I was lucky enough to chat with star Chase Williamson about his initial thoughts on the script, his acting career, horror films, and more!

PopHorror: Sour Minnows was fucking wild so I’m excited to talk to you about it today.

Chase Williamson: Yeah, I’d love to talk about it!

PopHorror: What was your initial reaction to the script and made you want to be a part of the project?

Chase Williamson: The script was very Harrison. I’ve known Harrison for a very long time and he’s just been a very, very singular guy since we were teenagers. He’s just always had his own vision and his own voice and it’s hilarious to me. I just love it so much. Anytime I get to read anything he writes I’m just tickled by it. When I first read this, he had written it in a sort of loosely formatted way where it started off as a poem and it became a screenplay so it sort of read as both in a way that was really interesting and made it not as much of a chore to read. When you look at a page of just a huge block of text sometimes you just kind of zone out and have to make yourself read it but he kind of moved along with the story and the formatting helped tell it. It was cool. I thought it was amazing. I would do anything for Harrison so I was just happy that he asked me to do it and I think we were all just dying to make something. It was very guerrilla-style, we were just doing it when everyone was free and everyone was having the best time. It was one of my favorite things I’ve done.

PopHorror: He said it started as a 12 page poem or something like that. It was fairly long for a poem and then it evolved into this screenplay. I forget how long he said it ended up being.

Chase Williamson: I think it’s like 90 pages, but I’ve never read the poem. I’d like to read the poem.

PopHorror: Oh, you didn’t get to read it?

Chase Williamson: No, only when it became a script. Maybe he’ll let me read it some day.

PopHorror: Was it hard to keep a straight face while filming the people licking the ground? Harrison was telling me that they were actually licking the ground and that they made sure it was safe and clean, but it wasn’t Hollywood magic.

Chase Williamson: It was genuinely kind of disturbing because we were rounding the corner and we didn’t really know what they were going to look like or how much licking there was going to be going on because a lot of images in the movie, just on the page, I was like, I have no idea what this is going to look like. I don’t think we really saw them set up so we rounded the corner and it definitely makes you take a pause. I think it felt pretty natural. When I’m watching the movie, it just seems like we’re sort of taken aback and I definitely think we both were. Just a little bit disconcerting and then you’re sort of worried like, are they going to stop? It had the desired effect on David and I. I think it was good we didn’t see it before.

PopHorror: I guess to get the most authentic reaction out of you and David it would make more sense to not show you ahead of time.

Chase Williamson: Yeah, yeah, definitely. He likes to do things like that. He’s very, very helpful with performance in that way.

PopHorror: How did you and David Brown build that natural roommate dynamic?

Chase Williamson: I don’t know. I think we really just clicked and had chemistry right away. He’s such a great guy; he’s universally beloved. I think he can vibe with just about anybody. We definitely ran lines a lot and sort of felt each other out and I think we found a nice way to balance each other out. I think he just set a really good tone, I thought. If he had been giving a different performance I would have to do something else but he was like really grounded and really present and doing it in a really nuanced way that I was just so happy to get to try and support and try and get at that level. That’s always fun too. You meet a new actor, you’ve never met them before, you click, and then you just really work together well. It was pretty natural.

PopHorror: It was, and you guys hadn’t met before?

Chase Williamson: No, never, and I don’t know if Harrison had thought that we would hit it off or whatever, but I wouldn’t put it past him. It ended up being a really good match. I think his performance is truly mind-blowing, really.

PopHorror: It is, I don’t think I’ve seen him in anything before. Like I said, it’s a wild ride and I can’t imagine reading the script and wondering how the hell am I going to do this? Like this is the most absurd thing I’ve ever read.

Chase Williamson: Yeah, and I definitely think I looked at what David was doing a lot so we could calibrate where we’re at. All the stuff that I wasn’t in that I saw in the movie, I was just blown away by what he’s doing. It’s seriously insane; he’s incredible. 

PopHorror: How did Harrison help you understand this weird world?

Chase Williamson: I don’t think he really did. I think he just set a tone and when we had questions he would encourage questions without really giving much of an answer and I think that kind of led to a quality of a few things. I think it led to a little bit of freedom of not knowing, which I think at the end of the day is sort of the message of the movie, weirdly. But there’s a little bit of freedom in not overthinking the lore and stuff of things because sometimes I can prepare way too much if I have too much material to use and then I show up kind of rigid and not as open as I am sometimes if I come in a little bit more ready to be loose and open. In that way, I think he did the right thing because our characters don’t know what’s going on, it really would be only for our own benefit to really get any answers. I feel like he probably felt it wouldn’t be helpful to the work, which is I think how he operates. I think he’s just really brilliant at getting a certain quality out of a performance by little things like that.

PopHorror: That makes sense because I think it brings a level of authenticity when it’s something that you have no idea how it’s going to look or how it’s going to feel or come across seeing it in person, and then experiencing it for the first time in the moment. It gets your real reaction.

Chase Williamson: Yeah, definitely. It’s much easier to do that when it’s someone that you know is going to make a good movie. All of us trust Harrison. He’s like one of the most talented people ever, so he can’t make something that I don’t think is good. It didn’t really matter if I understood it because he is making it, it’s his thing, then it’s going to be good. I just wanted to do whatever he needed to do whatever he was going to do and I think it turned out really well.

PopHorror: I love that. I read in a 2016 interview that you did-

Chase Williamson: Wow!

PopHorror: That your parents told you that you were not going to be a child actor, that you had wanted to go further than what you had been doing and they were like, no. How did you find yourself getting back into acting?

Chase Williamson: I mean, I never really got out of it. I was doing theaters and plays nonstop through college but I went to an acting for camera school called Dallas Young Actors Studio on weekends and over the summer, and everyone there had an agent and they were all like, “Theater sucks!” And I was like, oh man, guess I need an agent. I wasn’t good at acting for camera when I was a kid at all. I was very into theater. Once I got out of high school, I started getting really interested in movies a lot more so then I started to get interested in trying to develop those skills and bring more nuance to stuff but when I was a kid, I was just playing the comic relief in like the Tortoise and the Hare. I also could not handle rejection and I would scream and cry. So, they made the right call I think.

PopHorror: Yeah, I read that you then became really grateful to them for not allowing you to do it at an earlier age.

Chase Williamson: Yeah, I don’t think I had the maturity or the emotional intelligence to really navigate that in a way that would have been healthy for me. I feel like I just barely do now. As a kid, I think it’s probably good that I stuck to theater. I’m happy with the way the trajectory all went and I got to do some incredible plays. I really miss doing theater but I think by the time I started doing movies and acting on camera and stuff, I was really ready and honed. I had a lot of training before the pressures of the industry, as they say.

PopHorror: I have just one last question for you today. What is your favorite scary movie?

Chase Williamson: The Shining. It’s basic but I can rewatch it over and over and over again. It’s kind of like this movie where there’s a lot of ambiguous imagery and cryptic messaging where you can watch it over and over and over and get a completely different thing out of it every time. I think that’s my favorite kind of movie, rewatchable because you’re trying to decode it even though there’s not necessarily a code to decode but you can project whatever you want onto it, depending on the mood you’re in while watching it.

Thank you so much to Chase for taking the time to chat with us! Sour Minnows is currently on the festival circuit.