PopHorror Let's Get Scared
The Portrait, written by David Griffiths and directed by Simon Ross, and with a stacked cast of Ryan Kwanten (True Blood), Natalia Cordova-Buckley (Coco), Virgina Madsen (Candyman – 1992), and Mark-Paul Gosselaar (Dead Man on Campus – 1998), snuck up on me. The mystery thriller, cloaked in grief, weaves its scares with loneliness and hope, centered around a marriage in limbo after the husband suffers a traumatic brain injury.
After her husband is devastated by a tragic accident, a devoted wife obsesses over a mysterious portrait that resembles him as he was; but when it starts to terrorize her, she must decide if it’s possessed or if she’s losing her mind.
To celebrate the release of the film, I chatted with stars Ryan and Natalia about why they wanted to be in the film, crafting their roles, horror movies, and more!
PopHorror: I really enjoyed The Portrait. I thought it was great. Very suspenseful. I’m super excited to speak with you both today. My first question is for both of you. What intrigued you about the script and made you want to be a part of the project?
Natalia Cordova-Buckley: Firstly of course, the fact that I’ve never had the opportunity to carry a film in its entirety this way and that was a huge challenge for me that I really wanted to take on and see if I could do it. And secondly, the subject of the film, or when I read the script, what I felt was the undercurrent subject of the film, which to me was grief. We were in the middle of the pandemic in 2021, there was this feeling of loss and grief. I had lost three beings that I really, really loved so I was reading books. I was reading The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion right when I read the script and it just spoke to me because of the process that I was going through in terms of grief, compounded by this incredible idea of David’s of having death represented in life, meaning the person you love is there in body, but their mind, their spirit, how they speak to you, how they touch you, how they look at you, is not there anymore. So, you’re basically grieving a death without being able to let go without being able to release. That really drew me to this idea of interpreting grief as suspenseful or thriller-like because I do believe that when you’re in this state of loss, you do feel disconnected from the whole world and yourself. You’re like in this limbo state. That and then the psychological challenge as an actor of constantly walking this line of, is she losing her mind, is her husband violating her, or is there this supernatural element to it. It was all that seemed like such a difficult challenge to be able to make real and feel real. It spoke to me and I just really wanted to try it out.
PopHorror: I have to throw in there that you can absolutely carry a film by yourself. That was a perfect choice.
Ryan Kwanten: Yeah!
Natalia Cordova-Buckley: Thank you so much. Thank you.
Ryan Kwanten: These types of movies attract artists across the board. Psychological thrillers, horrors, have a way of infecting people and you can only do that if you have intelligent, passionate people producing that work, so I knew I was in for a good team effort pretty early on in this. From a straight acting standpoint, it really allowed me to do huge deep dives into the world of traumatic brain injury. How one copes with this type of injury is probably one of the toughest things any person could be asked to do because they are really coping with an alteration in such basic components of who they are as a person that it creates a huge challenge to their identity as a human being, their sense of meaning, value. The real insidiousness of a brain injury is that it can be quite difficult for someone else to recognize, both Natalia’s character Sofia, but as well as the audience. For me, it was a total level of suspense added on to an already kind of creepy backstory with the Calvin DuBose self-portrait.
PopHorror: With your character having a traumatic brain injury, you have almost no dialogue in this film and have to rely a lot on your body language and facial expressions. What were the challenges of not speaking and how did you prepare for your role?
Ryan Kwanten: Like I said, there were some huge deep dives that I took here. One lady in particular, Mary Pepping, a neuropsychologist, I read her book, A Successful Private Practice in Neuropsychology, and that was a real insight as to as much as one can get into the inner workings of what’s going on there. It’s basically the amygdala is affected in such a way where emotions such as fear and even love are dampened at best and sometimes taken away completely. Sofia is doing her best to try and figure out what the medical practitioners couldn’t, there’s a line in there that the doctors have sort of given up on him, but love has a way of sort of never giving up. She wasn’t content to just let him wallow. And not being able to express yourself verbally, to be honest, I’m not a particularly chatty guy anyway. I love to listen, and it was a real opportunity to see the mastery of someone like Natalia going to these deep depths of the human condition, and really just being a vessel for her to be able to do that. And not to be able to do it with words didn’t seem like as great a challenge as I thought it was going to be, to be honest.
PopHorror: I love that. And Natalia, your character is a very determined caregiver for her husband who is no longer who he used to be, and you mentioned she was going through some grief. Was there anything you were adamant about bringing to your character?
Natalia Cordova-Buckley: I wanted her to have a sweetness that I think I have within, but it doesn’t really show on my face a lot because of my physique, my voice. The first instinct for people is sort of tough girl and I wanted Sofia to have a real sweetness to her, this very feminine energy, which I think as you said, it’s very female to be a caretaker. There’s an instinct I think, in women, to constantly sacrifice ourselves for others. I love history and I love reading about history and when you get to know the history of humanity, the first oppressed group of people were women before any religion or anything so this instinct of being able to sacrifice yourself constantly for those you love, to leave yourself behind for those you love, is something I think we’ve had to heal as women and acknowledge that we have it innate and it’s been used against us and we’ve also used it in other perhaps manipulative ways. But my mom has a lot of that. My mom has this self-sacrificing energy way of being and I wanted that to be present without her being a victim. It was very important to me that there was this very natural female empowered “I’m going to leave myself out and just fight for this person I love” without her being a victim. Though it was a fine line, I wanted that very female sweet mother energy. Sometimes even the way I spoke to Alex as Sofia or to Ry, there are… When my husband watched this he said, “There are moments where you speak to him as if he’s a baby.” And it was sort of me playing with that, me wanting to use that part of the female energy that we’re mothers from the day we’re born in a lot of ways. That was very important to me.
Ryan Kwanten: There were also fantastic moments for me too, Natalia, where your character’s questioning her own psychosis and you stand face to face with this eerie portrait that we’re beginning to understand is sort of taking on a real life of its own and you stand there and you say, “So Calvin, am I a wounded bird?” And the rawness that you give with lines like that that are set up for the rollicking third act in such a “You better hold on to the seat of your pants right here because something’s about to really go down.” It’s truly incredible to see.
Natalia Cordova-Buckley: Thank you, Ry. I feel the same about your work, truly. I wanted to answer when Tiffany asked about not being able to speak, because as a dancer, the reason why I chose dancing was because I was afraid of my voice, and I thought I could be an artist just with my body and then I had to leave ballet. But when I read the script, I thought what a freaking amazing character to play and I was very interested in who was going to get Alex and how they were going to portray and how difficult it was. I said to Brian, my husband, “I’m terrified for whoever plays this because I think it’s very difficult. I’ve been a dancer in my life. To convey without language is harder to convey. Language is sort of a crutch in a lot of ways. To convey only with your eyes and with your body… Within days, I walked into the after shooting and said to Brian, “Holy shit, this guy!” There’s pictures – stills – of Ryan and he’s looking up and he looks like an innocent little boy. It’s just wonderful to see that transformation because I know you also used to be a huge athlete, and he’s this very powerful guy physically and stuff. And there was this kind of very innocence to his character that I just adored, and it helped me also find that motherly endearment toward him.
Ryan Kwanten: Yeah, I remember now too, Natalia, we did that photo shoot. Their wedding photo shoot, in the throes of utmost love. We did that first and it really did provide a sense of, “Okay, well if this is the furthest extreme of how deep this love goes, we can kind of gear everything else back from there.” You know what I mean?
Natalia Cordova-Buckley: Yeah, for sure. I was so nervous that day, I remember. I had never met Ryan and we were supposed to be like, “Oh we love each other! We’re getting married!” I was shaking. It’s so funny that you mention that day. Probably the most nervous I was in the film. So funny.
PopHorror: I love that! Thank you for sharing that. Just one last question for you both today. What is your favorite scary movie?
Natalia Cordova-Buckley: Definitely Midsommar.
Ryan Kwanten: I love Jodie Foster, so I like The Silence of the Lambs.
Thank you so much to Ryan and Natalia for taking the time to speak with us. The Portrait is now available on Digital and On Demand!
