PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Veronica Cartwright is a goddamn legend. She’s been in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Alien, The Witches of Eastwick, Flight of the Navigator, just to name a few. She’s horror royalty and shows no signs of stopping now. Her latest film, Stevan Mena’s mystery/thriller, The Ruse, is about a former conductor living with the dementia whose in-home nurse disappears mysteriously and let me tell you. Veronica. Is. Amazing.
An in-home caregiver fears for her life after being assigned to a mysterious elderly patient in a remote seaside home.
To celebrate the release of the film, I chatted with Veronica via Zoom about the film, her long and successful career, making Alien, and more!
PopHorror: I’m a big fan so this is a huge honor to speak with you. I had a lot of fun with The Ruse so I’m excited to hear more about it.
Veronica Cartwright: Thank you!
PopHorror: What intrigued you about the script for The Ruse and made you want to be a part of the project?
Veronica Cartwright: I thought it was really like an old-fashioned thriller. I thought the script was really well written and I really liked it. The fact that I was going to have to wear a cannula up my nose the whole time, I didn’t realize that but… I just really thought that it was like a really good, old-fashioned thriller and I was sort of intrigued by it and I thought this would be an interesting project to do. Maddie’s (Madelyn Dundon) lovely to work with. She’s really lovely and she’s a terrific young actress. I don’t know. And Maine, I’d never been to Maine and what a stunning place that is! They put us up in an Airbnb. I was in the Airbnb with Johnny Caglione, the producer, and Cory Geryak, who was our cinematographer. We all had different wings of this Airbnb that looked out onto a lake, and there were all these blooms coming out while we were there. All the tulips and everything. Oh my God, it was stunning. Maddy had her own separate apartment downstairs, which was great for her because sometimes she had some major stuff to do. The whole thing. We just became a sort of camaraderie thing. And I just think the house that we worked in was like a character of its own. There’s doors everywhere and corridors, and where’s the staircase going to? We used this house and our set decorator would just take stuff from one room – all those things were in that house, pretty much – and he’d move them around to different areas. The house was so funky! It was great and really fun. It was a good experience.
PopHorror: I liked that you said the house was like its own character because I felt that way about the scenery. It was amazing and really added some depth to the story and showed you what the surroundings were like. I’ve never been to Maine, so I was super jealous.
Veronica Cartwright: Oh, it’s so beautiful. The house was actually on a highway so the cars would drive by, but on the other side of it was this huge, big lake and then the lake wrapped around, and you saw the lake out of the kitchen. It was just the most gorgeous setting. These big trees. It was really pretty spectacular. Lucky me to live there.
PopHorror: Was there anything that you were adamant about bringing to your character?
Veronica Cartwright: Yes. I was so glad that Stevan’s daughter wrote that whole thing describing the music and the depth of the music, and “Listen to the refrain,” and stuff like that. She’s a musician. I’m not sure if she’s a conductor or not but she’s the one who wrote all that stuff and that really super helped to create Olivia, I think, because that’s when she became alive. When she was in bed and stuff like that, she would sort of drift off and thought her husband was still alive and bizarre stuff. That was really a great thing to be able to bring to it. I just wanted her to be human, because she starts out feeling like she’s so nasty and I don’t think she is nasty. She genuinely liked Dale and felt like she was being betrayed at the end. That scene, of course, was, oh God. That was a scene and a half. That took some time to do with the knife. I didn’t even realize it, but that Persian rug tore off my toenail.
PopHorror: Oh no!
Veronica Cartwright: I didn’t even realize it. I thought, What the hell’s going on here? Just bizarre. But you get into the part and you’re doing your stuff, and you don’t even think about it. Maddie was really easy to work with. She was very good.
PopHorror: I don’t think Olivia was nasty, I think she was lonely and dealing with a lot of changes because dementia is a lot to go through and to deal with. When you’re realizing that your mind is no longer what it was and you’re no longer who you used to be, yeah, I think I would be pretty nasty too.
Veronica Cartwright: My mother had dementia, so I remember she could be nice as could be and then oh my God, she’d get angry. It was like she wanted to go play Bingo, she knew she could get there if she could just drive. Why did we take her car keys away? These fits of just anger of that we had done something, and then turn around and be, “Oh, let’s have a cup of tea.” In that sense, I think I drew some of that stuff from my mother because she was very particular, and Olivia is sort of very particular to where things are and stuff. I think I incorporated my mother in there.
PopHorror: My mom had Alzheimer’s so I know firsthand exactly how it is so I think my thought process comes from and she’s not naturally nasty or a bad person, it’s the differences and the changes her body is going through. You’ve had a really long and illustrious career – The Birds, Alien, and my favorite, Flight of the Navigator, just to name a few along with many more. What motivates you to keep making art?
Veronica Cartwright: This is all I’ve ever wanted to do. My first TV thing was in 1957 at Zagway Theater. I did tons of commercials. When I got The Children’s Hour, I wanted that part so bad. I guess I was just really lucky and worked hard. I remember there was a period of time when I was on that Daniel Boone series for a couple of years and then I got let go at 17, which made it very difficult to get anything because I was too old to play young parts and too young to play older people, so I wasn’t working. Then I ended up getting married at 19 and I thought, I have to do something; go to acting classes. So I went to acting classes. I went and studied with Jack Garfein, who is part of the original group theater and I just felt that I wanted to perfect whatever it was because if I wasn’t working, I wanted to learn more. Then after that, I went and did Viola Spolin with Stephen Book. It was an improvisation theater and then I just moved over to England. I’m British, I figured, Let me give it a bash. While I was over there, I got a movie. I got this movie called Inserts with Richard Dreyfuss and oh my God, I was so nervous. I remember calling Jacking going, “Oh my gosh, I got this part! I’m supposed to be a porno queen junkie!”, and he goes, “You can do it!” It was such an incredible experience because to be able to do something and that movie’s always had a special part of my heart. It was really great. I used to work at a restaurant. I was a waitress at a restaurant, Yellowfingers. I got to Europe three times by being a waitress there. But when I came back, I couldn’t get my job back, so I went to work at this other place. I’m waiting on this guy, and this guy turns around to me and goes, “Excuse me, weren’t you in Inserts?” I said, “Yes,” and he says, “What the fuck are you doing here?”, and I said, “Well, I need to make a living.” I thought, I quit! The next day, I thought, What AM I doing here? That freedom just opened up a whole bunch of new things. Then I get this interview to meet Jack Nicholson for Goin’ South, and it was great. That was another thing. I go and Jack comes out… It was at Paramount Studios, a very old part of the Paramount Studios with these very thin little corridors, so Jack points for me to go ahead and I’m walking ahead of him, and he goes, “Loved you in Inserts.” Oh my God, I blushed. It was incredible. Anyway, that was the beginning. From that, I got Invasion of the Body Snatchers and then Alien. I just needed that push. But, I was prepared. I was ready. I worked really hard and a lot of things I realized I was just doing naturally, which I hadn’t even known. Main thing, just listen. Listen to the other person and if you listen, you’re there. I got to do some stage plays. It’s been great. I love my career. I wish things were a little faster right now. I just did a cartoon for Amazon. Anyway, I have an interview later this afternoon and we’ll see what happens.
PopHorror: Well, google luck!
Veronica Cartwright: Thank you!
PopHorror: I love that story so much. You’ve worked with some incredible people. Imagine if you hadn’t been waiting tables that day when someone called you out and you were like, I need to get out of here. Imagine if that had gone a completely different route!
Veronica Cartwright: Have you ever seen that movie?
PopHorror: I have not.
Veronica Cartwright: I think you can get it on Amazon. It was X-rated at the time but it’s NC-17 now. We won the Berlin Silver Bear. It’s only five characters and it was Bob Hoskins’ first movie and Jessica Harper is in. She does my insert shots. The whole thing with Inserts is Richard Dreyfuss is a director in the 30s who’s not been able to get work so he’s now doing pornos with dignity. It was just a fabulous experience. We rehearsed in three weeks and shot it in 14 days. It was just the best. It’s really a great movie, if you get a chance to see it.
PopHorror: I’m going to look it up when we’re done here and see if I can find it. You have me intrigued. I have just one last question for you today. What is your favorite scary movie?
Veronica Cartwright: My favorite scary movie to watch? Oh my God. This isn’t a movie, but one of the weirdest things was that Twilight Zone with Agnes Moorehead, and there was no dialogue, just sort of grunting. She’s a woman in a cabin and she’s sweeping, and then all of a sudden, all these little robot people come, and they start attacking her and stabbing her and everything like that and it turns out, they’re the United States and she was this giant from this other planet. That show was incredibly creepy to me. I thought it was terrific. I know there’s something out there that I’ve watched and jumped out of my skin.
PopHorror: That was a great answer! Let me tell you how many people say Alien, so you should feel very accomplished.
Veronica Cartwright: Because of the chestburster? I saw it in the theater when it first came out, and people got up and left the theater when the chestburster came out. They were just totally freaked. It was a good scare, and it holds up, which is amazing.
PopHorror: It does!
Veronica Cartwright: That whole movie was shot with no CGI. Everything was practical. You just don’t make movies like that anymore. Those sets were phenomenal! We just took over Shepperton Studios and that desert, oh my God. It was not an easy movie to shoot, let me tell you. It was very claustrophobic. By the end, they’d just stand there with big cameras drizzled with glycerin and just spray it on you until you were dripping. You were filthy by the time you got home. It was experience, that Alien.
Thank you so much to Veronica for taking the time to chat with us. The Ruse is in theaters today!
