It’s a scream! How Toni lost the plot in a real scare fest
TonI Collette found there was beauty in the horror of her latest scare - packed film, Hereditary. The actress plays Annie, a celebrated miniaturist who lives with her husband (gabriel Byrne) and two children in a rambling pile in utah. It’s secluded, of course; with a tree-house out back. Annie’s often estranged mother had been living with them before she died. As the film opens, Annie is going through her mother’s things and discovers cryptic papers that hurtle her, her family — and us — through a maelstrom of devastation. ‘It starts out as this beautiful story about these people trying to navigate one of the most painful experiences you go through as humans. ‘Then you’re taken on a completely different journey,’ she said, and we both burst out laughing over the phone. Because we know what happens in this terrifying thriller directed by wunderkind Ari Aster that opens here on June 15, following screenings at the Sundance Film Festival London next week (June 1 and 2 at Picturehouse Central, Piccadilly). every aspect of Annie’s life is threatened by forces of evil outside of her control. Her schoolgirl daughter Charlie (Milly Shapiro, who was in Matilda on Broadway), pot- head teenage son Peter (Alex Wolff), and husband Steve can’t escape what has been unleashed by grandma’s dark prophecy. I can’t give away one particular scene that will make you scream out loud — and may give you nightmares. But it happens on a road, with two people in a car. You can almost see it coming, but can’t quite believe it when it does.
As a result of this incident, tensions mount between Annie and Peter and a brilliant scene ensues between the pair.
‘Aha, the dinner table scene,’ Toni said, speaking from Beverly Hills. ‘It’s almost like a dam has built up, and she’s sitting with all of this pain, and eventually explodes — and her son gets it.
BeIng a mother is so idealised,’ she said. ‘This whole notion of motherly love — the rosy experience that it should be — is so contrary to the reality.
‘I know this is an extreme situation, and this woman is out of control and very vulnerable. She has so much resentment and so much rage. And this poor boy gets all of it.’
It’s an incredible screen moment that only a great actress could pull off. I remembered that Toni received an Academy Award nomination for playing a mother in The Sixth Sense. She’s surely due one for Hereditary, too.
‘It’s a horrible scene but I really love what Annie looks like as a mother who has lost it completely,’ said the actress, who has two children.
She said she had so much anger swilling about after filming it that: ‘I really needed to go off to the gym and just run on a machine. I really needed to shift the energy. I didn’t want it hanging over me.’
But she added there was ‘something perversely satisfying’ about the meltdown scene, and the film, too.
‘ even though it’s scary, there’s something beautiful and honest about it.’
It’s certainly up there with her best work: Muriel’s Wedding, The Sixth Sense and Little Miss Sunshine.
Toni will soon be seen in the six-part BBC drama Wanderlust, written by acclaimed playwright nick Payne, about a woman who has a near-death experience.
‘She starts to question how she’s still living; and starts to make changes,’ she said of her character Joy.
‘She realises that everything in her past has gone unaddressed. The tone is gorgeous. It sounds very serious but it’s very warm and very funny.’
A second series is being discussed. ‘I bloody hope so!’ Toni exclaimed. ‘It was some of the best writing I’ve ever worked with.’