Samara Weaving says there was “a lot of pressure” to top the original film in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come.
Samara Weaving as Grace MacCaullay in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
The 34-year-old star reprises her role as Grace MacCaullay in the comedy horror sequel and explained that they wanted to make the best movie possible to follow on from the 2019 flick.
Asked how the sequel materialised, Samara told Entertainment Weekly: “We weren’t talking about it seriously on the first movie. We really didn’t know how people were gonna take it, but when it did quite well, and then the fan base kept growing even after it wasn’t in theatres anymore, we were flirting with the idea.
“And then I didn’t know if it had been too long. It was always sort of this in-the-background conversation, and then suddenly it started to become quite real.
“We wanted to make sure that we made the best sequel possible, which is tough. There’s a lot of pressure to top that first one. I don’t think we would do it if we didn’t all love each other so much, because it is hard work making something like that.”
Weaving explained that she wanted to take a slightly different approach to her portrayal of Grace in the picture – which also stars Kathryn Newton, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Elijah Wood.
The Snake Eyes star said: “I like to map out the character’s arc. With the first one, I really wanted to avoid playing the same emotional beat over and over again.
“I was like, how can we see her in denial and then bargaining and then getting really mad about it and then being at a level of acceptance around it – having different colours of fear, essentially, and survival.
“What was great (for the sequel) was having Kathryn in the scenes with me. Having someone new to the experience, that was the key because I could bounce off of her.”
Samara also recalled how directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett had to painstakingly recreate a gory scene from the original film that features in the new flick.
The Australian actress said: “We had to recreate the scene from the last one, yeah, but Colin (Penman) and the rest of the makeup team did such a phenomenal job because they had to match the continuity of the blood perfectly.
“I think there was an FX team that worked for a month purely on that one shot, stitching the last shot of the first movie and the first shot of the second movie together.
“It was wild because we were on stages and they’d recreated the staircase and I had the old dress on and they had strapped a huge camera rig to me, almost like a fancy GoPro.”