Nicolas Cage starred as the titular serial killer in the recent film, Longlegs. Acting opposite him was Maika Monroe, who played the FBI agent tasked with capturing him. Witt, who portrayed Monroe’s mother, spoke out about their experience in a recent interview with Metro. She expressed her fright, saying, “It’s so twisted and certainly helped with my work because my interaction with him in the movie, all you have to do is look at him, and you know that man’s not right – like, deeply not right.”
Monroe, too, agreed that the experience of seeing Cage in makeup was visceral. In a recent video clip shared by the film, her heart rate increased to 170 beats per minute upon seeing Cage for the first time in character. Despite the shock and horror, a reviewer from NME gave four out of five stars to the film. “At its heart, Monroe is superb as Harker, offering up a buttoned-down performance that never breaks. Hopefully, Longlegs doesn’t get her pigeonholed as a Scream Queen; she deserves more. As for Cage, also a producer here, it’s just another worthy addition to his canon of crazies.”
Cage himself has spoken out about his work on the film, even admitting to having used his mother as inspiration for Longlegs. “Not that she was satanic,” he clarified during a recent interview, “but her vocalisations, the way she would move.” Even so, he wanted to pay homage to her in his performance, basing his character on her. “I think my mom did as well as she could with the situation in which she was contending with, but it was still scary. So I thought, O.K., I want to make this character as a sort of homage to my mother.”
Overall, the cast and crew worked closely to bring the film to life. As Witt explained in her interview, “It’s just an experience. It’s a very, very intense, specific experience, and everyone working on it really came together and worked as a team.” It’s clear that Cage, Monroe, Witt, and the rest of the cast put in a considerable effort to make Longlegs as compelling and memorable as possible
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