Interview: Oz Perkins and Maika Monroe on ‘Longlegs’ and Their Freeing Collaboration

When I suggest to Oz Perkins and Maika Monroe that they’ve attained special notoriety in the horror genre, they jokingly brush off the praise with a spontaneous yet synchronized gesture of wiping their hands as if it’s no big deal. The unscripted moment speaks to the duo’s impressive synchronicity, which is evident in Longlegs and remains intact during its promotion cycle. Their partnership feels fated as much as planned.

But the film marks more than just the inevitable union of an emerging horror auteur and a leading scream queen. Longlegs makes knowing use of both Perkins and Monroe’s elevated profiles to chart a unique path through what might seem at first blush like a familiar film about the hunting of a serial killer. Perkins and Monroe lean into the trust they have built with their audience to confidently navigate the many misdirects and mysteries of Longlegs.

Monroe’s F.B.I. agent Lee Harker proves as complex and mysterious a cipher as anything left behind by Nicolas Cage’s eponymous character. Longlegs starts as a familiar cat-and-mouse thriller in the vein of Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs and spirals into something much darker and different than initially presented. What emerges from Perkins and Monroe’s partnership is more than just a synthesis of ‘90s fan favorites, but something wholly their own at a moment of peak visibility within the horror community.

I spoke with Perkins and Monroe ahead of the theatrical opening of Longlegs. Our conversation covered how their collaboration on set worked, what Cage brought to the project, and why the film’s influences were more important for the audience than the actors.

Oz, I loved hearing the influence that Mike Nichols had on you after your father passed. Because he was such a master of directing actors, is there anything you took from him that went toward directing Mike in this film?

Oz Perkins: The things I learned from Mike are much less about directing actors, because I think he took the same approach that I take. Which is, I’m not going to tell an actor how to do what they do. They want to be doing it, they want to be good at it, they’re good at it, and they’re invested in it. It’s as important to them that the movie is excellent as it is to me. Mike’s tutelage was always more around the director’s relationship with the audience and the ways in which it’s our responsibility, in a sense, to take care of and position them in a certain way. Not in a manipulative way, but in a comforting way. One of the things you need to do, especially early on in a movie, is to establish what you’re doing so that people will want to play along. Because if you get an audience participating with you, then you’ve really got something going.

One way in which you did that in this film was leading with some red herrings. The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en serve as visual cues that let people think they’re in one kind of movie that maybe yours is not. Were those references helpful at all for you in making the film, or are they purely for the audience?

OP: It was absolutely deliberate. To reference Mike again, one of his things was, in a movie, as early as you can, tell the audience that you’ve got them. Tell the audience in some way, especially visually, that you know what you’re doing and they’re going to be happy with how it goes. Bringing The Silence of the Lambs in so shamelessly is just that. “It’s just this again, trust me.” [Telling the audience that is] good, especially because people want to experience that movie. They want to think about The Silence of the Lambs and be adjacent to it. It’s not like I was trying to put them next to some piece of shit or some horrible thing. I was putting them next to one of the greatest movies of all time, and that was meant to be an invitation.

Maika, do you think Jodie Foster’s performance at all in the back of your head, or do you try to keep it out of your mind?

Maika Monroe: I mean, yes, and no. When I read Longlegs, I didn’t really see [it]. On the surface, yes. She’s a young F.B.I. agent, clearly talented and having some sort of connection with her and the serial killer. But beyond that, Lee is very unique and different. It was so fun to explore that and lean into a different take on this.

It’s my understanding that Oz writes out a character’s thoughts in the script. How does that affect the way that you approach creating a character?

MM: As an actor, that’s always something that you need. It’s important. You have to have some sort of inner dialogue, especially with this role where there’s so many layers and emotions that are suppressed. Having that knowledge and making sure that even though you’re saying one thing, maybe underneath there are different thoughts. It’s incredibly helpful.

So much of what a director does is help actors know what they’re seeing. Was there talk between you about how often Lee would be shot in shallow focus or portrayed in a subjective soundscape? Does that factor into the performance?

OP: I think you trust that you have it. You know there’s a line of people ready to do their jobs as well as they can and are eager to make something cool and special. And eager to win—not in a competitive way, but just to realize what they do in their art. Relying on that is the joy of the job. What it’s going to end up sounding and feeling like is a whole other trip. That’s a whole other trip. The only thing you can do in the moment is watch for what’s there. So many times I will sit at a monitor, and something will pass in front of it, or someone will do something, or something will happen, and I just say, “Let’s do that again,” for no better reason than I just saw it in the moment. It was never planned or talked about.

Maika, what’s the experience like for you to watch the film? Does it capture the experience of acting in that moment even though you didn’t know it was going to be conveyed in this way?

MM: It’s so different from being on set to seeing everything put together. I don’t know the sound design, soundtrack, cinematography…those are all revealed when I see it for the first time. This was one of those movies where I was like, “Holy shit, all the pieces really came together!”

OP: I find that the good actors never ask to see playback.

MM: Oh, god, no!

OP: I don’t know what you would do with that.

MM: Mhmm, no. You’d just get in your head.

OP: Playback is none of her business.

MM: No, it’s not.

Maika, how did you come to develop Lee? It’s my understanding you brought certain elements that were not necessarily evident on the page.

MM: There’s prep that goes into building a character, but to be totally honest, it was the first day that I was shooting. It was the scene where I’m with the other young F.B.I. agent, and we’re sent out on our first task. And I think Oz and I both started realizing that she’s very different than her partner. Her partner is talking, and you can sense that maybe she’s a bit uncomfortable. In that scene, there’s some intuitiveness that [she] starts tapping into. That was when things just started to click in place. That was such a helpful first day for me.

Nicolas Cage settled on the dialect and dialogue for Longlegs before shooting, but was there any way in which he still surprised you even though you knew a lot of the performance that he was going to deliver?

OP: Yeah, because he was sourcing stuff that he’d experienced with his mom. He’s talked about it openly in interviews, things and gestures that she would do to scare him. The cuckoo thing he does was hers, so he would bring these little bits that weren’t in the script. For me, I just sit back and receive the gift that’s being given. I can’t imagine a person being like, “No, don’t do that.” He brings a lot of himself to everything he does, so I can’t predict what that’s going to be like.

MM: I had no idea. Oz wanted to keep us very separate, so it was all very shocking and jarring. As you know, there’s no part of Nic in this character. You don’t recognize him, and it’s just pretty surreal. He just gives such an incredible performance. It’s so haunting and deranged, but also entertaining and slightly funny. It’s one thing to see it on the screen, but to be sitting opposite him and watching him just transform…it was just truly something I’ll never forget.

One of my favorite details in the film is that Lee had wanted to be an actress growing up. What do each of you make of that?

MM: Oh, I love that line! I love that scene so much.

OP: It was just one nine-year-old talking to another nine-year-old and wanting to be something as ridiculous as an actress. You know?

MM: [deadpan] Yeah, it’s the best.

OP: What a funny thing for a kid to think they want to be. It was meant to normalize her, just to say that there was once a time when Lee had a normal childhood and aspired to be something as aspirational as an actress. She reached out that far. It wasn’t, “I want to be a vet,” which…that’s not funny. That doesn’t say anything about anybody. But “I wanted to be an actress” supposes so much about the character without saying more than that. That’s what you’re looking for in screenwriting, to say as much with as little as you can.

Within the horror genre, you both have such a cachet now. What does that allow you to do now that people have this association with you both?

OP: We’re all in the arts probably looking for approval. At some very base level, we want the parent’s reflection to say, “You’re good enough. I see you. I’m proud of you.”

MM: “You did good.”

OP: When you get to a place that’s weirdly populated by positive reflection, it validates your efforts. It should loosen a person up. I could see where one might want to become brittle under the pressure of it. “You must do better next time!” That’s a thing, too, but the gift is that you have confidence that you can make something that people love. Maybe that’s more freeing than binding.

MM: Indeed. Indeed, it is. I like that!