Tatiana Maslany on Death, Dying and Stephen King’s ‘The Monkey’ [February Cover Story]
Tatiana Maslany has spent her impressive career shapeshifting. Whether it was playing an entire ensemble of characters in her Emmy-winning turn in Orphan Black, her large-scale tenure at Marvel as She-Hulk, or her early days stealing scenes in the cult classic Ginger Snaps 2, Maslany has a gift for toggling between forms. However, later this month, she inhabits a very different state of mind: nothingness. Maslany confronts the vast unknowability of death with her role in the adaptation of Stephen King’s The Monkey, a new horror film with a dark, absurdist edge that forces its characters to confront mortality in all its unsettling glory.
In The Monkey, directed by genre visionary Osgood Perkins, Maslany plays a mother who, somewhat gleefully, explains the nuances of death to her two young boys. This abrasively dark yet jarringly funny moment encapsulates the film’s approach to life’s ultimate uncertainty. “I don’t know that the movie leans into nihilism exactly,” she tells me. “It’s more about the absurdity of death and the meaning—or meaninglessness—of it all. There’s humor in the fact that we have no control over any of it.”
The upcoming horror film, based on Stephen King’s famous short story of the same name, follows a cursed toy monkey that is somehow the cause of untold amounts of death and carnage. “The randomness of it is terrifying,” Maslany says. “It’s not about whether you’re good or bad, deserving or undeserving—it’s just chance. And that’s so much scarier than any villain you can fight.” But the film doesn’t sink into despair. “The humor in The Monkey is what keeps it from collapsing into itself. You laugh, even as you feel this weight, because what else can you do?”
And, like the inevitable human desire to make sense of death’s apparent meaninglessness, Tatiana Maslany is no stranger to existential questions.
Growing up in Saskatchewan, surrounded by the vast, open prairies, she developed an early sense of her own smallness in the universe. “When I was a kid, every year when the fair came to town, I had this realization: ‘Someday, I won’t be here for this.’ It was this deep, existential dread, and I was only five or six years old.” That feeling only deepened when she stared out at the sprawling landscapes of her childhood. “Looking out at the prairies in the winter—it’s so harsh, it’s so lunar. It made me feel tiny in the grand scheme of things. That same feeling hits me when I look out at the ocean or stare into the night sky.”
An awe of open spaces is something she’s carried with her. “There’s something about that vastness that’s so destabilizing. If you were dropped in the middle of the prairies, or the ocean, or space, you’d have no idea where you were. And I think that’s why horror is so effective—because it taps into that sense of being lost, of not being able to orient yourself.”
Death is a topic that many of us make an effort to avoid, but Maslany believes it’s essential to confront. “Strangely, it’s this huge, universal thing, and yet we act like it’s taboo,” she says. Her character in The Monkey has to be brutally honest with her children about mortality, and that moment resonated with her. “As a kid, I didn’t have a direct experience with death, but I remember realizing that one day I wouldn’t be here. It came out of nowhere—this deep, strange sadness. And I think a lot of people have that realization early on, but we don’t always talk about it.”
She believes that storytelling—especially in horror—is an effective way to process these fears. “Horror is one of the few places where we actually acknowledge death head-on. It forces us to look at it, to question what it means, to figure out how we feel about it.”
Horror has long been a genre that allows Maslany to tap into deeper truths. Many fans still remember her as Ghost, the unsettlingly childlike standout of Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed. “That was the first time I got to really create a character from the ground up. I worked with people on set to develop Ghost’s physicality, her voice, her way of moving.” Even the transformation was extreme. “They completely bleached my hair, and it was wrecked afterward—turned green. But that whole process of becoming someone else? It was so formative for me. It made me realize how much I loved acting.”
Over the years, Ginger Snaps 2 has found its cult audience, something Maslany has witnessed firsthand. “At conventions, people still come up to me with Ginger Snaps posters. One time, after a Broadway show I did, someone approached me with a VHS copy. That was wild.”
Though Maslany has dabbled in many genres, she finds herself drawn to stories that embrace the absurd—whether in horror, sci-fi, or even animation. She’s a longtime fan of Futurama, Adventure Time, and darkly comedic cartoons like Metalocalypse and Home Movies. “There’s something about those shows. They package existential dread in a way that’s accessible and hilarious. Futurama especially—Lela was my hero growing up.”
Even her taste in music leans into the surreal and boundary-pushing. She lights up talking about PC Music, the hyper-pop collective that reshaped electronic music and pop music landscapes. “Sophie was my absolute favorite,” she says, referencing the late visionary producer. “Seeing her live was an experience. And PC Music as a whole—there’s something about it. It takes pop elements, messes with them in this way that’s reverent but also totally disruptive. It’s nostalgic, but it also distorts nostalgia. It’s hard to explain to people who aren’t into it, but those of us who love it are emotionally attached to it.”
It’s that same embrace of the surreal and the subversive that fuels her passion for horror. “The Monkey plays with so many of these themes. It makes you laugh at the horror of existence, but then it pulls the rug out from under you. That’s the best kind of horror.”
For Maslany, every new role is a way to examine life from another angle—whether she’s playing multiple clones, an unlikely superhero, or a mother facing supernatural terror. As she continues to explore stories that push boundaries and probe the nature of existence, one thing remains constant: her ability to transform, to shapeshift, and to find joy in the absurd. “If there’s one thing The Monkey teaches you,” she says, “it’s that when faced with the abyss, you might as well dance.”
The Monkey will be unleashed into theatres on February 21, 2025.
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