‘My Animal’ Actors Bobbi Salvör Menuez and Amandla Stenberg On This Horror Classic
Editor’s Note: This interview was conducted in January during the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, before the strikes. Dread Central stands in solidarity with SAG and the WGA.
Jacqueline Castel’s feature film debut My Animal is the queer werewolf movie of our nightmares. Starring Bobbi Salvör Menuez and Amandla Stenberg, the film orbits around questions of generational trauma, identity, and desperately trying to fit in. During Sundance 2023, we spoke to the two stars about their experience with the film. Now, we’re publishing the second part of the interview in honor of the film’s wide release.
In My Animal,
Tormented by a hidden family curse, Heather is forced to live a secluded life on the outskirts of a small town. When she falls for the rebellious Jonny, their connection threatens to unravel Heather’s suppressed desires, tempting her to unleash the animal within.
We spoke with Menuez and Stenberg about their introductions to horror, their love of horny horror classic Possession, and more. Read the first part of the interview here.
Dread Central: Bobbi, on top of all this, your character is also a werewolf of some kind. I wanted to hear more about the physicality and the experience of inhabiting the monstrosity of Heather’s character.
Bobbi Salvör Menuez: I mean that was something I really loved getting into, honestly. Inside of all people, you know, we are animals at the end of the day. This was the most somatic and almost anti-cerebral approach to a character I feel like I’ve ever had. I just felt so much of who she was in her bodily experience. In her, you know, weightlifting and training her body and that relationship to one’s body, especially having a body that can hurt other people and feeling the need to keep it in line.
I think also in my own experience, like in the discovery of my own transness and my journey through that. The fear and the joy of learning about one’s own relationship to their body and embracing whatever is found there. But yeah, I don’t know, there was a lot of, <laugh> you know, screaming in the woods at night on hands and knees. <Laugh>
DC: Are either of you big horror fans?
BSM: Yeah, definitely.
Amandla Stenberg: Yeah.
DC: So starting with Amandla, what was your first horror movie? Do you remember?
AS: Yes, I remember very vividly. It was The Shining. I must have been like eight. This is because my dad was hell-bent on exposing me to his favorite movies. So it was not necessarily an appropriate age for me to have watched it, but I did anyway. I liked that feeling as a kid of being scared and then turning off the TV and it not being real. But I also think horror films provide really visceral worlds.
DC: Bobbi, what about you?
BSM: Yeah, I feel like naming the first one is kind of hard. The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc is not really a horror film, but I saw it when I was like five. There was something about that that was horrifying. <Laugh> I really grew to be obsessed with horror when I was a little kid. I remember spring break of fifth grade, me and my best friend spent the entire week going and renting a new horror movie at the video rental place every single day. And, you know, shooting our own horror things on her VHS camera.
I really loved horror as a kid. I just loved, I loved screaming. I loved just, I don’t know, the feeling of your heart thumping in your chest. And then also the ridiculousness of some of those moments in different horror films. Yeah, I just loved the psychology of horror and the expansiveness of the worlds that get to exist within that genre.
DC: What are some of your favorites now?
BSM: I feel like one of my top favorites is always gonna be Possession.
DC: Oh God. The best movie ever.
AS: Oh, yeah. That was a big reference for us.
BSM: Yeah, definitely. Isabelle Adjani is just so incredible in that film. I like body horror stuff. <Laugh> Also thinking about Titane, which I guess is more body horror than explicitly just horror, but I love that more recent film.
DC: And then Amandla, do you have any favorites?
AS: I mean this is very classic, but Hereditary is definitely one of my favorite horror films.
DC: It’s so good. <Laugh>
BSM: It’s so good.
AS: So good. Yeah. It’s so deeply dreadful. It’s such a rich psychological family drama. Also, last year I got to be on the judges’ panel for the Tribeca Film Festival. We ended up giving our award to this amazing film called Huesera.
It’s so good. Directed by Michelle Garza Cervera. It’s one of the more beautiful horror films that I’ve seen that explores what it is to inhabit the body of a woman. It’s pretty shocking and poetic, in equal measure.
My Animal is available now on digital and VOD.
Categorized:Interviews
