Exclusive Interview with Suki Waterhouse on The Bad Batch
Model-turned-actress Suki Waterhouse struts her stuff in short-shorts alongside Aquaman and John Wick in the dystopian desert-set cannibal holocaust that is The Bad Batch (review). The Bad Batch is audacious writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour’s follow-up to her lauded debut, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.
Waterhouse’s Arlen is introduced as an enigma wrapped in smiley-face cutoffs and a tank top. We meet her in the middle of the Texas badlands, where she’s just been branded and numbered as one of the “bad batch” – society’s castoffs, misfits, criminals, foreign riffraff – and left on the wrong side of a tall wall. “You are no longer a resident of the USA beyond this fence,” a sign posted there says, adding: “Good luck.” Basically, it’s an open-air prison. Now what? She walks.
But all too soon, poor Arlen is left with only one leg upon which to walk. There’s a lot of physical violence in the movie, not to mention a grueling, hot, dry desert-setting. When we asked Waterhouse how hard it was to do such a role, she smiled. “It was hard work, but it is something I’d totally do again. If I could do it tomorrow, I would. I am desperate to do something like that again. I want to feel like a truck has hit me, at the end of the day. Then I feel like, ‘Now I have actually done something.’ Only when I feel like I have been smashed, do I feel good about it.”
Related Story: Ana Lily Amirpour – Exclusive Interview on The Bad Batch
Waterhouse knew making The Bad Batch would be no picnic. That Arlen, as a victim of cannibals, would in fact be the picnic. “Even on the audition notice, it said: this is going to be a really difficult movie to do. I wanted to do it, because the character is relatable. It’s like when your life is torn apart and you lose your boyfriend and your job and you don’t have those things anymore. Arlen doesn’t have her arm or her leg anymore. It’s a metaphor. My own life did fall apart after I got cast, and I was kind of fish out of water too because it’s my first big movie and I’m with Keanu Reeves, Jason Momoa, Diego Luna, Giovanni Ribisi and Jim Carrey, so like, I was terrified the whole time. But in retrospect, that was a good thing.”
She definitely bonded with Amirpour, not only as her director, but as the creator of Arlen. “Something told me I needed a Lily in my life. I wanted to work with her, and luckily, she wanted me for the role. I got very excited when I saw her first film, and I was praying, like, ‘please-please-please.’ And I got it. Having someone I respect, and who I think is the shit, believe in me, is huge. When someone picks you out and says, ‘Yes, you can do this’ it’s big. This experience altered the course of my life. I felt decapitated in a way, and then spent the last two years putting myself together again.”
In the movie, Arlen has many adversaries. One of them is a cult-leader called The Dream (Reeves). But he’s sweet and seductive, offering Arlen a place to live and enjoy her miserable existence in a haze of hallucinogenic drugs. The only catch is: she’s got to become one of his captive harem, and bear his baby. Arlen resists his charms, but it seems Waterhouse is on Team Reeves. “Keanu is really kind. He is incredibly super-kind. Super hardworking and generous and giving. He’s just lovely. He’s kind of a sinister character, but so cuddly.”
Tough as nails Arlen is far from cuddly, but there is a touch of romance and maybe even a door cracked open for a sequel. So, would Waterhouse willing to do some more fighting in a Bad Batch round two? “My dad was a blackbelt and he taught me karate. I love getting physical, so yes. And I definitely want to work with Lily again.”
This dystopian love story is set in a Texas wasteland among a community of cannibals and stars Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Giovanni Ribisi, Yolonda Ross, Keanu Reeves, Jim Carrey, Jayda Fink, Cory Roberts, Louie Lopez, and Diego Luna.
The Bad Batch is playing now.
Synopsis:
Arlen (Waterhouse) is unceremoniously dumped in a Texas wasteland fenced off from civilized society. While trying to orient her unforgiving environment, she is captured by a savage band of cannibals and quickly realizes she’ll have to fight her way through her new reality. As Arlen adjusts to life in “the bad batch,” she discovers that being good or bad mostly depends on whom you’re standing next to.
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