Even though love stories are often more grounded than bombastic cinema, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still treacherous villains, and Your Monster is no different. While Melissa Barrera and Tommy Dewey play the lead roles in the project, actors Edmund Donovan and Kayla Foster also star in the project and play key roles in our protagonist’s narrative, which forced them to endure some pretty intense on-screen dynamics. Making the feat all the more impressive is that there’s an actual monster in the experience, yet that monster was nothing compared to the wrath of our protagonist. Foster played double duty on the project, as she also served as a producer with writer-director Caroline Lindy. Your Monster is currently playing in theaters.
As far as how he endured a vicious tongue-lashing from Barrera’s character, Donovan detailed to ComicBook, “Man, I’m not going to lie, that was rough. And everyone — Kayla, you were very sensitive to the fact that I had to be this horrible villain, [this] hated guy the whole time. Everyone, on the day, was very sympathetic. And she was making up a lot of that stuff, she was just improvising, so I didn’t even know it was coming, man.”
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Foster added, “And Edmund is so sensitive and sweet and wonderful. So he was really taking it in, really listening to her. And so Caroline and I were checking on him constantly.”
Your Monster tells the story of the soft-spoken actor Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera), who is dumped by her longtime boyfriend (Edmund Donovan) while recovering from surgery and retreats to her childhood home to recover. With her future looking bleak, insult is added to injury when Laura discovers her ex is staging a musical that she helped him develop. But out of these gut-wrenching life changes emerges a monster (Tommy Dewey) with whom she finds a connection, encouraging Laura to follow her dreams, open her heart, and fall in love with her inner rage.
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While maybe not as overtly harmful to Barrera’s Laura, Foster’s Mazie still plays an important role in having a negative impact on Laura’s mental state.
“I think there’s something about feeling like you have support and that it’s there and it keeps falling away and betraying you. There’s something really painful about that,” the actor admitted. “It’s one thing to feel like you have nothing and no one, and you know how to approach that. But I think Mazie adds to Laura’s pain through the beginning of the story, because she keeps saying, ‘I’m your ride or die, I’ve got you. I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this.’ And she keeps just bailing on her, which I think is almost more painful than her not being there.”
Your Monster understandably has plenty of metaphors and allegories, as the actors expressed the film resolves itself by addressing how things aren’t always black-and-white divides between good and evil.
“I had to advocate for him in playing him, but I don’t back him. I don’t agree with what he does,” Donovan explained of his character’s actions. “He is definitely, objectively the bad guy. I don’t think that it’s all that hard to see. So I do think he deserves something.”
Foster noted, “By the way, the story, while it’s a redemption story, it’s also a warning story of not having a relationship with your monster. If you don’t create a relationship with your monster and it’s too late, it can spin out of control. So I think it’s two-sided.”
Your Monster is now playing in theaters.
