‘The Wrath of Becky’ Star Lulu Wilson On Intense Training For The New Sequel
Mary Beth McAndrews
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Becky is back and meaner than ever. In 2020, we saw Lulu Wilson kick Nazi ass as the titular Becky. Now, she’s got a bigger arsenal and an even bigger grudge in the sequel The Wrath of Becky. With her adorable pooch Diego, the two are ready to fight back against anyone who dares interrupt their peaceful new lives. And of course, a group of unsavory characters do just that.
In the second part of our interview from SXSW (read the first part here), Dread Central spoke with stars Wilson and Seann William Scott, as well as co-directors Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote about training for the film, required jumping jacks on set, and more.
DC: Lulu, I wanted to hear from you in terms of how physical you had to get playing Becky. I know there are stunt doubles, but did you get to do any of your own stunts?
Lulu Wilson: Yeah, it was a lot. Personally, I am a pretty athletic person. I box and I fence. My fencing coach, I worked with her prior to filming for a few weeks. I wanted to do as much as I could and I wanted it to be as realistic as possible. Because Becky has spent two years freaking training. She’s gonna be a little strong and she knows what she’s doing. And it’s gonna look like she knows what she’s doing. I wanted to achieve that because while I’m athletic, I’m also really awkward and I can’t touch my toes. <laugh> But I wanted it to be as realistic as possible. So I worked on that.
Then there’s the roll, which is the biggest deal of my whole entire existence. I roll into the stall when the gunshot goes off. That was a really big deal to me. The physicality was so important to me and it was really fun to get to do because I had never done a movie that was this physically demanding. Every single day, no matter what, I was gonna be doing something that required me to be [moving]. I ate so many breakfast sandwiches while filming The Wrath of Becky because I was spending so much energy. I ate three breakfast sandwiches every single day because I needed to be fueled to maximum capacity. Like I was going for it. And it was amazing. I had such a good time with The Wrath of Becky, but it was a lot. And it was just a lot of running.
Matt Angel: You also had to deal with me constantly yelling “jumping jacks! Faster! Faster”
LW: “Roll around in the dirt!”
MA: I would always do it with you, though.
Suzanne Coote: 50% of the time.
LW: So would the stunt doubles! They would do the jumping jacks with me.
SC: Everyone felt bad for you!
MA: Mary Beth, I liked to get really worked up before we’d call action with jumping jacks. It helped! So I’d be like, “10 more, 10 more”. And then I tried it with Seann once. I was like, “Sean, 10 jumping jacks, go.” And he was like, “Oh. No.” <laugh>
SC: Also, Seann was in these steel-toe boots!
DC: I was gonna say those boots!
Seann William Scott: Yeah. I don’t think it was the boots. I think it was just too lazy.
DC: Seann she was giving you an out! <all laugh>
MA: You should’ve seen me walking through that forest with Sean before shooting <laugh> It was like, “OK, and then step here and then stop here, and then watch this stick”
SWS: It was so sweet!
LW: Well that was a big deal. There were a lot of obstacles.
MA: The last thing I wanted to do was kill Seann William Scott.
SWS: Not the old guy!
LW: I’m disposable
SC: Never! We have nothing without you.
DC: My last question, it’s kind of serious, I apologize. In talking about neo-Nazis and insurrectionists, things that are unfortunately super prescient in our day and age, what was your approach to talking about these topics to make a movie that is obviously kind of a badass while also thinking about the state of the world?
MA: So J.D. Lifshitz, one of the producers, the day he called and said, “Would you be interested?”, his next sentence was, “We need a script in three weeks. So we had a 40-minute phone call where we just started throwing ideas out and he said, “What about incels?” So we started talking about that and then I started researching on message boards.
DC: I’m so sorry.
MA: What I’ll tell you is you can’t make a movie that entails the word fun with any of the stuff you read on those message boards. So the challenge was how do we satirically make this film with characters that you can kind of start at a human level and yet make a statement about what danger is out in the world.
SC: It’s a line that we were toeing the entire time.
MA: And I think the only way that we could pull it off was to create a world where you’re not saying Proud Boys, you’re saying Noble Men. You’re not flying the don’t tread on me flag, you’re flying a Noble Men flag, but it still has a snake on it. Mainly cause you’re not saying the word Trump or Gretchen Whitmer or any of these things.
Instead of a governor, it’s a senator. You’re constantly just kind of finding the closest satirical parallels you can without using real life. We know exactly what we’re saying because it is real, but without stepping into it.
At the same time I kind of have this fantasy of some of the biggest fans of The Wrath of Becky will be those people because maybe they won’t even connect the dots since they’re so out there. But based on the YouTube comments from the teaser that came out yesterday, that’s not gonna happen. They’re very aware of what the film’s about. I think there were people who were like, “No! Woke!”
SC: We knew we were gonna piss some people off because we went Noble Men. They’re not that dumb.
MA: I think the goal was creating a world outside of this world that was satirical and obvious without ever having to step into this.
SC: It’s a fantasy. I wish Becky was real, you know, I just do. That would be really great for me personally.
DC: I agree.
SC: I think society as a whole needs a Becky lamp.
LW: Like a bat signal.
SC: A bat signal, but for Becky.
LW: But instead of a bat, it’s a fox.
The Wrath of Becky comes to theaters on May 26, 2023.
Categorized:Interviews
