{"id":793579,"date":"2026-05-13T14:06:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T14:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/793579\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T14:06:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T14:06:16","slug":"exclusive-maika-monroe-takes-on-serial-killer-in-victorian-psycho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/793579\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Maika Monroe Takes on Serial Killer in \u2018Victorian Psycho\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMaika Monroe<\/a> may have starred in multiple defining horror films of the last 10-plus years, from her breakout in\u00a0It Follows\u00a0to the recent box-office smash\u00a0Longlegs, but no amount of scream-queen credits could prepare her for the gory terror of\u00a0Victorian Psycho.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt terrified me. I knew that it would be the hardest role that I have ever done \u2014 and so incredibly different from anything I\u2019ve ever done,\u201d the Santa Barbara native says. \u201cThere\u2019s always a little part of me in roles that I do, something that I can ground it with or connect it with within my own personal life \u2014 but this role was really a departure from that. It was working from the ground up, creating this character where I couldn\u2019t rely on my own self. It really, in the most magical way, took a toll on me. I felt it every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSet in 1858 and adapted by Virginia Feito from her own novel,\u00a0Victorian Psycho\u00a0stars Monroe as Winifred Notty, an idiosyncratic young woman who arrives at the wealthy Pounds family\u2019s old gothic manor, claiming to be the house\u2019s new governess. She\u2019s eager to please, but only reluctantly welcomed in by the matriarch and patriarch (Ruth Wilson<\/a> and Jason Isaacs<\/a>), and is tasked with watching over and teaching their children. She bonds with a fellow employee of the house, the kindly Ms. Lamb (Thomasin McKenzie<\/a>), and expresses a plucky determination to fit in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s fascinating to see an outsider who desperately wants to be an insider, and it\u2019s simply impossible,\u201d says director Zachary Wigon (Sanctuary<\/a>). \u201cIt\u2019s a very, very deep paradox. She will never belong \u2014 and she will never stop wanting to belong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThose irreconcilable truths are but one reason why things start going so very wrong inside the Pounds household. People go missing; blood starts littering the garden, the hallway, the kitchen. This isn\u2019t just any oddball employee slowly losing her grip on her job. \u201cI remember reading the manuscript of the novel, and it\u2019s like, \u2018What is this woman going to do?\u2019\u201d Wigon says. \u201cThere was an interesting visual language to be had in depicting this woman\u2019s losing of her grip\u2026. What was animating about it from an aesthetic perspective was to do something set in 1858, but with a contemporary style.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe project came about organically for Wigon, who\u2019d been collaborating with Feito on an unrelated script before she informed him of her then-impending next book. They pivoted to fast-track a screen take on\u00a0Victorian Psycho\u00a0and swiftly sold the rights to A24<\/a>, with Margaret Qualley attached to star. That setup gradually fell apart. \u201cIt changed distributors, it comes with the territory of the volatile nature of independent filmmaking,\u201d Wigon says when asked about how the project evolved from the A24 version to a new package headlined by Monroe and distributed by Bleecker Street<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re enormously pleased with all the support that Bleecker has given me to bring the film into the world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat drew him to Monroe, who\u2019s having a big 2026 as she comes off of leading the commercial success\u00a0Reminders of Him? \u201cShe has this very, very intense internal quality, where you can tell that the gears are whirring and there\u2019s a lot going on in the character\u2019s head,\u201d Wigon says. \u201cI thought it would be perfect for a serial killer because we\u2019re always wondering what\u2019s going on in their head \u2014 that\u2019s why this whole industry of nonfiction TV shows and whatnot exists about trying to understand the phenomenon.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTo prepare for portraying a 19th-century serial killer, Monroe went through extensive rehearsals, zooming every week with Wigon to nail down the specific blocking. She needed to nail down the English accent, adjust her mannerisms and body movements. She suggested painfully visible prosthetic teeth. One memorable sequence from the film required Monroe to be covered in fake blood in the cold for an elaborate technocrane shot, at 4:30 in the morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn short, Monroe needed to be all in. \u201cI had every scene memorized because you\u2019re running the script so many times \u2014 it was so ingrained in my head, and I could still recite probably for years to come,\u201d Monroe says. \u201cThis character might be the character that I miss the most.\u201d It helped that each of her principal costars kept her off balance.<\/p>\n

\n\tIsaacs\u2019 slithery Mr. Pounds shows a discomfiting interest in Winifred. \u201cYour eyes are just absolutely glued to him, and he\u2019s totally unpredictable, and his choices are always unusual as his wife,\u201d Wigon says of the White Lotus alum. Wilson, meanwhile, plays Isaacs\u2019 wife as a kind of desperate shit-stirrer. \u201cSome of my favorite scenes that I\u2019ve ever filmed in my entire career were with Ruth,\u201d Monroe says. \u201cSometimes in the scenes, I would just be watching her blown away by what she was doing \u2014 and I find her role actually incredibly challenging.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThen there\u2019s the friendship with Ms. Lamb, a rare instance of seeing Winifred and another person able to enjoy each other\u2019s company. \u201cMost times with people, they look at her with a bit of disgust and don\u2019t understand her,\u201d Monroe says. \u201cAnd for the first time, she feels this bit of connection with a person.\u201d In these interactions, Winifred\u2019s characterization gets more complicated \u2014 she\u2019s an unhinged murderer, yes, but she\u2019s after something relatably human. The tension then becomes: What happens if she gets what she is searching for, and what if she doesn\u2019t?<\/p>\n

\n\tThe movie\u2019s arch-horror-comic tone came to Wigon only after the initial script stages. \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit more like engineering in the beginning,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s more about the structural math of, \u2018How are we going to fit this narrative and how are these scenes going to be arranged?\u2019 \u201c That led to a one-word descriptor that Monroe says defines his overall approach to the show: \u201cDemented.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I talked to people about it in the beginning, I said, \u2018This is a kind of manic madness,\u2019\u201d Wigon says. The presence of Monroe helped matters: \u201cEvery single time that we got into a setup, it was like Maika had the character in a vice grip. She never really left. You were always right there. It was like a magnet. It was just amazing to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe postproduction aspect, Wigon adds, was straightforward \u2014 if only because he\u2019d laid out the movie so exactingly before shooting even began. He had access to the castle where they shot for prep. \u201cWe had almost everything in the shot list pre-visualized before we started shooting, so in a situation like that, there\u2019s almost zero coverage,\u201d he says. \u201cYou don\u2019t really shoot coverage in these situations because you want to max out what you can get stylistically. If you have a more sophisticated or complicated visual idea that\u2019s going to come at the cost of coverage, that\u2019s fine because you\u2019ve visualized it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor her part, Monroe saw that all come together in the final edit. \u201cZach had such specific visuals and certain shots, and you\u2019re filming it like, \u2018That looks cool, hope that works out, seems cool\u2019 \u2014 and then seeing it all put together, it really blew me away,\u201d she says. \u201cAs with most actors, it\u2019s always a bit odd watching yourself, but what was really nice about this project is that it was very different for me \u2014 that little part of me was able to take myself out of it.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tIndeed, it\u2019s not just the fake teeth \u2014 Monroe may have scared you before on screen, but never quite like this.<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tVictorian Psycho\u00a0premieres May 21 at the\u00a0Cannes Film Festival<\/a>. Stay tuned for more\u00a0Cannes 2026<\/a>\u00a0first looks and exclusives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maika Monroe may have starred in multiple defining horror films of the last 10-plus years, from her breakout…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":793580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[3028,233610,297566,49625,185,171,1801,598,101919,175134,50534,323868,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-793579","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-a24","9":"tag-bleecker-street","10":"tag-cannes-2026","11":"tag-cannes-film-festival","12":"tag-celebrities","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-international","15":"tag-jason-isaacs","16":"tag-maika-monroe","17":"tag-ruth-wilson","18":"tag-sanctuary","19":"tag-thomasin-mckenzie","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116567657576480336","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}