Melissa Barrera and Tommy Dewey star in Your Monster, a ridiculously fun horror romantic comedy movie. Barrera and Dewey talked about their characters, one an aspiring musical actress and the other a literal monster, plus their romance in the film. Distributed by Vertical, the film is now playing in theaters.
“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,” says the synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Melissa. I really enjoyed this film, and then the last act just took it into overdrive for me. I love all the musical elements. How was it doing those performance scenes? I heard more we’re even shot than what we see in the film. I gotta see the extra ones now because it’s phenomenal.
Melissa Barrera: Yeah. We shot like four whole numbers, and they didn’t end up being in the movie. They were cut for time. There was just a little montage. But I hope that in the Blu-ray or DVD, you get the extra features and all the performances.
Tommy Dewey: Yeah, this movie has a B-side.
Barrera: It was so fun. I’m a musical theater girly. I love theater. I come from theater. It’s always been a dream of mine. So to be able to do that in a movie, like an actual rehearsal process, and then the whole backstage and everything about it felt very much like home to me. Then getting to sing like original music for a musical that’s part of this universe was so fun. Not only that, it plays such an important part in the arc of the character and the ending of the movie being so surprising was brilliant on the part of Caroline Lindy, who wrote and directed.
Tommy, your role is like inherently goofy and I love that you’re playing this monster, but how is it finding the balance? Because there are definitely times when you lean into the absurdity, but you did such a great job of really bringing a lot of human character to him as well.
Dewey: Oh, thanks. Well, first of all, I’m a goofball. I like to goof around. So that part comes naturally. There’s plenty of that on the cutting room floor. So we had that in spades. I got a real kick out of trying to make her laugh and engage in that way. But the beautiful challenge of this movie is that it required so much from the actor’s toolkit. I mean, even Monster gets emotional by the end of the movie.
I think the balance is what you said it was. That mask and that hair and all that brilliant monster design all the way down to the costume and everything else does all the monster work. Then it’s just up to me to be human, to be real, and experience real emotion in relation to what she’s going through emotionally. Like, in terms of balance, that’s really the director’s job, and Caroline just crushes it. This movie is her. She is this movie. We had full faith that she was gonna get it right so we could just try stuff, and she’d pick the right things.
Melissa, was there an adjustment period of acting right next to this guy in this monster makeup? I feel like that could be weird.
Barrera: It wasn’t at all. From the moment I saw him, I was like, “Oh, cool. He’s hot. I’m into it.” I’ve said this before, but I was like one of the girls after seeing Beauty and the Beast that when he turned into a human at the end I was like, “Oh, no. Turn back.” So, I feel like there’s a lot of us out there. I feel like there’s gonna be a lot of girls that are hot for Monster.
I think that was the point because when we were discussing the design of the Monster, and Caroline was very open with that. She would ask me for ideas, and I thought that the monster was gonna be scary looking. Like, I thought that he was gonna be more uglier and more horror. So I was sending her all these crazy ideas, and then she’s like, “Hmm, I think I actually kind of want him to be hot.” I was like, “Okay, cool,” and that’s how we ended up with this monster. So it wasn’t hard for me.
Also, Tommy is such a good actor, and he’s so funny. It just felt like I was acting with him. It wasn’t weird to me.
He definitely brings a charm to it. Tommy, there’s a makeout scene in this. How weird is that doing that with the mask and everything and all the makeup on your face?
Dewey: Well, back to your last question. It’s definitely worse for her than it is for me. Melissa did not flinch. I mean, she really was all in, and the Laura character is all in on Monster from the word “go.” It was incredible. We had a lot of fun shooting that scene. Because it represents this movie so well. It signals to the audience [that] this movie is gonna go places, and you better be along for the ride.
So I loved it when that scene appeared in the script. It wasn’t in the early drafts. The only issue was that beard comes off. Yeah. It’s not like your beautiful beard. Mine is applied every day, and then it’s all over the room and all over Melissa.
Barrera: We would separate, and I would have his hair on my face. The resets were kind of a thing.
Dewey: The mouth starts to kind of peel away, and the mouth had to be reset. But it was part of the unique thrill of making this movie. You get to have a love scene as a monster. I mean, come on.