Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on May 21, 2009, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
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In theaters or on disc, a key appeal of Lionsgate’s My Bloody Valentine remake was supposed to be its 3D gore, with blood and assorted body parts flying at the viewer. Yet when the movie first hit screens, one sequence immediately commanded attention for reasons unrelated to the splatter. It features young actress Betsy Rue, whose character Irene gets into an armed confrontation with her lover in a seedy motel parking lot, witnesses his murder and then is pursued at length by the pickax-wielding killer—all while stark naked.
What makes the extended setpiece so notable—and effective—is not so much the nudity per se, but the way Rue and director Patrick Lussier almost play against it. The actress seems completely un-self-conscious, to the point where her actions, not her body, become the point. That may be because, as she reveals, the script initially called for her to be covered up for most of the scene, and it was her idea to bare all.
“Originally, I was just going to be naked for the sex scene, and then as soon as I grabbed the gun, I was going to take a sheet off the bed and pull it around me, because their nudity quota or whatever had been met,” Rue says. “Once I left the motel room, I was supposed to have the sheet on me. But when we were filming, it just wasn’t working; I was like, ‘I don’t feel like I’d be worrying about this sheet right now.’ That was my idea; it felt more natural to me.”
While Rue was comfortable exposing herself to the cameras, the expected precautions were taken to make sure that during filming, her performance was a private one. “We had a closed set, and we were off on a little private highway,” she recalls. “There were security guys making sure that traffic was blocked every time we were rolling, and no cars were coming by. And every time we cut, I put a robe on.”
With no clothes to protect her and no way to place mats to protect Rue from the rough parking-lot surface, a planned fall during that part of the action was scrapped, though she notes, “On one take, I actually did fall and got some gravel in my knee, and I had to go back to makeup and have it covered. It was fine; I’ve done stunts before, so I was like, ‘Whatever.’ ” The most strenuous action she was called on to perform, she reveals, involved lifting a metal bed frame in one of the motel’s rooms to protect herself from the stalker. “It wasn’t light,” she says. “We actually went through a process of the stunt coordinator showing me how to lift it properly so I wouldn’t get injured.”
Rue, whose lengthy prior TV résumé encompasses everything from CSI to How I Met Your Mother, didn’t expect to confront all these physical challenges when she first auditioned for My Bloody Valentine; she read for the role of Megan, eventually played by Megan Boone. While the filmmakers didn’t find her right for that role, they asked her back to try out for Irene, and two weeks later she had the part. “I knew that there was nudity involved,” she says, “though obviously I didn’t know the magnitude of what it wound up being. So before they actually offered me the role, I had a sit-down with Patrick and we talked about it, since he wanted to make sure I was comfortable with what was going to happen, which I was. I knew going in what it would entail.”
What she didn’t know at first was that her motel bedmate would wind up being played by Valentine screenwriter Todd Farmer, who also shows off some skin before his onscreen demise. Lussier had read a number of actors for the role before deciding to turn it over to Farmer, and contacted Rue to assure she’d have no qualms about sharing the scenes with a nonprofessional actor. “He said, ‘I just want to let you know that he’s an awesome guy, and there’s not going to be any weirdness,’ ” she remembers. “It was funny, because Todd and I were on the same plane from LA to Pittsburgh [where the movie was shot]. Somebody sitting next to him asked, ‘What are you going to Pittsburgh for?’ and he said, ‘I’m filming a movie called My Bloody Valentine.’ I was sitting in front of him, and I turned around and said, ‘Wait a second, I’m going to do that movie, who are you playing?’ He said, ‘Frank,’ and I said, ‘Frank the trucker? I’m Irene!’ It was cool, because we got to switch seats and sit by each other, and we pretty much wrote that whole sex scene on the plane together.”
And of course, the final odd wrinkle added to the experience was the dimensional cinematography process, which required a bit of adjustment to the performances. “When they film in 3D, they can’t get quite as close to you,” Rue explains, “so they want your reactions and everything you do to be a little bit bigger. It’s almost like being on stage, for film.” One exception involved the moments where the terrified Irene hides under the bed as the killer hunts for her. “The camera was maybe a foot away from me, and Patrick talked me through it: ‘OK, now he’s coming in the door, now he’s going over to the closet.’ It was so strange acting to that with the camera literally right in front of me.”
It all paid off, however, in a sequence that received vociferous audience reaction in theaters across the country, and a number of favorable reviews singling out Rue’s performance. After first viewing the movie at a cast-and-crew screening in LA (“a really fun experience, though I was taken aback for a second—‘Holy shit, there I am and I’m buck-ass naked!’ ”), she attended a pair of public showings with co-star Jaime King. “The audiences laughed and screamed and were hooting and hollering,” she recalls. “One time, this guy was like, ‘You go, bitch!’ when I grabbed the gun, so it was pretty funny.
“I feel blessed,” she continues, “because for a brief moment, I was nervous that the only thing people would say about me was, ‘Oh, that stupid blonde girl just got the part because she was willing to run around naked.’ There are obviously people who do say that, but the majority of the reviews were really positive; they were like, ‘You forget about the nudity because she’s so believably scared.’ ”
Don’t look for her to repeat that combination on screen any time soon, though. Rue has since been offered a few fright flicks that required her to bare all, and turned them down. She’s more interested in roles that show off her performing prowess rather than her physical endowments, and “I don’t want to be labeled as the actress who does nudity in every film. I feel like sometimes in horror movies, they just put the naked girl in there to fill their quota of nakedness, and I’m not gonna do that.”
Yet her next genre appearance will be in a series that has built a rep for steaminess: She’ll be seen on the small screen in the second-season premiere of HBO’s sexy vampire show True Blood. “I’m a love interest for Jason,” the brother (played by Ryan Kwanten) of lead heroine Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), Rue reveals. “That show is amazing, and I’m thrilled to have gotten that part. It’s a fun little role; I play a trashy Southern girl who’s just out to get some in the bar.” And while she has only done that one installment so far, it doesn’t mean her character comes to a sticky end. “There is room for me to come back,” she smiles. “They did that on purpose.”
