The Wrath of Becky, the follow-up to 2020’s drive-in theater darling Becky, hits theaters May 26, and as of right now it’s currently sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. If you haven’t seen Becky, get on it – you will definitely want to see The Wrath of Becky in theaters. Where else are you gonna get to watch Lulu Wilson covered in blood, violently killing a bunch of fascist pigs?
Previously on FANGORIA, we shared a snippet of this interview after its SXSW premiere, and now we are diving into the whole thing with Lulu Wilson (Becky hereself) and the writer/directors of the movie, Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote.
Here’s what they had to say…
NOTE: This interview contains mild spoilers for The Wrath of Becky.
FANGORIA: When I realized this was a sequel to Becky, I decided to re-watch the original the day of the premiere and make it a nice little double feature. The Wrath of Becky is super fun and a lot more comedic, and I can’t wait for people to see it. How was it for you to come back and play the character?
Lulu Wilson: It was amazing. It was the opportunity that I was itching for, and I’m obviously very, very happy and excited [to have] this opportunity again, and for people to see it. But it was really nice and refreshing coming back into this character and knowing that I was going to be able to make it a little bit more of my own. I mean, Becky’s already such a strong character, standing up by herself, but I was able to inject a little bit more of my personality now that she’s older and she’s been through it. Man, she’s been through the wringer. So, I wanted to play with what I thought was happening within those two years and how that would impact her, how she’s growing up and developing as a human being and the way she processes things, views things, and sees things. But now she’s got this relationship with Elena. She’s got some sort of family that she’s found for herself. And she’s still got Pac. No, not Pac – Diego.
Suzanne Coote: Diego. Pac is the real name of the actor [dog].
Lulu Wilson: Yes, Pac is the real dog. She’s still got that to protect, and she’s been training this whole time. I presume it’s been the whole two years ever since what happened originally, just so it won’t happen again. And if it does, she’s ready.
Suzanne Coote: That’s right.
Was there always a sequel in mind when making the first Becky?
Lulu: Well, I was always like, we should do a sequel. But a lot of it was joking. So now it’s happening. Well, it did happen.
What inspired the whole story of the sequel and what social commentary were you trying to touch on?
Matt Angel: It’s definitely a satire in our minds. We say, often, we wish it were a little more satirical than it is. We watch Becky and you go, “Okay, what feels like a natural progression?” You have neo-Nazis with swastika tattoos who have just broken out of prison. And the first one, what if we go a little darker, a little more modern with it? Well, that’s in our headlines every single day for many years now. And so it really kind of spilled out of us. Within, I think, 40 minutes, we knew what the movie was about. The word incel was thrown out. Unfortunately, we spent some time on message boards, and realized how we could not make them anything like these people really talk, but we could do a satirical version of reality.
Suzanne: The dialogue in the movie is about 20% of what we saw on the message boards.
Matt: 20! Oh my God.
Suzanne: Honestly, at a certain point, Matt was like, “I have to stop for my mental health.” And it’s, at this point, just hurting the script. It’s very disgusting.
Matt: It’s too dark. But it was very much ripped from the headlines and it felt like a natural progression from the first film.
What kind of head space did you have to get in to come back to the role, and was it easier after doing the first one?
Lulu: I don’t know about easier, just because it was very physically demanding and other aspects. But I’d say that I just had more fun with it. And I always like to film really crazy scenes. Like the Twig death [scene]. I put on my headphones and just listen to some crazy shit, and then, I don’t know, I just go. I mean, I’m a teenage girl. I’m 17. I hate a lot of things, and I have a lot of anger for a good reason, and I think I just use that. And it’s not something that I really even have to tap into. It’s available. It’s a very natural, available resource for me. I just use that, and I feel like I have a lot to unleash.
Is there any specific song that you listen to?
Lulu: Yes, I have my playlist, “Murdering Nazis ‘22.”
Suzanne: It’s actually a good playlist.
Lulu: Slothrust is a great band. “Vunderbar,” “Mother Mother.”
Matt: “Mother Mother,” I remember when you sent that one.
Lulu: Yes. “Free Stress Test” by Professor Murder was a song that I listened to a lot. “Limestone,” which is in Russian.
Suzanne: She’s so cool.
Lulu: “Posed to Death” by The Faint is an amazing song. “Trunk Fulla Amps,” where the first lyric is like, “trunk fulla amps, motherfucker.” It’s so good.
Matt: Was that a pump-up song?
Lulu: Well, yes. Listen. It’s so Becky. I make a playlist for every single movie I do because music is important. If I’m crying, or if I’m angry, or if I’m any sort of really strong emotion, I do like to listen to a song beforehand. But that’s my own. I’m kind of low maintenance. And, physically, [it was] a lot more, just because I did not want to look stupid, because I’m awkward in my body. I just don’t know what to do with it, especially if I’m supposed to look like I know what to do.
So, I worked with my fencing coach and we just picked [it] up. I have so many videos on my phone of me rolling around on the ground of my fencing studio because I couldn’t do any of it. It was really helpful and I learned and I was able to do all of it. But I wanted to be able to actually do all of it without looking stupid, without hurting myself. Well, I hurt myself a little bit, but nothing bad.
Suzanne: She’s a director’s dream because she’s working out. We’re in prep and she’s in prep.
Did you do most of the stunts yourself?
Lulu: I just couldn’t climb the rope and I did not do the flip. But I jumped off a tall thing! I was like, “I’m going to learn how to do this. Where should I go in Los Angeles?” I was going to take parkour classes after I started filming Becky, but I was too tired. I literally didn’t do anything for two months.
You mentioned you had to watch movies for the previous one. What movies did you have to watch for Wrath?
Lulu: Did you make me watch anything?
Suzanne: We told you basically everything Quentin Tarantino.
Matt: Everything Tarantino. That was a big one. Kill Bill.
Suzanne: Probably things like Scott Pilgrim.
Lulu: Yes, stuff like that. Some I’ve already seen, but lots of re-watching, like refreshing.
Matt: I don’t remember every film we told you to watch, but it was a lot of kick ass. All Tarantino.
Jason: I finished Wrath and I was like, “Oh, this is kid John Wick.”
Lulu: Yes!
Suzanne: But without a dead dog.
Jason: I would be very upset.
Suzanne: That was my rule.
Lulu: That was my boundary. I said, “We need the dog back.”
How was it working with this new cast of villains?
Lulu: Oh my God! It was amazing. It was really exciting, too. On the first day, everyone was on set because it was just me for a while. It was me and it was also Elena (Denise Burse). It was really so fun to have them on set. It was hard at first because we had to figure out how we were going to do this thing because it’s so many bodies, just blocking-wise. It was hard just having everyone together. But it was really amazing. The first day everyone was together, I could feel an energy. And it was the first night that … It was TJ and Anthony who came on the overnight when we were filming the whole sequence of Elena’s death and the break-in and all of that. I was just pumped at night because I knew I was going to be working from 5:00 PM to 8:00 in the morning. So I was ready to do that.
Matt: That was your first full night, too, right?
Lulu: Yes. My mom slept the whole entire time and I did not. I ate a lot of candy. It was fine.
Suzanne: Same.
Lulu: I just crashed when I got home.
Matt: You were so delirious at 7:00 AM.
Suzanne: We had a really good shoot. What I’ve been saying, because it’s true, is a lot of this felt like we were shooting a play, because we had a limited budget, and the dog, and a younger actress, and squibs, and slow-mo, and we wanted to up the ante a bit, cinematically, in the second one. There was a lot of handheld in the first one. We were very specific when we went handheld in this one. Something like slow mo takes time with the camera, and we had one and with the squib.
In Becky, there are some very brutal kills and then Wrath does not disappoint. Do you enjoy performing them?
Lulu: Oh my God, yes. Of course. I mean, how could I say no to that? The day I got to be covered in blood was one of the greatest days of my existence on this earth. I got some blood in Becky, but I wanted to be drenched in blood like Carrie. I wanted it. I was just so excited. Also, I got to just scream and chop up Twig (Courtney Gains). I wanted other people to see me scream. I just wanted to do this thing. And I did.
Suzanne: Yes, she did.
Lulu: And then I did. But no, it was so funny. I just had people standing there throwing blood on me. Buckets and buckets and spray bottles and squirty tubes, like ketchup. It was great. It was fantastic. It was pure bliss. How could you ask for anything more? And then on day five, I was like, okay, maybe less blood. Everything was sticky, but I lived.
Do you know how many gallons of blood were used?
Matt: A lot of gallons. Many gallons. We should ask. We don’t know, but we know many gallons.
Lulu: Yes, a lot.
How many of the gore shots were practical?
Matt: All but one.
Suzanne: Well, we tried to make the head exposure.
Matt: We tried, but we ended up doing it in post.
Lulu: Well, we had a ginormous dude.
Suzanne: Yes, the body was real. The head explosion was a combination of VFX and practical.
Matt: All but that one, everything else was practical.
Suzanne: Which was really important to us.
You already mentioned that you love getting bloody. Do you have a favorite kill without giving anything away?
Lulu: Yes. Okay. Well, here’s the thing. I really love the third kill because, as I talked about it, I’m very passionate. But, also, the very last kill at the very end of the movie. I’m not going to say anything about it, but it’s amazing. And it was added in, he wrote it in the bathroom.
Matt: I was not in the bathroom.
Lulu: You were technically in the–
Matt: I was outside the bathroom.
Matt: As far as a death scene. For me, it’s Twig. It was very, very fun.
Are we going to get a part three and make it a trilogy?
Suzanne: We hope so. We have lots of ideas.
Lulu: Here’s to hoping.
Matt: Well, we have a lot of fun ideas, too. Hopefully, we stepped things up in [the sequel], and we have a lot of fun ideas to step three up from two. It’s a great franchise to kind of bend the genre every time you add an element.
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The Wrath of Becky is in theaters this Friday, May 26th.
