Heretic Star Sophie Thatcher on Growing Up Mormon, Having a Twin, and Making Music
Sophie Thatcher thought her days as a Mormon were a distant memory after she left the church at age 12. But her new role as a young Mormon missionary in the upcoming A24 horror film Heretic gave her a chance to reconnect with her childhood self.
Thatcher plays Sister Barnes and Chloe East as Sister Paxton. The two young Mormon missionaries go door-to-door to spread the word about their religion — but end up trapped in the home of Hugh Grant’s cunning and psychopathic Mr. Reed. They lean on their faith to try to escape.
“I was very surprised when I got the role, because I'm so far removed from being Mormon now, and I feel like I've done a lot of work on myself to make myself seem like I'm not Mormon, or just different from that,” Thatcher tells MovieMaker.
Thatcher, who grew up in Chicago, left the religion on good terms.
“I didn't have a negative experience. It just did not resonate,” she says. “I think being exposed to working in theater and the outside world, it felt like it didn't connect, and I wasn't engaged in the church.
“It was because I was doing eight shows a week, so I couldn't go on Sundays. It was as simple as that. And it wasn't like I forcefully tried to find a way out. It was just because I was working all the time,” she adds. “My older siblings had left the church too, so I had their influence in my ears. It was pretty natural. It wasn't dramatic.”
Heretic brought up a lot of old feelings she drew on to make her performance more authentic.
“I definitely felt a little bit like a misfit at church… it feels pretty far removed from who I am,” she says. “My immediate family isn't still Mormon, but all of my outside family, they're all still Mormon.”
She appreciates writer-director duo Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ efforts to depict the faith accurately.
“The writers are very close to Mormons. They do an amazing job of capturing them and not being offensive and not being a caricature, because I think it could have been so on the nose,” she says.
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More About Heretic Star Sophie Thatcher
The 23-year-old is perhaps best known for Showtime’s Yellowjackets, in which she plays Natalie Scatorccio, part of a soccer team whose plane crashes in the wilderness. She was also in the 2023 Stephen King horror movie The Boogeyman, written by Heretic’s Beck and Woods, and appeared in Ti West’s horror MaXXXine earlier this year.
Thatcher started in Chicago’s theater scene, working her way up to starring in a production of The Diary of Anne Frank at age 14. But she’s also a musician, having just released her debut EP, Pivot & Scrape.
“My mom's a pianist and plays for the church choir — still does. So I grew up with a lot of music,” she says.
“When I was very, very young, I was always putting on shows,” she adds. “I'm a twin sister, and I feel like that immediately gave me a partner to engage with who I could joke with and be artistic with. I think that separated me from other kids and made me feel a little, to some extent, outcast. I felt like I didn't need friends because I had my twin… so I think that let me to dive deeper into anything artistic.”
She says she prefers music to acting: “It feels like my release right now, which is interesting, to make it into an actual thing and to have it be public because for so long, it just felt like a very personal, private journaling thing.”
She makes a point not to put too much pressure on herself as an artist.
“I don't know what's going to happen with it, and I think right now, I'm just trying to set no expectations,” she says.
Heretic is now playing in theaters.
Main Image: Sophie Thatcher. Photo by Emma Thatcher.