‘Longlegs’ Star Alicia Witt Breaks Down Her Haunting Character and What You Didn’t See
[This story contains spoilers for Longlegs.]
Nobody has had a career quite like Alicia Witt. From avenging House Atreides at age eight in David Lynch’s Dune to her standout role as Ruth Harker in Osgood “Oz” Perkins’ Longlegs, Witt has been a prolific performer across film and television for four decades, all while balancing an accomplished music career at the very same time.
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Longlegs came Witt’s way roughly a year after she suffered the tragic dual loss of her parents in December 2021. That was the same year in which she also battled, and eventually overcame, a cancer diagnosis. So, with that unimaginable context in mind, a number of actors, understandably, wouldn’t have entertained the idea of playing a single mother who wipes out entire families in order to satisfy the devil and protect their own daughter in the process. But, oddly enough, Witt found the entire experience to be cathartic, having learned long ago how to protect herself from dark material.
She also connected with Perkins as of their first Zoom call, and she believes that their shared trauma of losing loved ones in a highly publicized fashion has made them kindred spirits in a way. (Perkins lost his father, Anthony Perkins, in 1992 due to AIDs-related causes. His mother, Berry Berenson, was also a 9/11 victim on American Airlines Flight 11.)
“The fact that Oz and I both have the shared experience of having lost both of our parents in a grotesque and publicly known way, I am certain I won’t ever meet another person who’s got that experience,” Witt tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. It’s brutal and cruel, and it just robs you of the normal way in which a person would mourn such a thing. So that was a commonality between us, but [Longlegs] was such a cathartic experience overall.”
Surprisingly, Witt’s most challenging day on Longlegs was not the climactic birthday party scene where her FBI agent daughter, Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), made the impossible choice of ending her mother’s life. Instead, it was a moment that hit the cutting room floor. When Lee realizes that her mother, Ruth, is Longlegs’ (Nicolas Cage) accomplice, she returns home to confront her, and that’s when she witnesses Ruth murder her accompanying FBI colleague. With her weapon drawn, Lee then makes her way to the backyard where Ruth shoots Lee’s own personalized doll that Longlegs had infused with Satanic energy two decades prior. The blast seems to concurrently release a black energy from Lee, causing her to pass out in response. She then wakes up in Longlegs’ basement quarters inside her childhood home, while Ruth has gone to finish two decades’-worth of devil’s business at Ruby Carter’s birthday party.
In the original version of the scene that was scripted and shot, it sounds like the shotgun-shattered doll was not the cause of Lee falling unconscious. Instead, Witt, who has chosen to not see the film, alludes to an “embrace” that may have resulted in Ruth’s use of a hypodermic needle that knocked Lee out. The needles were established earlier in the film when Lee encounters her mother’s “bits box,” which contained Lee’s childhood hair, fingernails and teeth. So, to speculate on why Perkins cut Ruth’s embrace and drugging of Lee, he may have wanted to bolster the connection between Longlegs’ Satanic dolls and the stranglehold they have on their intended recipient. Thus, when Ruth discharged her shotgun on Lee’s doll, it effectively severed the controlling bond it’s had on Lee since age nine.
“The most intense day of filming for me was the scene with Maika and the hypodermic needle. She makes the choice to harm the daughter that she has sacrificed everything for, but she did it because she knew it was the way to save her,” Witt says. “At that point, she did know best, and Lee wasn’t understanding the sacrifice or the necessity of what Ruth had done. So this was Ruth’s attempt to protect Lee and to allow herself to finish the job [at the Carter birthday party] so Lee would be free [of the greater obligation].”
One would think that Ruth Harker’s unraveling began when Longlegs showed up on her doorstep in the early ‘70s. After all, she went from a shorter, well-maintained hairdo to long straight hair that she likely hasn’t taken care of all that much, if ever, since their fateful encounter. That choice also makes sense for someone who went from a neat and tidy home to one of a hoarder, but Witt actually believes that Ruth was already on the verge of a mental illness.
“I could tell right away that she had some trauma before meeting Longlegs, and that was a lot of what I journaled on and worked on prior to filming the movie,” Witt shares. “Oz was completely in agreement with that, and that was also what he felt from her. I believe she would have probably experienced some debilitating mental illness one way or the other, anyhow, but obviously not to the extent that happened.”
When child actors deliver a memorable performance like Witt did in Dune (1984), it’s very rare — and disappointingly so — that a director will rehire them during adulthood. However, Witt is one of the few exceptions, as Lynch brought her back for 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return, reprising her role of Gersten Hayward from Twin Peaks’ season two premiere in 1990. This reunion turned out to be the very work that led Perkins to consider Witt for Ruth Harker.
“That [Twin Peaks: The Return] scene with Caleb Landry Jones under the tree was the moment that Oz saw something in me, and it led him to think that I could be his Ruth,” Witt says. “And [Perkins] handed me the greatest gift, the greatest honor and one of the greatest collaborations I’ve ever been blessed to have. So it all comes back to David Lynch.”
Below, during a recent spoiler conversation with THR, Witt also recalls her first time meeting Nicolas “Nick” Cage in the ‘90s, before detailing how generous he was to her on the set of Longlegs.
Well, to be honest, I was unaware of everything you’ve been through the last few years until after I watched Longlegs, and I’m so sorry, first and foremost. That said, I also couldn’t believe that you were willing to go to this place just a year later, production-wise. So, what compelled you to take on such sinister material after, presumably, the darkest stretch of your life?
When I read the script, there was something so viscerally connective for me about Ruth, and there was no question in my mind. There are three different versions of Ruth in this movie. It’s three characters in one, and she just felt like she was part of my cells. I knew who she was; I understood her. I knew how the words would come out, and it’s a really complex character to put it lightly. But something was telling me that I need to play this role, and it wasn’t just, “I like the role and it will challenge me as an actor.” It felt way deeper than that in a way that only a few roles have felt before.
I had a dream the night before I read the script. I knew that I had this script in my inbox, and I knew that I had a meeting scheduled with [Oz Perkins] to talk about it on Zoom. But I had this vivid dream that had to do with the scene where it all has been revealed. Lee has come to Ruth’s house and finds her in the yard with the effigy, and it had to do with the embrace and the needle. The needle wasn’t in my dream, but the embrace ended up being exactly the way that we filmed it. It was so eerie, and I didn’t know what I was seeing, but it just stayed with me after I woke up.
And then when I read the script and saw that scene towards the end, I debated whether to tell this stranger I was about to have a meeting with. I didn’t know if he was going to think I was being manipulative or crazy or both. But as I got to talk to Oz, I knew he would know that I was telling him the truth. The fact that Oz and I both have the shared experience of having lost both of our parents in a grotesque and publicly known way, I am certain I won’t ever meet another person who’s got that experience. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. It’s brutal and cruel, and it just robs you of the normal way in which a person would mourn such a thing. So that was a commonality between us, but it was such a cathartic experience overall.
We talked so much, and we developed who Ruth was over the six weeks we had between when he chose me and when I filmed my first scene on set. It allowed me to really dig into who I thought she was and who Oz envisioned her as, and it let us make sure that we knew what we were going for every step of the way. So by the time I got on set, it was so free, and we had this shorthand with each other. Often, he would just give me a look or a hand signal because we’d already discussed various ways that line could go or that scene could go. I gave him so many different versions, and it just felt like something was coming in through me and out of me. I didn’t think much about where she might be coming from; I just let her in. It was magic, just magic.
Ruth helped Longlegs obliterate entire families for two decades. So how did you initially process the revelation that your character literally made a deal with the devil to protect her daughter?
I had two reactions. The biggest one was that I understood completely, because the love between a mother and daughter is so complicated and so intense. It’s the most intense love that there is, and so I thought, “Of course, she would do that.” You would do anything to allow your daughter to grow up. I knew even before I got to that point, because she was in the beginning of the script. So I could tell right away that she had some trauma before meeting Longlegs, and that was a lot of what I journaled on and worked on prior to filming the movie. Oz was completely in agreement with that, and that was also what he felt from her. I believe she would have probably experienced some debilitating mental illness one way or the other, anyhow, but obviously not to the extent that happened. Wouldn’t you need to have some sort of madness intrinsically in you to go to these Herculean lengths to keep your daughter alive and to allow her to grow up and to make that deal with the devil? The upside, of course, is that Lee was allowed to live, and the downside is that it’s a never-ending cycle and she doesn’t know how to get out of it. All she knows is that if she doesn’t [uphold her deal], her daughter will die and she won’t let that happen.
What I also noticed and felt intrinsically about Ruth as she descends into madness and becomes more and more a part of this folie à deux with Longlegs is this twisted pride and a sinister glee that she starts to feel. I haven’t seen the movie. I’m not going to see it, specifically because of not wanting to see what my character looks like on the outside, but from friends who have seen it and in talking to people who have seen it, I know what is in it. So I loved filming that sequence where you see the different kills and the different homes and the progression of Ruth through the years. After the first one, she couldn’t believe what her hands just did, even though her hands didn’t do it. But she brought the doll, so she did. And she’s sick about it as anyone would be, but as time goes on, it starts to feed her. So I really understand that, and I have a lot of empathy for her.
In the end, Ruth delivers a Satanic doll to the Carter family, and Lee arrives too late to stop Agent Carter (Blair Underwood) from killing his wife. But Lee then kills him, as well as her mother, in hopes of protecting 9-year-old Ruby from the spell of her own Longlegs-crafted doll. Was that your heaviest day, both mentally and emotionally?
No, and it’s odd. I hesitate to use the word tough because I keep coming back to the catharsis of it all, which is why I’m not going to watch it. Oz has indicated to me that he may create a version that doesn’t have Ruth in it, so that I can watch the movie. I don’t want to see what it looks like on the outside because there was such a sense of catharsis. It was deeply eerie and intense, but, at this point, through many experiences of trial and error, I put a sort of force field around myself that protects me and allows me to slip in and out of the character. So I leave that behind on set, and I do not carry that home with me. It also allows me to go deeper, and since I’m free and I’m safe, I can go fully into the character. There’s no fear; it can’t hurt me. But this experience was totally out of body, and I didn’t know whose voice was coming out of me. Some of the time I had an idea who it might be, but it was out of my control at that point having done the work.
The most intense day of filming for me was the scene with Maika and the hypodermic needle. She makes the choice to harm the daughter that she has sacrificed everything for, but she did it because she knew it was the way to save her. At that point, she did know best, and Lee wasn’t understanding the sacrifice or the necessity of what Ruth had done. So this was Ruth’s attempt to protect Lee and to allow herself to finish the job [at the Carter birthday party] so Lee would be free [of the greater obligation]. There was all this fear that Ruth may have to harm Lee further in order to satisfy the devil, and I think Ruth’s madness at that point had gone that far. Her love was so intense, but her dedication to Longlegs and his work was wrapped up in that love for her daughter, so much so that she could harm her own daughter to keep doing the work. It’s almost like she treated Lee as two different people: the child and the FBI agent.
I’m surprised to hear the birthday party scene wasn’t the most difficult day. How would you describe it instead?
It wasn’t the most intense, but it was the most fulfilling — and the most thrilling experience I’ve had on a set so far. We took two days to film it, and my coverage was towards the end of the second day, so over the span of that time, Oz had seen all the variations of how I was playing with Ruth. He ended up giving me, I think, six different one- or two-word directives before each of my takes — each diametrically opposed from the last. I felt like he was shining a spotlight on me for the whole cast and crew to watch, putting me out on a tightrope and knowing what I was capable of after six weeks of working together. We went from rage and intense grief, to reverence for the proceedings, to out of it, to warning, to exhausted, if i remember correctly. In between each one, we would just reset and wipe tears away et cetera, and go right away again. When it was all over, there was a round of applause. Blair Underwood came over and shook my hand and said, “That was a masterclass.” I feel so emotional all over again just thinking about it, and no matter what I experience from this point forward, that will always be a highlight.
Maika Monroe didn’t actually meet Nicolas Cage until after they wrapped their final take together. Did you have a similar situation where you didn’t meet the real Nick until much later?
Yes, but I actually did meet the real Nick 30 years ago. I reminded him of this at the premiere and he, not to my surprise, did not remember because I was not at all known as an actor yet. I was 17, and I was dating a very good friend of his at the time, so we all went out for one of those epic ‘90s Hollywood nights. It was like six of us and it was a wonderful night. So I got to know Nick very well that night, as we all wound up back at his house to hang out and talk. So I met him that one time, but the most I spoke to him in this chapter of life was at the premiere. On the set of Longlegs. I only met him when he appeared as Longlegs, and I tried to not look at him very much until the cameras were rolling, because I had no idea just how horrifying he was going to look.
I had a mini sense of what he might look like because we’d filmed some stuff with a stunt double that was vaguely made up to look like what Longlegs was going to look like, but it really wasn’t that scary and his face wasn’t going to be on camera. But, holy shit, Nick’s physicality [as Longlegs] and the voice. I heard the voice for the first time when the cameras were rolling because, of course, he wasn’t talking like that in between takes. He wasn’t really talking much at all, but we’d all been told, “Nick’s going to stay in character. He doesn’t want to be out of character as he’s filming this.” So all of us expected that he was going to be staying in character like some actors we’ve heard of that only speak like their character. You also don’t make eye contact with them, you don’t call them by their name, all that stuff. But he didn’t go to that extreme. In between takes, you could ask him, “Do you want some water? Do you want your coat?” He was normal. So he was just staying focused and that was really cool.
And the other thing that was so notable about him was that, for a role as intense and as extreme as Longlegs, there was absolutely no difference in the intensity of his performance. When the cameras were pointed at him and when they were reversed onto me, it could have been the same performance. He gave me so much, and that’s a very vocally demanding thing to do, so I really appreciated that. It’s just the mark of the finest kind of actor, and that’s not always the way it’s done.
Whenever Lee called her mom and said, “Hi, Mom,” Ruth would ask if it was Lee, which frustrated Lee as her only child. Why do you think Ruth always had to clarify it was Lee?
That is something I experienced as a daughter, eerily. So I don’t know on a logical level why she did that, but I understood why she did it. As with so much of Ruth, I just got it, but I suppose if I were going to speculate, perhaps it was partly a sense of paranoia. Is there anyone else on the line? Is it really you? Is somebody pretending to be you? There’s just this mental, not-quite-rightness paranoia that goes along with that, and I think she may have also done that had Longlegs never come to visit them that day.
Ruth twice asks Lee if she still says her prayers, but I think she already knew that her daughter wasn’t keeping up with them. Was that original question her way of validating that her work for the devil was protecting her daughter, not prayer?
I viewed it like she was hoping she did say her prayers and that she was getting afraid she wasn’t saying them. She was worried that Longlegs was circling closer to her, so that was my view of it. That just made sense to me. Every time that line came out of me, Ruth hopes she is [saying her prayers], and it was a bit of a warning: “You should listen to me. I know what I’m talking about. You need to be saying your prayers because there’s bad stuff out there.” I felt like she was starting to suspect that Lee doesn’t say them and that she needs to say them, because she’s worried she’s going to collide with Longlegs. So she’s trying to stop that from happening, and Ruth is already too far gone. She doesn’t say her prayers anymore; she’s turned to the other side. I also wondered if Longlegs had told Ruth or if she just had a suspicion early on that Lee is getting closer to the truth, and that’s Ruth’s worst nightmare.
I’ve noticed a bunch of tweets, likely from younger viewers, who, in response to Longlegs, are just now discovering that you were Alia Atreides in David Lynch’s Dune. You then went on to work with David a few more times, and in the case of Twin Peaks: The Return, you’re one of the very few examples that I could find where a director reunited with one of their child actors during adulthood. Has David’s loyalty always impressed you?
Yeah, David is one of those people that I can’t even imagine the trajectory of my life had he not come along. And, despite the subject matter of Longlegs, I’m a very prayerful person, and I think that there are people and events that are destined for us in this life. So I believe, as certainly as I know anything, that I was meant to meet David. Living in Worcester, Massachusetts, a daughter of school teachers, I had been on That’s Incredible!, reading Shakespeare, but I didn’t have an agent, and I certainly wasn’t auditioning for any movies. That was not even on the radar, and then fate allowed the casting director of Dune to contact That’s Incredible! to see if they had any suggestions for a young girl who could say big words and play this role of Alia [Atreides], who was imbued with generations of knowledge and wisdom.
So that is what led to me meeting David, being cast in Dune, and that changed my life. I knew from the moment I set foot on the stage that this was what I wanted to do forever. It hadn’t occurred to me that a person could make a living playing characters, but then I just had this absolute belief, “Oh, this is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.” When I went to L.A., I had an agent, and I was starting to try and make this dream of mine a reality. That’s when David wrote that part on the first episode of Twin Peaks season two especially for me. He filmed me playing piano not only in character, but also for the end credits. At the time, I think it was the only end credits of any episode of Twin Peaks that had something other than the image of Laura Palmer and the theme music. Instead, it was me playing a boogie-woogie, and it gave me so much at a time when I needed it. It gave me attention from casting directors and more auditions and more opportunities.
Then he cast me in Hotel Room when I’d just turned 17, which was my first adult role. I played this young woman in 1936 who had lost a child and was experiencing a mental break by way of a multiple personality disorder, and that massive blessing led to the rest of the roles that came in the next few years.
And then Twin Peaks: The Return was a beautiful reunion. It felt like a time warp because it seemed, in some ways, like no time had passed, just being back there in the Twin Peaks universe with David. I trusted him because I had no idea what was going on in my scenes. I didn’t have a script, and he wouldn’t tell me. He just said, “All I’ll tell you is that you are playing the same character of Gersten Hayward.” So I just let David take the reins and let go, and it was such a beautiful out-of-body experience. I was in some other realm as I did those scenes, and I knew that David knew what he wanted. So he feels like a family member, like an uncle, because I’ve known him since I was seven. I have such love and such deep gratitude for this human being.
But what’s crazy is that the role of Gersten Hayward on Twin Peaks: The Return is what Oz had seen prior to our Zoom meeting. That scene with Caleb Landry Jones under the tree was the moment that Oz saw something in me, and it led him to think that I could be his Ruth. So when we had our Zoom meeting, he told me that was what he’d seen, so I never auditioned for this. He just knew from Twin Peaks: The Return and from our conversation, and he handed me the greatest gift, the greatest honor and one of the greatest collaborations I’ve ever been blessed to have. So it all comes back to David Lynch.
***
Longlegs is now playing in movie theaters.
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