Greer Grammer – Deadly Illusions

By starrymag | June 1, 2021

By: Lisa Steinberg

 

 

Q) We have certainly seen you do more comedic roles and this film marks a pretty dramatic departure. Talk about how the beats of comedic and dramatic delivery compare and contrast.

A) I mean, comedy and drama are very different. I am very fortunate, as I think most actors do, I have an amazing acting coach named Lee. She and I sat down the week before I filmed.  I was put to this project two years before it was released by A&E and my brain had had time with the story was going to be for a while.  But when it came down to actually filming and learning the lines and going through the pieces, I sat down with my coach the week before.  We would meet every day and we would go over all of the beats and what was happening in this moment and what was going on in my head at that moment and which version of Grace was being represented in this scene or this line.  So, it was really fun, and that’s one of the things that I love about my job and I love about acting, that it’s kind of like a puzzle.  You get to find the beats. You get to kind of figure out what’s going and really cut open everything and look at it all as you put it on the table and dive into it.  The beats were, of course, super different than comedy because they are.  But I love doing both.  I find comedic beats almost harder because it doesn’t land, it doesn’t land.  It’s all bad if the comedy does not go well.  Whereas drama, it’s just all very, very different.

Q) You talked about these puzzle pieces and putting them together for Grace. There is this more innocent Grace and then there is this seductress disturbing side of her. I wanted to talk about those puzzles.  We see her wardrobe is a big indicator for her personalities.  How did you and your coach really approach the more vulnerable sides of Grace and then this distinct switch up we see which begins to blur the lines?

A) When Anna [Elizabeth James] pitched this to me she obviously told me that there was going to be this character was struggling with a multiple personality disorder and so I got to really kind of dive into that and what mental illness is and what it means. I think some of the feedback from the film has been hard because some people are like, “You’re making her crazy.” And that wasn’t the intent.  We wanted to make it very sympathetic.  I mean, there is a reason why she survives.  There is a reason why Mary (Kristin Davis) keeps visiting her at the hospital.  It’s because she is aware that this is a mental illness.  But what was really fun to discover was why does she have these two very strong personalities.  Which one is the lead personality and which is the one that comes in to protect?  A lot of times with MPD the other personalities are formed because it’s usually a protection.  I got to figure out that Margaret, which is the other character’s name, is triggered by touch.  If you go back and were to watch the movie you, you would see that any time Grace is touched in any sort of way that lingers, my eyes would change.  Or something would happen in my physical body that would show that someone else was coming through.  So, that was really, really fun.  Obviously, when it came to the wardrobe that was a very big part that we played.  Especially in the beginning, Grace was the dominant personality.  She was picking her clothes. Grace is somebody who is like a really young girl. She never really grew past the age of when all of the trauma was going on.  So, in her head she is like fifteen years old.  She’s innocent.  She is sweet.  She wants to hold on to hat innocence to fight all of the abuse that she has been through.  Margret comes in to protect and Margaret is sassy and sexy and knows how to get what she wants and knows men and all of that kind of world.  Towards the end there is a little bit of struggle with the wardrobe.  She’s full-fledged.  That’s obviously her. That is her choice in dressing that way.  The final dress at the end, which is that cute little blue dress that I actually have, I took it home with me because I thought it was so cute.  That seems like a nice mix of both.  It shows some skin, but it also is cute and precious.  There was a lot of thought that went into plan when it came to planning the two personalities and planning the wardrobe and what everything meant to each character that I got to play because I basically got to play.

Q) You’re right and it’s sort of like you were playing twins in a way. And that’s a good reason as well to go back and watch the film a few more times because the more you watch, the more you actually do notice that touch is kind of a keystone for these personalities.

A) If you watch it again, you’ll pick up on so many things that you missed, your mind isn’t open to it yet. Everyone has been really taken aback by the bra shopping scene, which I also felt like I need to clarify because I got so many messages being like, “Who takes their nanny out shopping for bras?” And I totally get that.

Q.) Yeah, that was a very interesting early scene.  Mary offers to take Grace out shopping and you think it’s going to be at a department store for shoes or clothing.  And then we see Grace being fitted for bras instead…

A) I know. I know. What happened was there was supposed to be this whole montage of us shopping and we just literally ran out of time. We shot the movie in seventeen days, so we just didn’t have time to get more footage of us to make shopping. So, we walk into that store where we try on the bras with a bunch of bags already, which we assumed everyone would get meant that we were shopping. We had a whole shopping day. We went for blouses and dresses and skirts and all of these other things and then we went to go get bras.  It was shown in the scene before when I am cleaning up the Band-Aid that she sees that I am wearing this tattered dirty bra, so she wants to go get me a normal proper adult bra because I am basically wearing a training bra because Grace is a child.  That was kind of missed and I was like, “I guess we see how that probably was important and that people didn’t just see the bags and be like they have been shopping all day” because that’s’ what we assumed was happening.  And also I try on outfits after that.  In the next scene she watches me try on clothes, which is what we bought at the stores.

That scene was kind of fun because that was sort of the first Margaret turn, I think.  When I am looking back, I don’t think there was one before.  But when Mary is helping Grace with the strap and kind of touching her, it’s really not in a sexual way, but then Margaret being immediately triggered by touch comes in and knows that, like I said, it’s a personality that can protect but also knows what people want and is triggered by being sexually abused.  So, it’s very much like, “Oh, you’re touching me. Oh okay. I can do this.  I can play this game.  I can be sexy.”  So, she reaches for her boob and she is sexy and kind of big and that’s who that character is.  But it is so shocking in the moment because you’re like, “What the fuck!?”  Excuse my language.  But that’s also the point of the movie and you’re supposed to be feeling like you’re going crazy.  You’re not supposed to know where it’s going, and you’re not supposed to know what is real and what is not.  And what just happened and what is not.  Just like Mary doesn’t understand what’s happening.  She’s like, “That’s weird.  Did that happen?  I don’t know.” So, it was really fun to play those parts.

Q) You talked a little bit about when were pitched this project, and I wanted to find out what the original breakdown for these dual characters was like. It really has this kind of Lifetime TV plot to it, but it also has Netflix’s risqué fingerprint to it as well that pushes its boundaries even further.

A) Annie and I (I call her Annie) …She and I worked together on a family horse film in 2015 called Emma’s Chance which was released in 2016. Obviously, we took a deep departure from that genre to make this. But she met with me a few years after filming that, I feel like it was January 2018, and she said I want to pitch you something and I said okay. So, we met at a coffee shop in Santa Monica and she kind of just started saying ideas.  But she was like, “I don’t know how you’re going to feel about it.  I don’t know if it’s going to be something you’re interested in, but I just had an idea and I want to make it with you.”  I was like, “Okay.”  She described it as a psychological erotic thriller and I was like, “Okay.” That was kind of when she just started pitching me different scenes.  She didn’t have a whole script written yet, but she was just like here is what I want to do.  I want to kind of create this what the hell story of am I crazy or is this person crazy.  She said she wanted to show female sexuality in a different way, and I want it to be directed by a woman.  I always talk about how amazing it is. The scenes are so risqué and so sexy, but we actually don’t really show all that much when you think about nude scenes or sex scenes.  There is really not a lot of nudity is shown or going on, and how to make it really beautiful.

Like, I loved that bathtub scene because even though you’re watching it and you’re like, “What the hell?!” It’s shot so beautifully, and the colors are so amazing with the petals in the water and there is this kind of very feminine aspect to it, which I think is amazing to have an important to have because if it was being shot by a man I don’t know if it would have the same sort of gaze and beauty to it.  And I think that’s what Annie wanted to show. That women can be sexy, that sex can feel beautiful, that it doesn’t have to be this graphic shocking sex thing.  I personally don’t love watching sex scenes. I think they are there to shock you or at least graphic sex scenes.  I have never really watched “Game of Thrones” because I don’t like nudity, even though everyone tells me the story is amazing and I need to watch it.  I am just like, “I don’t need to see it.” It just makes me uncomfortable. It just feels shocking and that’s the whole point, “Like look at us, we’re showing boobs!” So, I think there was this really cool thing which she wanted which was to show sex and show it in a real way and to show it stylistically but also with viewing less is more your mind is able to go to other places and you’re able to imagine, you’re able to fantasize, you’re able to know what is happening without having to see what’s happening.  I think there is something really beautiful in that.

That’s kind of how she discussed it with me. She said she wanted to make a kind of psychological erotic thriller.  I want there to be this girl, I want her to sleep with the husband, I want her to sleep with the wife.  I want there to not only be sex, but I want there to be love. There is a million emotions. I was just kind of like, “Yeah, I am so in.  I am so in on this ride.”  She was so excited by me being in because I don’t think she thought I was going to actually say yes to doing it.  I was like, “Yeah, let’s go.  I want it.”  I have never done a role like this.  I have never been given a chance to do anything like this.

And, yeah, it falls into the Lifetime tropes a little bit, but I think that’s what’s fun about the movie.  It has that same feel of a Lifetime movie, but also it goes different places that you wouldn’t expect, which is kind of like what you were saying where it falls into the risqué Netflix films that they do.  It’s been really cool because you think it’s going to go one way and then it goes a really different direction, and you see something that you are not really expecting.  It’s kind of just all over the place but I think in the best way.

Q) Just when you think you are catching your breath or putting some of the pieces together, things take a whole new turn. Talk about how the pacing of the film really helped play into the intensity of the suspenseful aspects of the film as much as the psychological aspects.

A) I think what’s cool about the timing is, like you said, every time you think you are catching your breath or you think you know what’s happening, it goes a completely different way. And that’s the point. The feelings that Annie were trying to capture with the movie, which I think I might have already said, is am I crazy or is this person crazy?  We both dealt with people in our lives who have dealt with borderline personality disorder or, in my case it was narcissism. But she had a different scenario.  So, we were kind of talking about how you are in that situation where somebody is gaslighting you or somebody is doing something and you are kind of like, “Wait, that’s insane.  Or maybe they are being totally normal and I am crazy.”  So, we kind had talked over that and a lot of this came from that feeling and wanting to capture am I losing my mind or is this crazy or is this movie making total sense.  Who’s the crazy person? What’s going on?  I think the timing of everything is just as you are going one direction you do get swept up in another direction and that’s intentional because we want you to wonder what the hell.  I literally don’t know how else to describe it.  We want you to question everything and we want you to wonder and be caught up in being confused.  And you’re not supposed to know what’s real and what’s not.  Everyone is really upset with us because they don’t have actual answers.  But that’s the point, you’re not supposed to have actual answers.

I keep telling everyone that it’s like a choose your own adventure or draw your own conclusion type of movie.  You have to figure it out on your own.  And everyone is really upset by that.  But I think that’s what makes it fun.

Q) Choose Your Own Adventure seems pretty fitting because the end of the film kind of gives you at least two to three different twisted possibilities. Mary goes to visit Grace at the hospital, but then there is this shadowy figure at the end leaving. Then, there is a flashback of Mary with her family. There are a lot of things that leave questions lingering, which I feel is the best aspect you could have given to fans.  Rather than tie it all up you left it open ended and much like Netflix movies once again, it’s complicated.

A) Yeah, yeah.   That’s Grace’s backstory.  That’s why she is the way she is, and we were kind of showing that.  That ending, which by the way, I feel like I always have to clarify.  That was the ending from day one.  Like the very first script. The very first draft that Anna gave me had that ending and I was obsessed with it.  I was like, “This is incredible that you don’t know who’s walking out.”  That’s the thing, too.  That’s the question I have been asked the most.  I see different people have been so bothered to know who. They’re like, “Who is that at the end?” But that’s the point. You’re supposed to wonder that yourself. That’s the Choose Your Own Adventure.  You get to come up with your own theory.

As an actor and creative producer on the project, I don’t have any answers for you.  It’s not anyone.  It’s whoever you want.  But as a fan of the movie, I am like, “It’s definitely Grace.”  She found a way.  She either killed Mary or she did something, but that’s her walking out of that hospital.  But, again, as a person on the actual movie, I have no idea.  As far as I know, that’s Mary.  You just have to come up with your own thoughts on who you think it is.  That’s been so fun to watch the fans converse or just even the people who are just watchers because so many people had issues with the movie.  But the people who are watching and discussing and having these conversations and to have them be like, what the heck just happened?  And wonder who is walking out?  Why don’t we have answers?  That’s the fun of it.  Discuss with your friends.  I had people be like, “I had a wine night with my girlfriends and all three of us were up discussing who we thought it was and why we thought it was this way for the next hour after we watched.”  That’s fun!  That’s fun!

Q) That’s what has to be so rewarding to you on different levels, as both an actress and creative producer on this project. Seeing these reactions and having people say they have had discussions or wine nights with friends, which is a total Lifetime TV hallmark as well. It’s what makes it such a guilty pleasure.

And normally we could all talk about the film around the water cooler at work, but since it’s a pandemic, it’s not that easy.  But that’s what’s amazing about social media.  You can have a conversation with a million strangers, and each have a different perspective on this juicy movie.

A) I am so thankful for social media with this movie, and for Netflix because it found this home. I don’t know where else we would have put this. I don’t know where else we would have gotten this attention and where it would have done well.  I am still amazed by the success that it has had and the people that have watched it and how it kind of blew up.  It still doesn’t really feel real to me.  But it’s been so incredible to watch and see.  I am so thankful that we have got places like Netflix because that was the perfect place for this.

Q) One last thing that I do want to talk about is these numerous palpable moments that take place between you and Kristin Davis’ character Mary. I wanted to talk about how you and Kristin really approached the choreography of the more physical elements that we see between Mary and Grace. Certainly, we have the fight and chase scenes at the end, but then there are the more tender moments we see riddled throughout the film that turns into this tete a tete.

A) So, for a majority of the movie we had an intimacy coordinator, that was her job title. She would work through the beats with us, especially during a lot of the sex sense. She was there with me. I just always specifically remember the bathtub scene because we talked over breaths and beats and counting out how the breaths would be and how it would be slowed down and then it would speed up. Then, it was the movement of the hands and how that would go with the breaths. It was very much like a dance in a way, which I think was really, really special and important to have for that stuff and to discuss it with Kristin and to really talk about it with her.  The fight scene was choreographed by a stunt coordinator, which as it usually always is in movies.  That was with a stunt coordinator that we had on set and he was fantastic.  We had stunt doubles which obviously did the majority of the really intense fight scene stuff.

Those scenes are great. They are always very hard for me.  In theory, I am like, “Woo-hoo, I get to do a fight scene!” Or even like, “I get to do a sensual scene!”  And then you realize that there is actually so much that goes on behind those and you’re like, “Oh wow, these are beats.  These are moments that I have to think about.”  And it’s intimidating.  But it’s super fun and it’s super rewarding.  I am just really happy that I got to do those scenes with Kristin because she was so great at doing them and making me feel comfortable.

Q) Is there anything else that we didn’t talk about that you want to mention or are there are any other projects you are working on next?

A) No, I mean I am looking at projects. I am looking at things. I have an episode of “The Goldbergs” that I did. I am excited about this just little guest star role on that show. That was one of the most fun things that I have ever worked on just because I know Sam Lerner really well who is on that show and Hayley [Orrantia]. So, it was just a blast to be able to go to work and work with my friends.  And, of course, do comedy.

I did a movie last summer called American Boogeyman with Chad Michael Murray. It’s about Ted Bundy.  And it’s kind of like a Ted Bundy horror film.  So, that was really cool to get to do that.  I am not sure when it will be released.  I think they are in post-production right now.  That was really cool and really interesting to film during the pandemic.

Then, yeah, I am keeping my eyes open.  I definitely want to start producing more and to really play into that since I had so much fun with this project.  Anna and I have discussed the possibility of a sequel to this after it did so well.  We are kind of in very, very, very early talks about that.  Nothing set in stone.  Nothing concrete.  With the questions we have been asked a lot and after seeing the success that it has had, we are definitely interested in continuing the story.  That’s kind of the main thing that I am working on right now.  Other than that, auditioning and normal actor stuff.

 

Watch The Trailer For Deadly Illusions