Camila Morrone ‘Wept for Days’ After Finishing Her Favorite Scene in ‘Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen’

Welcome to My Favorite Scene! In this series, IndieWire speaks to actors behind a few of our favorite television performances about their personal-best onscreen moment and how it came together. 

And welcome to a brand-new occurrence here on IndieWire: the first time a previous My Favorite Scene participant has returned to talk about another favorite scene in another favorite show. Back in 2023, Camila Morrone joined IndieWire to chat about her favorite scene in Prime Video’s acclaimed limited series “Daisy Jones and the Six,” a heartbreaking finale sequence that saw her Camila Dunne, perpetually supportive wife of the Six frontman Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin), finally confront what we all know is true: Billy is in love with the titular Daisy Jones (Riley Keough).

It’s a barn-burner of a battle, and one audiences had long been waiting for. Morrone’s fury and heartbreak is on full display for the very first time, after her Camila spent entire years keeping her pain under wraps. It’s a release, and a hard-earned one. And Morrone’s dedication to nailing the scene (and the entire series) paid off, eventually netting the rising actress her very first Emmy nom.

Three years later, Morrone is back to high-stakes relationship drama, this time with Netflix’s limited series “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen,” in which she stars as marriage-shy Rachel, who we first meet as she’s… oops, well, as she’s traveling to her fiancé Nicky’s (Adam DiMarco) family home for their very big, very high-pressure wedding. But Rachel’s fears go way beyond the usual cold feet, and showrunner, creator, writer, and executive producer Haley Z. Boston’s funny, dark, and very twisted series really puts Rachel through her paces.

Presumably, if you’re reading this, you’ve seen the series (and aren’t opposed to some massive spoilers), so keep that in mind before reading ahead. This time around, Morrone picked a key sequence in another series’ finale episode (you can check it out, in part, above), in which Rachel confronts Nicky about their very fucked-up relationship. Oh, and it’s their wedding day. Oh, and Rachel just ditched Nicky at the altar. What more is there to say after that? A whole lot.

The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

IndieWire: You are the first actor who has done two of IndieWire’s My Favorite Scenes, and it’s striking how similar these scenes are. They are both big, emotional eruptions in a finale episode, sequences where your character really gets to let loose. What is it about these kinds of scenes that most appeals to you?

Camila Morrone: It’s probably the Latina feminist in me that resonates with these scenes. In this particular case, it really feels like the culmination of an entire season, and it all kind of blows up in this one specific moment. It’s what you wish Rachel would say to Nicky throughout this entire season: to tell him off and put him in his place and defend herself and stand up for herself and step into the woman that she is meant to be.

[Before that], it’s so much about him gaslighting her and Nicky making her feel as though she’s seen and understood, but in reality? She has never been seen by Nicky. I love characters kind of at their breaking points. I love the humanity in that. I love seeing people crumble, like blood on the walls and there’s nothing left to say. There’s nothing to lose, and you just let it all out. I love seeing characters in that moment. I think it’s incredibly vulnerable to go there. I think that’s a vulnerable thing to do.

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I will confess, I was a little disappointed that you didn’t pick the toe [amputation] scene.

[Laughs] Oh, I could have picked the toe scene, too, but I think I just can’t watch that scene again. That was challenging as an actor, because I had never done an amputation scene. Selling horror is so much more difficult than I had ever imagined. I’ve seen some of the best horror films of all time, and I look at these performances, specifically the female performances, and I’m like, “We need to give these women more Oscars.”

It is so hard to have an audience believe that you are so terrified that you are certain that you’re going to die. I mean, how many times in our life have we been so certain that we’re going to die? It’s hopefully not something that happens every day, right? It’s such a far away state of being from the norm, it’s such a departure. That’s why I think horror is such an incredible genre. And you also have to get creative about the different levels of fear, right? Because fear is not linear, and you can be scared one moment and then relieved a moment after and then back to being scared.

Where does fear live in your body? How does anxiety manifest? You meet Rachel and she’s already at a level-five anxious. She’s already the person who’s looking over her shoulder and then you’ve got eight episodes to go. So, how do you maintain that throughout an entire season?

And even within all that fear and anxiety, there are all these other emotions. As you said, horror performances tend to be so underrated, especially female horror performances.

With “Weapons,” I loved seeing Amy Madigan win the Oscar. I love that this is opening up horror. Listen, I wasn’t a horror fan to begin with, this process has really opened me up to the genre. I studied and watched so many performances and so many films, and it’s just incredible the range that is required in horror, the nuance.

Even if you didn’t watch the series and did not know the specifics of Rachel and Nicky’s debate in this scene, which is a pretty specific debate, there’s still something here that’s applicable to many relationships, especially bad ones.

Relationships are so complex and dynamic and unpredictable, and I think that’s what people relate to when they watch this scene. I mean, we’ve all been in that kind of argument, whether it’s with a friend or a family member or a sibling or a partner, and you can have that kind of argument and then bounce back and have recovery. I like when relationships get raw and the walls come down and you’re able to kind of be your ugliest version of yourself. I love that unhinged nothing-to-lose-ness. There’s such a power in it.

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For so much of the season, Rachel is low-key stoned, which can keep her at a remove, even when things are getting really insane. But in this finale episode, she is fully present and it is terrifying for her to actually be sober and realize what she’s dealing with.

I think it takes people while in relationships to have clarity. Sometimes, you have to be out of them to look back and understand why things happen the way they did. Although Rachel is a stoner, I think that is really just to level out this paralyzing fear, anxiety, weight that she carries on her shoulders and has carried her whole life. To play a character who is always looking over her shoulder and is constantly afraid of the world is really exhausting. Being in Rachel’s skin was emotionally grueling and physically exhausting. She never lets her guard down. She never puts her armor away.

That is really interesting to me to play because it’s so far from who I am. I’m much more bubbly and goofy and I guess naive in some ways and overly positive about the world and believing in people. That’s kind of the golden retriever energy in me and she’s the opposite of that. She’s full black cat energy.

I wanted to scare myself and play something that I don’t know at all. All you need between you and a character is like one connective tissue, whether that’s an event that’s happened to you in your life or a similar trait that you have or a similar interest or a point of view of the world.

Rachel and Nicky are often in different places during the series, physically and emotionally, but you and Adam have a consistent chemistry that makes your relationship believable, even when things are really crumbling. How did you and Adam bond?

Adam brought this to my attention, but we’re in different shows altogether. Even our prep work, I watched almost over 40 films, all genre and horror films, and Adam didn’t watch any of them, right? Because Nicky is not living in a horror film, he’s not living with this anxiety and this fear of death. It’s not happening to him, but it’s very much happening to Rachel.

How do you have these two characters who are living on opposite planets still have this camaraderie and intimacy and chemistry and spark together? Adam and I had really great natural chemistry. The part of the relationship that was fun and silly and lovable and goofy came really naturally to both of us. Adam also has that kind of lovable golden retriever energy, it’s hard not to love him, and that’s what Rachel felt often, it’s hard not to love him even when he makes mistakes or maybe even lies.

So, the prep was different, the state of being was different, the stakes were different, but then we had to keep coming back and remembering the love that these two people have for each other and what brought them to the altar to begin with.

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Right before this scene, Rachel and Nicky are at the altar, and Nicky is saying his vows, but they were so clearly written before the last week has happened in their lives. Rachel has been through a life-changing experience the past few days and he’s like, “These vows from a week ago, they still apply.” And she’s like, “What are you talking about?”

It’s also that moment when it’s just too late, right? The thing that she has been asking for since day one, which is “I never even wanted to get married,” he’s just completely obliterated it, ignored it, and thought about only himself through all this. And now, at the eleventh hour, he’s like, “You’re right, and I see you.” That is the moment that everything crumbles for Rachel. You didn’t believe me then when it was real for me, but now when it’s convenient for you, you choose to believe me.

At what point in production did you shoot this scene?

This was the last day of filming. We had almost an 80-day shoot in which I was in almost every single frame, and it was my first time leading a show. It’s true that it is a marathon. I think that what you see in that scene is a real depletion — a physical depletion, how relationships can wear you down. Rachel is just on her last legs.

I got to improvise with Adam, and Haley and Weronika [Tofilska], our showrunner and our director, gave us the freedom to just have at it with each other. To just say the meanest things that you have been holding in for years of the relationship, the thing that you’ve always thought, but would never say. The way we shot it, with the [single takes], we kind of just kept going and going and going. It just felt like a massive release.

Do you remember how many takes you did?

Oh, we were just in a total delirious state at this point. It was something like five in the morning on a night shoot, and we went till 10 in the morning, so this was like a couple hours into the night shoot. I remember clearing the set, so it was our cinematographer, Adam and I, and then Haley and Veronica in the corner crouching, being like, “Be meaner, say whatever you want.”

It kind of felt like a play, because there was no one in the room, just Adam and I. The cameras were being held on someone’s shoulders, in on our faces and you never know when it’s going to land on us. It’s so great to not have to start and stop and to just flow. We were just moving wherever we felt instinctually was right and then the camera was following us. We didn’t have to think about our marks or lighting or anything. We could just be with this couple who is at their breaking point.

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You do this incredible thing at the end of the scene with your hands, sort of resting them on your neck, trying to calm down and ground yourself. It’s a fascinating little piece of physical performance.

There are a lot of times as an actor where, the truth is, you don’t feel connected to the character and you’re thinking about yourself and you’re outside of your body and you’re going, “Oh, that was a bad take or that was a whatever take.” And then you have those moments where you actually forget that you’re acting or that you’re playing a character. They’re few and far between, these breakthrough moments, and that scene was one of them. I think I was literally overheating from how upset I was.

The body doesn’t know the difference, right? When you’re really going there and you’re screaming, my hands are shaking and my palms are sweating and I’m getting really physically hot. Those are the moments where I know I’ve broken that ego barrier of self-judging or self-criticizing my own performance.

You’re also wearing this wedding dress that is not your wedding dress, and you look so cinched, so uncomfortable, Rachel just seems like she’s dying to get out of it.

Thank you for noticing that, because our costume designer, Courtney [Mitchell], we had a lot of fittings for the dress. I had a clear vision of kind of what I wanted it to become after she presented Victoria’s [Nicky’s mom, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh] dress, and we played around a lot. But I really wanted Rachel to feel suffocated. I wanted her to feel uncomfortable in this dress. It’s not her style. It’s nothing that she would ever wear. The cleavage is overwhelming for her, the waist is completely suffocating, and the corset and the dress is heavy.

I wanted her to feel so weighed down and brutal and awkward in this heavy, monumental piece of fabric. So, I think that having that design actually did help the physicality of kind of those final scenes where she’s carrying the dress and it just feels [like] this whole world is just so far from her.

This finally ends with Rachel telling Nicky, “No, I am not going to marry you.” We know what it means for her, because we believe her and we understand what this actual curse is. What did it feel like after you said that?

I think I felt disgust. It’s that moment when you cannot unsee somebody for who they are. It’s in your bones. I think there’s even a facial expression that I make, when I see him with his mother and he’s being a mama’s boy and now he comes back and tells me, “Sure, I’ll marry you,” because Mommy told him to do so. There’s a layer of, “You make me sick. I don’t even know this person.” I love that Rachel has that on her way out and she’s just incredulous. “I’m not marrying you.” It was the feeling of, this is done. I can’t unsee this. I’ll never unsee this.

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How did you feel when shooting was totally over? Did you feel like, OK, Rachel has left me, or do characters stay with you for a little bit afterward?

Honestly, and this is not an exaggeration, I wept for days when I wrapped, and that had never happened to me before. I think it was the pressure that I put on myself to do this performance. I work with an acting coach every day. I would come home at midnight and I would work till three or four in the morning, because it was the only time that I had to look at the next day’s dialogue. Then I would get on with my coach and we’d work on it and then I’d get into the line drilling because there’s quite a few monologues in the season. By the end of it, I just had to release.

I was running on adrenaline and anxiety and pressure. I think we shot for like 15 hours on the last day, and when it was over, we walked outside and it was broad daylight. There’s a photo of Hailey, Adam, and I, and they’re not crying and I’m like inconsolable. It’s the ugliest photo you’ve ever seen. I remember going back to New York and calling my mom and just being like, “I don’t know. I’m, like, not well. I don’t know what I’m feeling. I feel really confused and sad.”

I guess the only analogy would be to run a very long marathon. It took me a couple of weeks to kind of get my Cami back and step out of Rachel’s heaviness and darkness.

“Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen” Season 1 is now streaming on Netflix.