“This Frightens Me and I Can’t Stop Thinking About It”: ‘Touch Me’ Challenged Its Cast To Face the Weird

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Sundance

Summary

Collider's Perri Nemiroff sits down with the creator and cast of Touch Me at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
From writer-director Addison Heimann, Touch Me is a sci-fi, horror-comedy about two best friends who find themselves addicted to the touch of an alien whose intentions are unclear.
In this interview, Heimann and stars Olivia Taylor Dudley, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jordan Gavaris, and Marlene Forte discuss the importance of finding actors who embrace the film's strange and weird nature, the cast's chemistry, and bringing humanity to horror.

The Sundance Film Festival is founded upon uplifting unique voices that run counter to the usual slate of films that play at the multiplexes. For writer-director Addison Heimann, playing things safe and ordinary is not in his repertoire. In fact, his sophomore feature film, Touch Me, is gloriously weird.

Touch Me is a comedic but earnest take on sci-fi horror (a "bisexual alien sex horror comedy," to be precise) about two codependent best friends, Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley) and Craig (Jordan Gavaris), who find themselves in a predicament when Joey and her ex, Brian (Lou Taylor Pucci), reconnect. Brian is an alien with an alluring touch, and it seems his business on Earth may not be so innocent after all. The film, which also stars Marlene Forte, explores the universal search for love, acceptance, and peace in our complicated lives.

At the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, Heimann, Dudley, Pucci, Gavaris, and Forte stopped by Collider's media studio at the Rendezvous Cinema Center to chat with Perri Nemiroff. Celebrating their Midnight screening, the crew discusses working with strange and provocative material, bringing humanity to horror, and the most unexpectedly difficult scene to film. You can catch the full conversation in the video above, or you can read the transcript below.

'Touch Me's Director on Finding Their "Type of Weird"

"These are my weirdos."

PERRI NEMIROFF: I have the great honor of introducing the team behind Touch Me. Oh my, I've never seen anything quite like this, and that fills my movie-loving heart, especially at Sundance. Congratulations!

ADDISON HEIMANN: Which is so funny! I just don't think this movie's that weird, and then everybody else thinks it's that weird. Then we were reading the script, and then it was just like, “An arm gets cut off, then there's tentacle sex, and then a head explodes," and I was like, “Okay, guys, it's weird. I'm sorry."

Clearly, I know what Touch Me is, but because we're celebrating a film festival debut, no one out there is going to know about the film just yet, so I must give you these honors, Addison. Would you mind giving a brief synopsis of your film?

HEIMANN: Touch Me is a bisexual alien sex horror comedy about two best friends, Joey and Craig, played by Olivia and Jordan, who find themselves at the compound of an alien, played by Lou Taylor Pucci, whose sexual touch removes your anxiety and depression.

You were ready for that. I'm impressed!

HEIMANN: Oh, honey, I've been pitching this. It's, like, the fifth day. Everyone's like, "What's it about?" And I'm just like, "Well ..."

When you have such an ambitious idea, you have to make sure that everyone you want to get on board fully understands your vision.

HEIMANN: My favorite thing is when I say there's an alien that you fuck who removes your anxiety and depression, everyone's like, “I want that.” I'm like, "Yeah, me too. That's why I wrote the movie."

Addison Heimann at Sundance 2025 for Touch Me

I feel like we don’t often talk about the experience of getting a second feature off the ground, more so a first. And I think that’s partly because many think it can be smooth sailing after the first and that’s not always quite the case. Can you tell me something about getting your second movie off the ground that was shockingly challenging that people might think is easy, but then also something about the way Hypochondriac was received that helped you make this movie and make it the way you want it?

HEIMANN: That's a great question. Oh my god, I have amazing answers for this. I think the hardest thing of this entire movie, funnily enough, was casting because the movie was so strange, and to find people who were my type of weird. And then these four? I fucking found them. They are my forever people. I’m not even joking! It was just one of those things where you're looking, and you're looking, and you're looking, and you're trying to find the type of weird. Meeting Lou and Olivia and Jordan and Marlene, I was like, "These are my weirdos, and these are the people that I take with me everywhere."

With Hypochondriac, that's actually really easy because my producers at Rustic [Films], Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, I met at a film festival in Switzerland. We happened to just be hanging out and became buds, and both Hypochondriac and Something in the Dirt were being distributed by XYZ [Films], so we were constantly finding ourselves at the same film festivals. When I wrote the movie, I was like, “I think they'll enjoy some tentacle sex." It was a surprisingly beautiful, like, "Hey, what do you guys think?" And they were like, “Your mind is crazy.” And I was like, “I know, but, like, do you want it?” And they were like, “Yes!” And I was like, "Okay, cool!" But the thing is, Hypochondriac is so dark. It's about my mental breakdown—not that Touch Me isn't also about my suffering of OCD, but it's such a different movie, and they really got it right away.

“This Frightens Me and I Can’t Stop Thinking About It”

I want to follow up on something you just said with your cast. You are all Addison's type of weird, but now I want to know, what is the very first thing you saw in Addison that signaled to you he was your type of weird?

OLIVIA TAYLOR DUDLEY: I got the script. David Lawson, one of our producers, sent it to me, and he called me, and he's said, “You're really fucking weird. I think you might like this movie. Will you read it and meet with the director later today?” So I read it, and I loved it. I laughed the whole time I read the movie, which is really hard to do. I met with Addison. We met at a bar. We both have OCD, and we talked about that for two hours. At the end of our talk, he was like, “Oh, wait, do you want to do the movie?” I was like, “Oh, yes, please. I love this movie so much." So, it was more that we just connected on the mental health aspect of the movie and the trauma aspect of the movie. The tentacle sex and all that stuff, that's just, like, fun stuff on top.

JORDAN GAVARIS: I was last in the casting process. I came on two weeks before the principal photography was going to start. I got the script, and I was also a fan of Hypochondriac because my husband was one of the stars—Devon Graye was one of the stars of Hypochondriac. I knew Addison a little bit, and I knew he was a really promising and gifted filmmaker. To be honest, when I read the script, and I also know it's really fucking weird, but I was like, “This is good. This is it. This is something.”

HEIMANN: My ego is so high right now! [Laughs]

GAVARIS: I did, though! I knew it was out there, but also, we're both cinephiles, and I understood some of his visual reference points. He's got this incredible cinematic lexicon that, just in talking with him for five minutes, is so obvious. I just trusted it was going to be the kind of weird that worked and not the kind of weird that's arbitrary, which I find a little bit obnoxious when I watch movies. I think I was right. That's the moral of this story.

MARLENE FORTE: This is my second time around with Addison because I played his mama in Hypochondriac. You know what it is? He's given me the most challenging roles, and when you read something, at least for me, that frightens me a little bit, I have to do it because I think that that's why it's frightening me. It's vibrating in another part of my body that I'm like, “Oh, god, I don't know what this is, but I need to explore it.” Hypochondriac was clear for me on the page because I, too, have mental illness in my family and dyslexia and all that type of stuff. I was like, “Oh my god, I think I get this!”

This one he sent to me. I didn't realize he wrote Laura for me, but he sent it to me and I read it, and I said to my husband, “Oh my god, Addison's at it again. He wrote this thing. This frightens me and I can't stop thinking about it." So I called him, and I said, “What is up with this? Who comes up with this?” And he was like, “Do you want to play Laura?” Duh! So, for me, that's what it was.

LOU TAYLOR PUCCI: Laura’s the scariest person in the movie.

FORTE: I am.

I will say, I love the movie as is, but I do feel like you need to make a sister sequel, and the whole thing needs to be told from Laura’s perspective.

LOU TAYLOR PUCCI: 100%!

21:09

Emilie Blichfeldt, Ane Dahl Torp, Thea Sofie Loch Næss & Lea Myren Talk The Ugly Stepsister

Lou, time to make Addison blush!

HEIMANN: Can you brag about me, please?

PUCCI: Actually, I read the script three times. I had no idea what the fuck was happening. But I was really like, "This is the scariest thing I could possibly do. It's a hip-hop dancing naked man for most of the film. What the hell would I be doing playing an alien?" I asked him only sci-fi questions. I got to meet him for a second, and I said, “What's in the serum? Do you get pregnant from alien sex?” He had all the answers. That's actually what really made me go, “Oh, this guy created an entire world that makes sense to him,” and that's all I really care about. The worst thing you would want is somebody who created some kind of flippant comedy based on, like, "That's funny," or whatever. You know what I mean? No, this is a total surreal experience based on toxic relationships and love and sex, and it's real. Everybody can actually relate to it.

How to Humanize Strange and Provocative Material

The relationships on and off-screen were crucial to Touch Me's otherworldly story.

A close-up of Olivia Taylor Dudley upside down in purple lighting in Touch Me

Lou, I'll stick with you for a moment because with this kind of character, I have to imagine you have so many questions going in. It was making me wonder, did you have an “aha” moment while finding Brian? Something you thought of or did that made you say to yourself, “I get him to my core now?"

PUCCI: I always wanted to play Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka, and so I got to do that for the first time, or Tim Curry in Rocky Horror Picture Show. Those are my favorite cartoonish versions of this thing. This is a more realistic version of that. I got to emulate my favorite people.

GAVARIS: And like Keith Raniere from NXIVM.

HEIMANN: None of us knew that. It wasn't until we did our first press day. I was like, "Oh my god, that makes so much sense."

It makes all the sense in the world.

To follow up on what Lou said, Addison, know every single thing there is to know about Brian. Can you just share a fun fact that didn't make it into the finished feature, but we can still feel informing that character?

HEIMANN: With Brian, something that we didn't talk about is his in-between of when he met Joey for the first time to when he is reintroduced to Joey five years into the future and his sexual escapades that followed through there. The entire time that he was missing Joey, he just never found somebody as interesting or as beautiful, according to him. You're not that hot! She's so pretty. It's weird. And so talented. Oh my god, I have this talent crush on Olivia. I'm literally going to take her with me everywhere!

HEIMANN: Now I'm just talking into the void. I'm so sorry.

DUDLEY: I love you, too.

PUCCI: I think we all have a talent crush on Olivia.

Lou Taylor Pucci at Sundance 2025 for Touch Me

Olivia and Jordan, I have to ask the two of you a question, because I do think a lot of the success of this movie hinges on your chemistry together. Can you tell me the very first thing you saw in the other that signaled to you, "You are definitely the Joey to my Craig," and vice versa?

DUDLEY: I have no idea how to put that into words.

GAVARIS: It was instant. But also, to be honest, you started talking about your germaphobia. I hope that's okay to say because I'm also a bit germaphobic. I was like, “I love this girl. I'm going to really, really love you.”

DUDLEY: It was like, “Nice to meet you. Have you washed your hands?” [Laughs]

HEIMANN: Then the next thing you know, you're slapping him with a dildo!

DUDLEY: Yeah. That's how it goes.

HEIMANN: That's not a spoiler. That happens in, like, the first 15 minutes, maybe. It was a clean dildo. We had it sanitized.

GAVARIS: In all seriousness, it was an instantaneous connection. I don't know if we've talked about this a lot, but I feel like for both of us in our process, relationships are a really strong access point and an important one. I also have a thing that I've noticed that my husband pointed out to me that, in so many of the projects I do, I'm always playing either someone's younger brother or their best friend, and it's always a girl. I'm always the best friend of a girl.

DUDLEY: Interesting. But I'm the best one.

GAVARIS: Oh, no, no. You heard it here first. You are the best one.

DUDLEY: Working with him was amazing. I was on another film leading right up to shooting this, so I didn't get to meet you when you came on so last-minute. We met at the table read days before shooting, so we really only had an hour together before we started shooting.

GAVARIS: We were all so nervous.

DUDLEY: We were so nervous because the material is pretty wild. It was immediate. We fell in love, and it was so easy. That was the thing in the movie that I was like, “This has to work, this relationship.”

GAVARIS: And we're getting married.

Olivia Tayor Dudley Tackled an 8-Minute Monologue In 'Touch Me'

"It was so hard, but he trusted me."

Olivia Taylor Dudley at Sundance 2025 for Touch Me

Olivia, you are above and beyond in so many different respects in this movie. I need to know, what do you personally find more challenging, something like a nine-minute-long monologue that is a single shot on you, or maybe something a little more effects and stunt work-heavy?

DUDLEY: By far, one of the hardest things I've ever done in my career is the opening monologue of the movie. It opens with this eight-minute monologue that is one shot, and it was the first thing we shot in the movie, day one, 9:00 AM.

HEIMANN: And that's her first take, too.

It's so good.

DUDLEY: I'm dyslexic, so memorizing is the hardest thing in the world for me with my job, and I only had a few days to memorize it because I was on another film. It was so hard, but he trusted me, and he just kept saying, “You got this. You got this.” I will do all of the other weird shit in this fucking movie, but that is so terrifying. But your trust in me made me feel like I could do it, and now I'm just so proud of it. It's such a bold way to open a movie.

Special thanks to our 2025 partners at Sundance including presenting partner Rendezvous Capital and supporting partners Sommsation, The Wine Company, Hendrick’s Gin, neaū water, and Roxstar Entertainment.