Death of a Unicorn’s director relieved to cast Jenna Ortega before Wednesday's premiere
'Death of a Unicorn’s Alex Scharfman "doesn't know what we would’ve done if we didn’t get Jenna" Ortega for the movie and said she "was just incredible as a collaborator and performer".
'Death of a Unicorn’s Alex Scharfman "doesn't know what we would’ve done if we didn’t get Jenna" Ortega for the movie.
The debut director managed to land Jenna for the movie, alongside Paul Rudd, before her Netflix hit 'Wednesday' premiered and he feels lucky to have signed her before she found fame.
He told The Hollywood Reporter: "Well, sending the email was easy. You just write a letter and send the script in the hope that she gets what you’re trying to do and is interested in it. I think we sent it to her the weekend before Wednesday premiered [in November 2022]. It was very daunting because there’s a lot that rides on the character of Ridley. She’s a vehicle for exposition, but she’s also the emotional focus of the movie. She’s the audience’s eyes and ears. She’s the one person who sees that everyone else is a little bit crazy. Paul’s character, Elliot, actually sees it too, but he’s trying to pretend he doesn’t because he wants things from these crazy people.
"So I don’t know what we would’ve done if we didn’t get Jenna. It’s such a hard role, and she does such an incredible job with it. Aligning things with her schedule was not necessarily a challenge because it ended up working out relatively easily, but there’s always that dance of, 'How can this happen?' But there was a really great vibe as of our first meeting, and she really got the character. She also got what I was trying to do on a genre and story level, and she was just incredible as a collaborator and performer."
The movie tells the story of father-daughter duo, Elliot (Rudd) and Ridley Kintner (Jenna Ortega), who hit a baby unicorn on their way to a mountainside lodge.
And, Alex revealed he took inspiration from Robert Eggers when it came to research, having previously worked with the company that produced Eggers' 'The Witch' and 'Nosferatu'.
He explained: "It’s not like I was his research associate or anything, but just passively being around his research and reading his scripts and seeing where his brain was going with his next project, it’s a pretty incredible thing how researched-based he is. So it was an illuminating moment for me, and that became the general philosophical outlook during the early stages of developing this story. I knew that I wanted [Death of a Unicorn] to be a modern monster movie adaptation of unicorn lore from antiquity.”
