Adam DiMarco and Camila Morrone in 'Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen.' Courtesy of Netflix Logo text [This story contains major spoilers from the finale of Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen.]
If Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen inspires breakups, Camila Morrone and Adam DiMarco won’t be surprised.
The pair play the starring couple in creator Haley Z. Boston’s buzzy and bloody Netflix horror series, who very much break up by the end of the season. It’s a heightened breakup, of course, since Rachel (Morrone) died a violent death, only to be resurrected as an immortal witness to the soulmate curse that took her life. And Nicky (DiMarco) is last seen cradling himself on his bed, reckoning with being a mass murderer of his own family. But Boston, a first-time series creator, previously told The Hollywood Reporter that the show is a breakup story with a hopeful ending, and Morrone and DiMarco agree.
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“Rachel is going to go out there and get the kind of love she deserves. Or maybe she’s on her own. I like the redemption and the walking away from something that wasn’t right for her,” says Morrone. DiMarco adds, “Hopefully, this show makes people take a look at their own relationships, and either makes them feel like they want to double down or fold.”
The series ends with the now-immortal Rachel driving away from the crime scene, smiling and hopeful about what her future holds — even though she’s dead. Below, Morrone and DiMarco talk to THR about what attracted them to this creepy horror romance, what it was like filming their explosive finale fight and that insanely red wedding, and how they imagine their characters moving on if Boston comes up with an idea for a second season. “I think Rachel has a real motivation now to go out there and help people,” says Morrone of the possibilities.
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So what were each of your audition processes like for Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen?
CAMILA MORRONE I was filming The Night Manager in Spain. I was deep into playing Roxana Bolaños, who is the opposite of Rachel — she’s a Colombian arms dealer. I got this urgent audition from my team to play this paranoid, anxious introvert who’s afraid of the world. I was like, “How am I going to get into the headspace to send in a decent self tape?” I saw in the email the logline, but also the creative team — which was A-plus-plus-plus with the Duffers and Weronika Tofilska and Haley. When I read the pilot, I was like, “I have to audition.” I met with Carmen Cuba, our casting director, who’s incredible, and she worked on the scenes with me a few times. Then I went to read for Haley and Weronika. I did one more reading then with some higher ups at Netflix, and then I got to do the chemistry read with Adam. I got the job after that. Maybe you helped me get the job.
ADAM DIMARCO I feel like we helped each other. They asked me, “Who’s your favorite Rachel?” I was like, “Cami.”
MORRONE Aw, thank you!
DIMARCO My casting was a similar story. It was an audition where my team prepped me on just how sick it was. When I read it, I was like, “Oh, yeah.” Sometimes when you get a script, it feels like homework. But this one was a page-turner. I just couldn’t stop reading it.
MORRONE You know when you finish something in one sitting? That’s how I know I want to do it. If I binge it.
DIMARCO Yes, I binge read it. I wanted to read more. I wanted to know what happened. I had two auditions to do that day, and I was taping my friend for two of her auditions. She was taping for Rachel as well. My first tape, I tried two takes. I messed up my last line. It was a really long scene from the pilot of us at a diner just showing our relationship. But they cut it down.
MORRONE It was four-and-a-half pages.
DIMARCO I did all of it and then literally the last line, I had a flub on it, and I was like, “Just imagine I got that right!”
MORRONE I love that you did that. That’s such a good idea. I’m such a perfectionist. I can’t send a tape unless it’s perfect.
DIMARCO That’s like Nicky and Rachel’s difference.
MORRONE My anxiety, I have to get everything right.
DIMARCO Then I had a call back with Carmen and Weronika, who I was really excited to meet, and Haley, who I was really excited to meet as well. They gave me some notes. We talked about the character, and chemistry reads. It felt super alive when Cami and I were reading it on Zoom. Cami had fully blocked out the scene in her hotel room. I found myself walking around my space as well, trying to help her look for her dress.
MORRONE I was looking in closets and shoving suitcases. I was filming in a hotel room, so I had all these great props.
DIMARCO When we did our first chemistry read, I understood the dynamic immediately. Nicky exists to try and calm her down a little bit. She’s paranoid and stressed, and I’m just her rock.
The horror tone of the first two episodes is so different than the rest of the season. Haley said the beginning was like filming a road trip movie with the two of you. Did you have a lot of time before the show to spend with each other, or did you hop right into figuring them out?
DIMARCO We jumped right in.
MORRONE We had a table read, and then jumped right into rehearsals. But we were very separate, too. I had to do all my costume fittings, my tattoos and color and cut my hair, and figure out our hero look. All of that was totally isolated.
DIMARCO We had eight episodes to memorize. So much material.
MORRONE We got very few physical rehearsal time. Very little personal time together before it was Day One, and we were in the love cave!
DIMARCO With my fiancée.
MORRONE I don’t think we even had dinner or a coffee before we started filming. Those first days in Toronto were a whirlwind.
DIMARCO We found our chemistry pretty quickly on set. Our first scene was when we arrive at the house and jump on the bed and are holding hands, cuddling and kissing.
That’s the happiest moment of the whole series!
DIMARCO It’s all downhill from there!
MORRONE That was the only time I had a good day on set! When we got to be silly and be in the car, I didn’t know I was going to die so soon.
DIMARCO She had just come off The Night Manager and was quoting Tom Hiddleston. What was it again?
MORRONE Tom Hiddleston always says, “It’s the first time we’re doing it. It matters, and it’s important.” When you’re on scene five of the day and take seven, you’re like, “How do I muster it again?” He’s like, “It’s the first time, and it matters.” And I love that. It’s so true.
Adam DiMarco as Nicky Cunningham with Camila Morrone as Rachel Harkin in Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. Courtesy of Netflix At the beginning, as a viewer, we don’t really know what’s going on. Rachel has this feeling of being watched, and we hear breathing. When you were playing her before she realizes this curse and before we’re told exactly what it is, what did you want us to believe in terms of if she a reliable narrator, and did you play with that?
MORRONE To me, she’s a reliable narrator. Every character that I play, I have to believe wholeheartedly. I also can’t judge them. In order to sell her paranoia and fear to an audience, and to tell it authentically, she needs to believe everything that she’s seeing is happening to her. She needs to believe it with conviction. I think that’s really important, especially when you’re telling a horror story, or playing a character who’s living in this horrifying, scary world where all these things keep happening. It has to be real to Rachel in those moments where it feels like life or death to convince an audience. She’s a reliable narrator because everything she says ends up being true, and everything she feels ends up being real.
DIMARCO And everything she sees is actually happening. Even that scene, in episode three, where she’s like, “I believe there’s someone behind this door right now.” And there was a twist that there actually was someone behind the door: the “Sorry Man.” I think the pot smoking is a bit of a red herring in the show, too, because the audience is like, maybe she’s an unreliable narrator, high and paranoid. But it almost makes her locked into the universe and the signs and omens.
MORRONE I say that “ever since I got here, I feel like something very bad’s gonna happen,” right? Even in the trailer. Nicky does a really good job of placating her and being like, “I hear you. I’m with you. I feel it, if you feel it. I love you” — which doesn’t end up playing well at the very end, but it’s OK.
DIMARCO How many joints did she bring for the wedding? She brought more than a couple pre-rolls.
MORRONE Yeah, I mean, she smokes.
DIMARCO You’re thinking, “stoner goth baddie.”
MORRONE You said I was an unapologetic, non-traditional baddie.
We learn a lot about Nicky as the season goes, and we have a different opinion of him by the end. What surprised you most about him, Adam, as you were getting deeper into the season?
DIMARCO The big one for me, even before the finale, would be episode five where it’s revealed that the story of how they met, he hasn’t been totally truthful about it. When it came to light, I really felt like the character when I went, “No, no, no, it doesn’t matter.” Cami and I were talking about how you have to be like an attorney for your character sometimes and defend them in court to everyone. I have to have empathy for him, and find justifications. Everyone has their own experience of what’s going on. Everyone has their own truth and their own things that matter to them that might not matter to someone else as much. But yeah, it’s an unfortunate journey that he goes on.
Jumping ahead to the end, what was it like to film their finale fight? How long were you two in that room screaming at each other? Did you do a lot of insults that didn’t make it in the final cut?
DIMARCO That was my favorite room in the house, so I was really happy to be in there.
MORRONE I really love that scene. I think the hinges were off the door, and it was just balls to the wall, let it all rip — because there’s nothing to lose. There’s such a freedom finally being able to express what these characters have been suppressing for so long. All is already lost, so let’s just really have it out. We didn’t over-rehearse that scene. I was sick the day we were supposed to shoot that, so we had to push that scene to be the second to last scene of the show. So on wrap day, at 5 in the morning, we started. We did all nighters and were shooting overnight. We got to work at 6 p.m., shot a bunch of scenes and wrapped at 10 in the morning. So I think that really contributed to us being at the end of our rope — emotional, exhausted and tired. Haley gave us the freedom to ad-lib and improv a bit and just say the meanest things we could ever think of to each other, which I really enjoyed. And she ended up using some of it.
DIMARCO She wrote this additional mean dialogue on little strips of paper, almost like a board game. She would slip it to us.
MORRONE I ad-libbed. I was like, “You are… little!” I was ready to have it out.
DIMARCO You got some good licks in on me. Those scenes were so fun. It’s so fun when the subtext becomes the text, and you say what you’ve been meaning the whole time.
MORRONE A good fight just feels so cathartic, too. I was ready for Rachel to have it out. You never really see them go at each other’s throat like that, maybe when I find out that you lied to me. But it’s a relationship drama. I want to see the characters fight. That’s what happens in relationships.
DIMARCO I don’t really yell a lot in real life.
MORRONE Why did that come easy to me? (Laughs.)
Left to right: Gus Birney as Portia, Karla Crome as Nell, Morrone as Rachel, Ted Levine as Boris, DiMarco as Nicky Cunningham, Jeff Wilbusch as Jules with Zlatko Burić. Courtesy of Netflix That scene also contradicts the quietness of your final scene, where, Adam, there’s a lot written on your face as Nicky is crawled in a ball; he’s realized his parents weren’t their soulmates and his other family members died. Haley said she would like to think of an idea for season two, so thinking ahead, how do you imagine Nicky would be when he gets up from that bed?
DIMARCO It could go in so many different ways. I love that scene and everything that comes after. I think of that as a living nightmare. He’s in shock. He’s catatonic. He doesn’t even necessarily believe what he’s seeing is real when Rachel walks in. We had shot a scene in the main atrium where I was pounding on the glass and then I actually walked over and sat in the snow with her. That doesn’t make it into the final cut, so that just becomes like a dream or something. Like, did that even happen as well? He’s trying to piece together everything and reckon with his role in things. He’s essentially a mass murderer of his family. So I think he’s got some amends to make. I would hope he would try to find Rachel and help. I mean, if she’s willing to take him back, I would hope he would help her so this doesn’t happen to anyone else. Obviously, he still has his brother and Nell and he probably feels pretty protective over [their son] Jude. And he still thinks that Rachel is his soulmate. He didn’t die, so…
Haley did say she would like to think that Rachel would try to end the curse.
MORRONE Yeah, that’s very Rachel. It’s very selfless of her. I think she wouldn’t want anybody to go through what she’s been through. I think she’ll be the opposite of what the witness was to her, and that she would be like a PSA and spread the word and be like, “I’ve been you, trust me, you’re validated.” All she’s ever wanted was for somebody to look at her and say, “You’re not crazy. Yes, these things happen to you,” and that’s what she said to Jude. She said, “Don’t let anybody ever tell you that it didn’t happen, because it did.” There was so much gaslighting in her life and so much being told that she was crazy or paranoid. I think she has a real motivation now to go out there and help people.
Is that why she is so happy in the very final scene? What were you thinking about when you were driving away laughing?
MORRONE She’s happy because she has another chance at life again. Now she knows her story and her history and her past. She can reconcile with it, and she’s just letting everything go. Nicky wasn’t her person, and she said goodbye to her dad for good. She knows what happened to her mom. It’s redemption.
DIMARCO Maybe they can be friends one day.
MORRONE We’ll see.
Rachel says the moral of the story is be really, really careful who you marry. Has this made you think about relationships in your own lives? Have you guys changed your views on love and romance? And Haley viewed this ending as hopeful, do you guys agree?
MORRONE I see this as hopeful, but I also am coming from Rachel’s perspective where she’s going to go out there and get what she deserves; the kind of love she deserves. And I like that. Or maybe it’s no one. Maybe she’s on her own. I just like the redemption and the walking away from something that wasn’t right for her.
DIMARCO I’m weird in the sense that I think breakups are good. Because it means that at least one of the people involved didn’t want to be in that relationship anymore. So that’s ultimately good for both people in the long run. Hopefully this show makes people take a look at their own relationships, and either makes them feel like they want to double down or fold.
That would be interesting if this show sparks a lot of break ups.
DIMARCO Or people are renewing their vows. You never know.
MORRONE I think it’s going to be one the other. Either way, it’ll pose some questions, and people will have interesting conversations at the end.
DIMARCO Like, would you do that for me? Would you still love me if I was a witness?
MORRONE If you were Nicky, would you have left me at the alter? That’s going to be a question. I think people are going to feel a lot of ways about you.
DIMARCO Would you have drank the potion?
MORRONE Great question.
Morrone as Rachel in the finale. Courtesy of Netflix I heard there was a ton of blood for the final wedding scene. Camila, what was it like filming your bloody bridal walk?
MORRONE I’m OK now. I’m here. I’m here. (Laughs.) That dress became incredibly heavy when it’s getting stuck to the floor. It’s a lot of fabric, and it really started to weigh on me when and leave marks. I had to carry it around. The corset was not very comfortable. I’d pop it off in between takes. We wanted to make it really flattering, but when you’re in it for 13, 14 hours a day it starts to add up! But besides that physical challenge, the blood… I had never worked with blood before like that. I’d never shot anything like it. But the set design… the people who make these things happen are so good at what they do — the [face] tubes, the rigs were so fun. Of course, they’re uncomfortable, but you’re doing it for four or five days, and you’re at the end of the show, and you know the result is going to be amazing. It’s so fun to see movie magic as a fan of movies — even the amputation scene. I never had a prosthetic leg. I’d never done an amputation on camera.
Were the tubes of blood wrapped around your head?
MORRONE Yes, the tubes go around your head and behind the ears and through the nose. I have a bunch of BTS photos from that time. I’ll post them.
DIMARCO Did you wear a corset for Age of Innocence?
MORRONE Oh, yes, I did.
DIMARCO Netflix loves Cami in a corset!
Is there more horror in both of your futures?
MORRONE For me yes.
DIMARCO God, I hope so. It’s just my favorite genre. I love when you’re watching something and it gets your heart pounding and your pulse going.
MORRONE Watching it at the Egyptian for the premiere, with those speakers. The score in this show is incredible, from Colin Stetson. His soundtrack. It was cool sitting in the theater and hearing people’s reactions. The score is half of the jump scare in this show. The title card is a jump scare. If you listen to it without audio, it might not be as scary.
DIMARCO I’m also trying to write a horror movie right now.
MORRONE Are you casting?
DIMARCO The role doesn’t have a corset, I hope that’s OK…
MORRONE Nope, won’t do it. (Laughs.)
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Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is now streaming all episodes on Netflix. Read THR‘s finale interview with Haley Z. Boston.
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