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KatyOh’brian He has lived a reality so interesting that it has bled his fiction.
Every once in a while there’s something gross: for example, a disgusting used condom found in a seedy New Mexico alley while filming his pulpy romantic thriller “Love Lies Bleeding.” But most importantly, like the muscular character he plays, O’Brian is a queer person. Midwestern woman entering a moment that is about to change her life.
“It’s all weird,” says O’Brian, who just heard some exciting “top secret news” about her burgeoning career, which has seen her skyrocket from supporting roles on television (“Z Nation,” “The Mandalorian”) to co-stars. – protagonist of a neo-noir film by Kristen Stewart. “He feels a little simulated.”
The 35-year-old Indianapolis native has her breakthrough role in director Rose Glass’s “Love Lies Bleeding” (now in theaters) as Jackie, an aspiring bodybuilder from Oklahoma who passes through 1980s New Mexico on her on the way to a competition in Las Vegas. a very violent turn when she falls in love with the introverted gym director Lou (Stewart).
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While Glass wrote the role of Stewart with her in mind, O’Brian felt a deep connection with Jackie when she read the script, to the point that she went through a six-part audition process before being cast.
“That allowed me to walk in with this level of swagger and confidence that I never, ever go into an audition with,” says O’Brian, who is married to screenwriter Kylie Chi. “It helped me because I wasn’t nervous. I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m here.’ “
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A throwback era influenced Katy O’Brian’s role in ‘Loves Lies Bleeding’
In “Love Lies Bleeding,” Jackie and Lou’s love story has some serious ups and downs, involving murder, betrayal, and steamy sex, but their mutual attraction is there from the beginning, when Jackie struts into the dingy gym and Lou looks at her. lifting weights. “Obviously, Kristen is beautiful. It would be harder if she was someone who maybe wasn’t super cute,” O’Brian says of their chemistry.
O’Brian was also inspired by the film’s era: “The ’80s are such a big, fun, wild time,” the actress says, adding that Glass outfitted the sets with authentic gym equipment from long ago. “It is not designed for a woman’s size. It’s too big, so it needs to be adjusted. (Also) the costumes were very revealing and you had to walk around like, ‘Yeah, I’m sexy’ because it’s just your skin and you have to have it up.”
Like her character Jackie, Katy O’Brian has a background in bodybuilding.
O’Brian actually competed in bodybuilding when he was 20, so doing the posing scenes in “Bleeding” wasn’t a problem. (Well, there probably was some sweat.) O’Brian appreciated that Glass literally took viewers behind the curtain, where people were getting spray tans and doing last-minute bicep curls.
“All the moments of intensity,” says the actress. “The most stressful thing is not when you are on stage, but right before.” The film also captures “the strange juxtaposition of being very pretty but very tense at the same time. You have to be flexible but smile and pretend it’s fun for you.”
O’Brian, who is also a martial artist, stays in good shape, so getting into Jackie mode was “pretty easy”: He has continued his bodybuilding workouts over the years because “that’s what I know, but it’s also good for my mental health.” Her physicality is “pretty plain for her,” says Glass, who notes that O’Brian is “incredibly charismatic,” but “just underneath that, he brings this incredible vulnerability and softness.” Stewart adds: “She’s like Frankenstein. “A sweet little Frankenstein.”
Former band member Katy O’Brian also has a police officer on her resume
O’Brian began acting as a child alongside one of her older brothers when her mother registered them with an agent. But it was difficult to find a place because of her mixed race (black and white): “They just didn’t know where to put us.” O’Brian remembers being discouraged, but “I was always doing something artistic,” from local theater to assistant directing high school plays to playing percussion in a band.
However, after graduating from Indiana University in 2011, O’Brian felt the “need to have a steady job,” so he worked as a police officer before devoting himself fully to screen acting. While being a cop wasn’t for her, her experience helped her find emotional impact with military-style roles on shows like “The Rookie.” In law enforcement, “you have to put yourself in situations that are scary or emotionally horrible,” she says. “A lot of people get more tired, but that made me a much more understanding and empathetic person.”
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This ‘Love Lies Bleeding’ leak also lives in the Marvel and ‘Star Wars’ universes
Admittedly “a huge nerd,” O’Brian grew up watching Spider-Man and X-Men cartoons, as well as “Hercules” and “Xena,” and has enjoyed her roles in that geek-friendly space. She played warrior Jentorra in Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and villainous Imperial communications officer Elia Kane in the “Star Wars” show “The Mandalorian.”
“Honestly, maybe it’s even cooler” for his brother, who loves “Star Wars,” O’Brian says. “When something goes into space, that’s where it loses me, which is funny.” He even took his brother to the “Mandalorian” premiere: “It was like being kids again.”
Contributing: Patrick Ryan